What I’m Watching: Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives: Season 8, Episode 21 “The People Will Hear” (C+)

This episode certainly doesn’t feel like a penultimate installment. There are definitely some positive progressions that lead this show towards its inevitable conclusion in next week’s blowout two-hour finale. Susan deciding to move away with Julie and help her raise the baby is monumental, but after living away from Wisteria Lane for a year, she’s the least connected and could easily sever her ties to her friends if it was about moving with her daughter. Tom punching his boss after he insulted Lynette was a strong step since he was finally ready to go back to her, and it’s frustrating that a mistaken moment with Lee drags the reconciliation out yet another episode so that it can occur in the finale. Bree getting jealous of Tripp and accusing his private investigator of being a prostitute is the kind of filler plot that shouldn’t be used in such an important episode, and it’s far more relevant that he deduced that Alejandro was Gaby’s stepfather, causing her to think about whether she really wants to take the fall for her friends. I imagine that she’s going to have to get off, but her friends will have to rally to her defense in a more compelling way than simply thanking her for taking the fall. It would be much more fitting to see all the housewives on trial for the show’s swan song since it’s always been about these hard-working, loyal housewives and the murderous secrets that lie buried among them along Wisteria Lane.