"Desperate Housewives" and "Heroes"

"Desperate Housewives" - I like the "water under the bridge" theme of this episode. We think we've gotten rid of things in the past, but the past always comes back to haunt you. And boy does this episode epitomize that.

There were a lot of funny lines in the episode. When Bree is trying to talk Orson into letting baby Benjamin sleep in their bed, he says the reason people did that was so the baby could be near their milk, and since Bree wasn't lactating, that would mean Benjamin would really need to sleep in the refrigerator. I laughed really hard at that line.

Bree is still so misguided. She is trying so hard to not repeat her past mistakes that she doesn't even see that she's just forging on ahead making brand new ones. OK, so she wants Benjamin to turn out differently, and Danielle is pretty much out of the picture. But Andrew is right there. And virtually invisible. She says that the three of them (her, Orson and Benjamin) are a happy little family - but she completely excludes Andrew, and he's witness to that time and again. And finally, it results in him moving out. But it didn't turn out quite the way I thought. There's a part of him that's still the same person he was as far as personality, but he's not nearly as destructive. And he has already pledged support to his mother, in his own mind. And he's right - she hasn't seen or really acknowledged any of the progress that he's made in the last year or two. But I did like that in the end, he's going to go out on his own, but there's a very different relationship there now between Bree and him - he's his own person now.

And the past coming back to haunt someone is played out beautifully in the cycle of blackmail that follows. Katherine's husband is visited by someone who was obviously involved in the "Chicago incident". You get the feeling there was some kind of affair or something. Mike is witness to this, so Mike takes advantage to ask him for a prescription for his painkillers. The husband in turn asks Orson to write the scrip instead, blackmailing him by reminding Orson that he knows about Danielle being the real mother of Benjamin. Orson is still hesitant, but after talking to Mike, who says the pain originated when he was hit by a truck, Orson readily agrees to hand over the scrip, since Orson knows it was him that hit Mike. Oh, what a tangled web we weave and all that.

And then when Barrett, Mike's dealer, tries to blackmail Mike into letting him keep his date with Julie, Mike rats him out instead, but the dealer rats him out right back about how much business they've done together.

And poor Susan. She's so delusional. First, she tries to set Julie up with Barrett based on superficial information. And then, she wants so hard to believe Mike that he's given up the drugs. But he lies to her again and again. And Susan has to find out the hard way that Mike has not in fact given up on the drugs as he'd promised.

Gabrielle and Carlos - OK, really still don't care that much. But when Gabrielle slipped the sleeping pills in Carlos' drink, I thought it was odd that the pills took effect that quickly. Was that because they were dissolved? Odd. And Victor was found. Ho hum. But the twist there was perfect. Amnesia, he doesn't remember anything that happened on the boat. Oh, yeah, how convenient. That happens on soaps a lot. But then we get that he definitely remembers. And Gabrielle knows it. Usually, they really do have amnesia or they don't, but they're keeping it a secret from everyone. In this case, only Gabrielle knows, for now, anyway, until she's able to tell Carlos. So now, Victor's got that to hold over her and Carlos. What is he going to ask for in return?

And then there's the story of Lynette and her mother and stepfather. I was kind of curious about casting Richard Chamberlain in that role, but he was actually perfect for it. I didn't guess the reveal at all. I figured it was something like he'd had the affair instead of the mother, but his being gay didn't figure into it. Nice twist there, and then with the mother being his new roomie.


"Heroes" - So I guess I hadn't paid enough attention to connect the verbal dots, but getting hit by a clue by four finally did it - the virus is named after Mohinder's sister. So is that why his blood doesn't work to counteract that, because he's a relative?

OK, Noah's healed. What I really want to know, though, is does that mean he doesn't have to wear glasses anymore? Does it heal *everything* or just up to where he was before?

Sylar has managed to wrap Maya around his little finger. He's still evil, but in a purely human way now, without the special powers - yet. He knows just what to say to get Maya to trust him and be attracted to him and think that he's her saviour. He even tries to sacrifice himself to save her, to show her that she can control her own powers. OK, well, if she can control her power now, then why does she still need Mohinder? Didn't she need him because she couldn't control herself and she needed someone to help her do that, other than her brother? And poor Alejandro. He didn't know exactly who he was getting involved with. The shot of Sylar and Maya kissing outside his room as he shuts the door on Alejandro's stabbed dead body in the room was chilling. Body count 1.

I loved the scenes with Claire trying to pack her things. She goes through a litany of the physical harm that's come to her, that she's always healed from, but the one thing her powers can't do is heal her broken heart.

So Mohinder thinks he's found a cure for the virus to save Nikki, but he may not be able to test it since Sylar and Maya are now "babysitting" Molly. Uh oh.

Micah and his copycat cousin get themselves into a mess of trouble. But we knew that was coming when the camera focussed in on the cousin when Nikki was consoling Micah.

And, I win the lottery. That was in fact Joanna Cassidy playing Victoria. When her name came up in the credits, I actually yelled at the television. Her character is there to explain a few things, I guess, and to really show that Peter is completely being mislead. She only lasted one show. Body count 2. But if Victoria left the company when Hiro's dad refused to destroy the virus and decided to hide it instead, when was the picture taken that we've been seeing? That was obviously taken at a later time.

And the ending - it comes down to Hiro versus Peter. Yeah, I knew it was going to be a cliffhanger.




So next Sunday and Monday are going to be action packed. Huge tornado/hurricane on "Desperate Housewives" and the last episode of this arc of "Heroes", to see how much they wrap up. What a way to start December! And if the writers' strike doesn't end soon, we may just be left with what we see next week.