You didn’t really think Housewives was going to kill a housekid, did you Even for a series that has had more than its share
of fictional fatalities, murdering adorable little MJ would have been a hideous step too far, one you never thought a show that is essentially a comedy was going to take. Which is why, despite a few entertaining flourishes, Sunday night’s two-hour Desperate Housewivesmostly seemed to be spinning its wheels, desperately trying to build suspense around an event we never really feared was going to happen. Stretching what felt like a half-hour worth of plot over a two-episode slot, the show took too long to get to the climax — and telegraphed the (relatively) happy ending before it got there. The set-up was scary enough: Dave tied Susan to a post so she’d be forced to watch as he recreated the crash that killed his wife and child. Only this time, Mike would crash into Dave’s car, killing MJ in the back seat. But at the last minute, in a hallucination-inspired act of charity, Dave let MJ out of the car and went to the accident alone, only to survive and end up in a mental hospital. Granted, last year’s finale was a hard act to follow. It had one of the show’s better mysteries to solve — the secret of Katherine’s past — and ended with one of the show’s best tricks: a five-year leap forward. As good as Neal McDonough was as Dave, his revenge plot couldn’t hope to compete. It was too simple and unraveled too quickly. Unfortunately, this flat and silly episode not only didn’t live up to last year’s effort, it also didn’t live up to the season it was meant to finish. This has been a good year for Desperate, and it deserved a better end. Too much of the episode just didn’t ring true. I didn’t buy Bree’s desperation to get divorced, or Katherine’s desperation to get married. And clearly the time has come for a TV time-out on hallucinatory visits from the dead, even though in this case, Dave’s visions did provide an excuse for a surprise return by Nicollette Sheridan.
Worst of all, much of the show was spent setting up new plots that seem deeply unpromising. Lynette pregnant with twins Gaby and Carlos living with a teenage tramp Carl and Bree a couple