522: 'Marry Me A Little'
Wr: Jason Ganzel
Dr: Larry Shaw
Synopsis: Bree goes to extremes to hide her true intentions from Orson, while Susan and Jackson (guest star Gale Harold) put on an act for the authorities. Lynette is shocked at the lengths Tom will go to in order to look younger, and Katherine masks the truth from Mike, afraid to lose him. Meanwhile, Dave is on edge when he learns a key witness to his misdeeds surfaces.
Review: As a lead-in to next week's grand season finale, 'Marry Me a Little' feels rather underwhelming. While the stakes are certainly raised for a few of the housewives, the stories themselves suffer from a number of irritating flaws. Take Susan's marriage of convenience to Jackson: not only do the writers continue to annihilate all the character development she's acquired since deciding to go it alone earlier in the season, by having her mutter gloriously pathetic lines like, "oh I've been so lonely without you Jackson!", but now they're funnelling the thoroughly artificial cracks in Mike and Katherine's relationship through it as well. How utterly, utterly predictable that Mike would start to realise that he's still in love with his ex-wife as soon as she turned up on his doorstep with her new beau in tow! Oh, and just in case there's any doubt as to the truth of that, Mary Alice even remarks, over a shot of Mr. Delfino at episode's end, that 'others cover up a love that continues to linger'. Well, that's just great. There's nothing like stringing a fanbase along for five seasons, playing seemingly never-ending games of will they/won't they with a couple, putting them together, splitting them up, promising marriage, giving him amnesia, getting them together again, splitting them up again and now... well, more than probably getting them together. Again. Don't tell me that as soon as she gets the first whiff of feeling from Mike, Susan isn't going to run head first into his plumberly arms, abandoning all of her feelings for Jackson and pretending like the last few years never happened. It's the only story that the writers know how to tell, the only one they seem to think will reward and engage their audience (remember the British guy in season three?) Well sorry guys, but I've got a newsflash for ya: we're tired of it. We're sick of being jerked around, sick of being promised something but never truly given it, and most of all, we're sick of being expected to buy into every insipid twist and turn in this most ghastly of narratives. How are we ever supposed to invest in any of the other relationships that Mike and Susan may individually become involved in, if they're always going to abandon them for each other by the time the season finale comes around? And more importantly than that, how are we supposed to care about them being together at all if you're just going to screw it up and take it away from us again? Frankly, I'm done with the whole thing.
Sure, I'm possibly jumping the gun here; perhaps the writers won't reunite the two and surprise us all, but I don't exactly have high hopes given their past record. And in any case, look what it's done to Mike and Katherine's relationship. You can pretty much kiss that one goodbye in the season finale, now that he's made the most pathetic and insincere marriage proposal EVER and she's acted like an emotionally transparent idiot, giving completely over-the-top reactions to Susan and Jackson's matrimonial bliss and, most ridiculously of all, pretending to be Mike so that the wedding will go ahead. This one is so full of holes, it barely even holds together: so Susan receives a message saying she'll get the alimony. What's to stop her actually CALLING Mike back about this rather huge issue that probably shouldn't be discussed by the medium of text? Okay, so Katherine could just choose not to answer... but um, Susan will inevitably communicate with Mike at some point in the not too distant future, seeing as, you know, he's doing her this huge favour. Katherine can't intercept every call she might make to the guy, or be around him 24/7 so that she can turn the tide of the conversation. The cat will inevitably come scampering right out of the bag and her duplicitous antics will be revealed in all their ill-thought-out glory. This is just lazy writing, desperately trying to manufacture some additional conflict in a relationship that is already going down the drain thanks to all the 'oh, they want different things' anvils we've been hit over the head with for the past few weeks. It's not needed, guys; in fact, this entire fracturing of their relationship isn't needed, as we can all see it for what it really is: a tired excuse to reignite a spark that was lost years ago.
The other narratives fare a little better but they're still not without their problems. The writers continue to assassinate Bree's character by turning her into a criminal, even going so far as to include an unnecessarily over-dramatic pre-credits sequence in which a late night conversation between she and Karl reads like the kind of top secret rendezvous between a pair of dirty government agents you might see in a show like 24. It's shot in the shadows, with the characters almost completely in black, as if, because their dialogue is duplicitous, they have to look duplicitous too... like how, if I'm feeling happy, I always wear bright colours and if I'm angry, well, I venture deep into the red section of my wardrobe. Sure, the scene is well shot and it does make for a nice homage, but as a believable piece of the plot, it falls horribly flat. It doesn't help that the whole thing is completely out of character for Bree, either. She's happy to commit fraud? She'll burgle her own home? I really, really don't think so. While it's nice to see Richard Burgi again, delivering those delicious one-liners with great aplomb, and there is at least some form of redemption being offered for Orson as he begins to see how his actions could have affected other people, there's too much suspension of disbelief for it to work, too much 'fitting the character around the story', so to speak. Let's hope the writers course correct in the finale, restoring the equilibrium by having both parties realise how selfish and ridiculous they've acted for the past few weeks.
At least this narrative appears to have some form of direction, however: Lynette/Tom and Gaby/Carlos's stories have been wandering around aimlessly for a while now, lacking the momentum that is needed to keep us interested for those crucial final hours. Their stories are self-contained here, serving little purpose other than to reinforce certain facets of their characters. While Tom's dalliances with plastic surgery are mildly amusing at times, and the scenes between Gaby and the lady at the soup kitchen are well written and acted, they are relatively pointless time-fillers, contributing nothing to the on-going plot. This is not always needed of course; there is certainly scope for introspection and character development, but this late in the season, the writers really need to be upping their game, not resting on their laurels. And sadly, that's a good summation of the episode. We fall back, once again, on the familiar: from Tom's mid-life crisis to the bleeding ballad of Mike Delfino and Susan fracking Myer, there's very little here that we haven't seen before. This doesn't make 'Marry Me a Little' a bad episode; it just makes it one that it's hard to really care about. 5.9
No comments:
Post a Comment