"Desperate Housewives" - September 28, 2008 episode - season premiere

The new season starts off where the last season left off - after having made a five-year jump into the future.


Susan

She had given birth to her and Mike's baby boy, and she and Mike were on their way to an anniversary dinner when they ended up in a really bad car accident. In the present, she has a boy-toy that she sleeps with who's actually her painter, but she has kept him a secret and has not allowed him to meet her friends or her son. He wants more of a relationship with her, but she refuses. Eventually, she tells him about the car accident. We then learn that Mike didn't die in the accident, but rather, the mother and daughter (the same age as Susan's and Mike's son) in the other car were killed. Susan's guilt caused such a rift in the marriage that she and Mike divorced. When he comes to take their son for his visit, she finally admits that she's seeing someone else.


Gabrielle

Glamor-queen is gone, and she's now the mother of two kids, the oldest of which is fairly heavy for a four-year-old. Carlos apparently indulges her (he's still blind) and doesn't want Gabrielle to make her self-conscious about her weight. Gabrielle tries to get her daughter Juanita to get some exercise by having her run after the car (that seems like a bad idea, doesn't it?), and when Juanita is finally tired of it, she just gets on a bus. And the bus driver doesn't make her pay? She certainly didn't have any money on her. Gabrielle's life and looks are certainly very different now than before. It was cool to see them do almost no make-up and no hairdo on Eva, and they still toned it down even when Gabrielle was supposed to be dressed up.


Bree

Bree has a catering business with Katherine, but she's also about to publish her first cookbook. Katherine is touched that Bree has dedicated the cookbook to her, but she's angry after she's had a look at the recipes and finds that some of the recipes were either jointly created by both of them or are outright Katherine's creations, yet Katherine is mentioned nowhere in the book as a collaborator. When a local cooking show wants to tape Bree, Katherine manages to show that Bree doesn't know how to make one of their famous creations, one that's contained in the cookbook. Bree kind of treats Katherine like the hired help, which Katherine doesn't like. Bree is apparently back with Orson, but it's revealed that Danielle came back to claim her son since she is now married and could provide for him, and she only gave him up because Bree talked her into it. It appears that Bree has no access to Danielle or her baby, so Bree is trying to fill the hole left by their departure, though Andrew is still around.


Lynette

Lynette's and Tom's twin boys haven't calmed down any in the five years that have gone by. She catches them having taken over the family restaurant for an alcohol-filled poker night with friends, which has apparently been going on for some time. She grounds them from Homecoming, but she and Tom argue about what they've done. Rather than being a dad to them and teaching them what was wrong with what they did, Tom is more like a friend who shares in the "cool" things they do. Tom even overturns Lynette's decision to not let them go to Homecoming. But Lynette turns the tables on him by telling the boys that they can go AND they can use Tom's treasured convertible. When they're late returning, Lynette finally gets through to Tom that they have to be parents to their kids, and when the boys finally show up, Tom finally puts his foot down, being dad for what looks like the first time. I used to really like Lynette and Tom as a couple, but Tom's actions over the past season, especially with his daughter from the other woman and even with his own kids, shows him to be a total baby and wuss who can't seem to take responsibility for anything. OK, so NOW he decides to be dad? Ummm, yeah, dude, the twins are 16. Where ya been this whole time?


Edie

The big surprise (to me, anyway, since I thought she was gone from the show) is that Edie returns to town, and she's got a new rich husband - Dave Williams. They move back into her house, much to the neighbors' surprise. The women of Wisteria Lane are surprised that after Edie makes a rude remark about Gabrielle's appearance, her husband has some words for her, and then Edie apologizes, and she even says she baked them some muffins. At a party thrown by the women to welcome back Edie, there's a disagreement about who was at fault when Edie left, but her husband calms things down. It turns out that he convinced Edie to return to Wisteria Lane. Late at night, he receives a phone call, from someone to whom he is required to check in once a month. It must be some kind of doctor or something, because Dave is shown on video as having been in some kind of treatment for anger management issues, though the anger is apparently directed at one person, someone who lives on Wisteria Lane.