ONE WONDERFUL DAY

"My name is Mary Alice Young, and before I died, my life was filled with love, laughter, friendship, and, sadly, secrets." We see a framed photo of all the Desperates, including Mary Angela, clumped together in a big group hug. "The secrets had begun fifteen years earlier when my name was Angela Forest and I was living a life of quiet desperation." Flashback to Angela taking out a very ominous bag of trash. "I'd feel it every morning as I made breakfast for my husband." Mary Angela sashays out of the kitchen hefting two truly glorious plates stacked high with pancakes -- I'm guessing that back when she was still alive, Mary Angela gave Bree a real run for her housekeeper-of-the-year money. "And during the errands I ran in the afternoon." We see Mary Angela tipping the bag boy at the grocery store. "Even at my work every evening." Mary Angela walks into some kind of medical facility, wearing those terrible, terrible patterned scrubs that so sadly have taken the place of the awesome zip-up A-line nurse dresses of yesteryear. A younger-looking Felicia with unexpected Nancy Reagan hair is chatting with another woman about an image found in a calendar that they're both examining. The woman wonders if the photo was taken in the area? "Oh no," Felicia says, "that's way out in Fairview. I have family there." You know, just passing the time, chit-chatting about real estate calendars! Could anyone possibly be that boring? To have to resort to calendars? ["No wonder Mary Angela was so desperate." -- Wing Chun] MAVO: "To me, each day was grey and meaningless. And then one day, there was color." Back to the night of Mary Angela and the ominous bag of garbage. Mary Angela is bringing out the trash when she runs into a sunken-eyed, red-nosed Deirdre, who is doing the patented junkie "twitch and scratch" dance. She is also carrying a baby. "Deirdre, what are you doing here?" Angela asks. Deirdre: "I need some money." Inside the house, Angela gives Deirdre a glass of water as CreePaul hovers nervously in the background. Angela notes that Deirdre is back on the drugs again, which doesn't exactly take a rehab technician to observe because seriously, Deirdre is not behaving even slightly normal in this scene, and yet still she denies that she's using, insisting that she just needs cash to feed her baby. "If the baby's hungry," Mary Angela offers, "we can go to the market and I'll buy food." Deirdre yells that she can shop for her own baby! She then snaps a "quiet!" at the mildly squawking baby -- who is very cute, by the way, all big-eyed and footy-pajama-ed. Then Deirdre tries to sell Mary Angela her watch. CreePaul tells her sternly that Mary Angela is not giving her any money. "Do you mind?" Deirdre yells at CreePaul; then immediately she downshifts to wheedling, saying that in rehab, Mary Angela was the only one who treated Deirdre like a person. Mary Angela holds firm and tries to show Deirdre the door. Deirdre blurts, "I'll sell you my baby." Wow, you'd think there'd be some intermediary step between trying to sell her watch and trying to sell her baby -- a car maybe? Sexual favors? Deirdre: "I heard you talking, and I know you can't have your own. It's been killing you." Appalled, Paul tries again to get Deirdre to leave, but she argues that it's for Dana's sake, and that the baby will be better off. And to prove the point, she hushes the baby again in a very edgy, I'm-about-to-snap kind of way. To CreePaul's shock, and Deirdre's excitement, Mary Angela actually begins to consider the offer. Deirdre asks how much money they have in the house, and slowly Mary Angela closes the door.

GOODBYE FOR NOW

MAVO: "Edie Britt's favorite moment of every day was her arrival at the construction site of her new home, because she knew what was about to happen. Her sudden appearance was always sure to generate a few appreciative glances, a few lascivious looks, and some downright ogling." MAVO calls it exactly like she sees it: Edie pulls up to the construction and does indeed get glances, looks, and ogles. "Sadly for Edie, the one man she wanted most to notice her," as across the way Mike comes out to pick up the paper, "paid her no attention at all." Edie waves, but Mike doesn't see her, and Edie lowers her waving arm in sad, sad disappointment. Huh. Edie doesn't really strike me as the pining sort. But if you say so, MA. "Yes, Edie needed attention to feel good about herself. And she was determined to get it." Edie -- wearing a shirt so small that it would reveal half of the bra underneath it even if it weren't absolutely see-through -- pulls her convertible up to the construction site. A goofy construction worker hems and haws and pants and then finally manages to ask her out. Edie: "Oh honey, you are so far out of your league that you're playing a completely different sport." Ouch. Edie steals a box of doughnuts and walks them over to Mike's, leaving a very crushed-looking goofy construction worker in her wake. As she climbs Mike's steps, we get a blinding eyeful of Edie's cleavage, which is looking positively Benny Hill-ish in magnitude. Seriously, for the duration of this scene, whenever Edie speaks, imagine her head perched atop two huddled bald men. Mike opens the door wearing a faded tee. "Nice ensemble," Edie says, though she pronounces it the French way, "ahn sahm." I'm not so sure what is so noteworthy about Mike's outfit -- it's not sloppy enough to deserve sarcasm, nor tidy enough to deserve a compliment -- but okay. "You busy?" Mike overreacts weirdly with a laughing no, oh no. Edie tells him that she bought her workingmen some fresh doughnuts (lies!), and that there was a surplus and would Mike maybe want to...? And then out from underneath Mike's arm pops Susan, wearing nothing but her bra and panties (Cute! Pink! Matching!) and a shorty robe. "Susan!" Edie says, understandably surprised. "Well, what..." Edie stutters. "Mike and I got back together!" Susan says brightly. Edie, recovering fast: "Super!" Susan: "I knew you'd be happy for us." Susan wonders what Edie is doing there. Edie: "Free doughnuts. You want 'em or not." Susan suggests that Mike go put them on a plate, yelling after him to save her one with sprinkles. She's smiling giddily in this scene, and understandably so: based on what I just saw of her itsy bitsy body, Susan hasn't eaten a doughnut since 1983, so clearly this is going to be a big, dear-diary kind of day for her.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE

MAVO: "When she was younger, Sophie Bremmer was a hopeless romantic. She was also hopelessly naive. Which is how she came to be married four times." Through flashback, we get a tour of the Many Husbands Of Sophie Bremmer: (a) the gambler; (b) the drinker, (c) the man-lover, and (d) (see (b)). "Yes, Sophie was tired of having her heart broken. So she decided she would never...get...married...again. Then one night, she had a visitor." Why, it's a drunk Bob "Morty" Newhart. Yelling "Sophie, Sophie" from the front yard. Susan hustles him inside the house as he mutters and stutters that he has to talk to Sophie. Susan reminds him that it's 1 in the morning and Sophie's sleeping (not at all true -- Sophie's standing just outside the living-room door, listening in on every word). But Morty wants to ask Sophie to marry him. "The [Pancake!] restaurant is starting to make money, I just bought a new jet ski, my cholesterol is down...but none of it's any fun without her." Oh, Morty, Susan doesn't think it's going to work Sophie's moved on. But "Not So Fast" Sophie bursts in. Sophie: "Your doctor told you not to drink!" Morty: "Well, there are times when you need liquid courage." And with that, he hands her his dead wife's engagement ring. Susan: "You gave her your dead wife's ring?" Morty: "It's a three-carat diamond! She shouldn't care if it's used." So, Morty wonders, what does Sophie think? About the proposal? Much to Susan's, and Morty's, surprise, Sophie says, "All right." But she makes him get down on his knee and do the proposal right. MAVO: "Sophie Bremmer was still a hopeless romantic." And another thing? Tomorrow Sophie and Morty are going to exchange the used ring for something much bigger. MAVO, smugly: "But she was no longer naive." Credits! Things get started with an awesome wedding photo montage of all the desperate couples: CreePaul and Mary Angela (wow, Mary Angela sure did love the '80s), Bree and Rex (both lit very mysteriously, as though their faces are being illuminated by the heavenly glow of a just-off-camera baby Jesus), Lynette and Tom (Lynette looking like a very pretty cross-dresser), Gabrielle and Carlos (Gabby looking very matronly indeed). MAVO: "Marriage is a simple concept: basically, it's a contract between two people, that binds them together for life, in hopes that they can live happily ever after. Sadly, some contracts [and here the MAVO ramps up to a supremely smirky pitch] are made to be broken." We pull back from Carlos and Gabby's wedding photo to reveal an aggressively traditional painting of, I think, a bunch of biblical people clumped together in a group hug. The painting is surrounded by the most gaudy, ridiculous, eight-million-pound frame ever made. Seriously, the thing belongs in a mid-quality museum somewhere. But instead, it's hanging on the wall at Casa Tampers and Pampers, where plates are currently being heaved through the air. Carlos swears he did not mess with Gabby's pills! Gabby shows him how very much her pills have been messed with by peeling back the tinfoil to reveal some suspiciously shoddy gluemanship. Well, perhaps it's a manufacturing problem, Carlos suggests, or maybe even his mother? "It's possible: You buy that stuff in bulk, six months at a time, right? Before the accident, I told her how much I wanted a child, and she said that she would take care of it. I just thought she'd talk to you! Baby, I am SO sorry." After a long moment of uncertainty, Gabby comes back with "That bitch!" Carlos rubs Gabby's back, confessing that although he did very much love his mother, he has to admit that she could be very controlling. Gabby: "Reaching out from beyond the grave to screw with me. God, she's good." Gabby gets up to leave, and Carlos asks where she's going. Gabby: "I feel a wave of morning sickness coming on, and I want to be standing on your mother's grave when it hits." (Crypt, Gabby. Remember? Mama Solis doesn't have a grave, she has a crypt.) As Gabby stomps out the door, Carlos gives a huge sigh of relief and throws himself back onto the couch with a self-satisfied "getting away with it" smile. Gross!