#610: 'Boom Crunch'
Wr: John Pardee & Joey Murphy
Dr: David Grossman
Synopsis: Gabrielle and Lynette's friendship is on the brink of collapse, whereas Bree and Orson come to an agreement about their marriage. Meanwhile, Susan hatches a plan to help an irrational Katherine, and Danny's vital mistake might cost Angie her freedom. In the meantime, Christmas cheer is curtailed when disaster strikes, as a plane crashes down on Wisteria Lane, putting lives in peril.
Review: Oh Desperate Housewives, when will you learn? Going into the Christmas hiatus, Marc Cherry's magnum opus wheels out the gimmicks once again, desperate to shock and surprise us all and to give the nation's millions something decent to chew on for the better part of a month. Only problem is, the events are so transparent, their purpose so Goddamn obvious, that they only serve to infuriate. For about three weeks now, it's been apparent to everyone with a functioning frontal lobe that a plane was due to crash on good ol' Wysteria Lane and, understandably, this was met with considerable trepidation; after all, just how many disastrous events can occur in this supposedly sleepy suburb without there being, say, a bloody Hellmouth underneath it? Clearly buoyed by the success of season three's 'Bang', a fantastic hour of television set almost exclusively in a supermarket as a recurring character holds several of its customers hostage, the writing staff have been trying to recreate the magic every year since. So we've had a tornado that promised to change the lives of the characters 'forever', when actually all it did was give Lynette a minor panic attack and made Carlos blind for less than a season; a 'devastating' fire that 'tore through' a building but, um, didn't do much of anything at all really and now, we have the possibility that a little passenger jet may have done away with one of the show's recurring characters. But actually, all it'll have done is injure said individual (most likely Karl or Orson), thereby serving to keep any significant developments in their storyline at bay until, you know, the end of the season when things can 'come to a head.' Sigh.
Okay, perhaps cynicism is getting the better of me. Maybe the Housewives writers will actually take the road less travelled this time. Perhaps they'll make a brave decision and do something that, you know, genuinely surprises us... but 'Boom Crunch' hasn't exactly filled me with confidence. Pardee and Murphy's script is a lazily written piece that falls back on desperately predictable story ideas in order to propel, sorry, slouch its narrative towards some sort of crescendo. The decision to withhold the actual plane crash until the final few minutes is just irritating, not only because we knew it was going to happen before the episode began, but because they then proceed to tease it for the entire forty minutes with some horribly contrived sequences between the piloting couple that descend so far into caricature, it's a surprise they don't just do away with dialogue altogether and hold up signs reading 'PUT UPON HUSBAND' and 'MENOPAUSAL WIFE.' The viewer just wants the carnage to ensue and not to be left for a month or so waiting to find out about the aftermath but, lo and behold, that's exactly what happens, in a sequence of events straight out of Padding 101.
If the housewives' individual storylines were actually engaging, perhaps this wouldn't be such a problem. Alas, we can but dream. Katherine's downward spiral reaches all new lows here as she descends into madness, wittering on to Susan and Dylan about, respectively, how Mike shot her and how he's her husband, and Dana Delaney does her level best with what she's given, trying desperately not to let the storyline descend into parody, but sadly, there's only so much dignity you can preserve when you're asked to run around a hospital in your nightgown and start crying and shrieking at a bunch of nurses. The frustrating thing about all of this is that the concept itself isn't all that terrible; hell, in the hands of better writers, it could be poignant and moving. Unfortunately, the Housewives staff have wrapped it up in so much abhorrent circumstance - not the least of which is the very fact that Mike would callously dump the woman he professed to love, and was set to marry, in order to reunite with his ex, and then she, and we, as an audience, are supposed to be okay with it - that it's difficult to derive even the tiniest morsel of enjoyment from it. Yes, we feel sympathy, maybe pity, for Katherine here, but when you take into account the bastardisation of her character that has occurred for the past ten weeks, it really is far too little, far too late.
While the rift between Lynette and Gaby actually looked promising last week, its unwarranted absurdity just irritates here. The scene in which they bicker during the carol singing isn't funny, it's just petty, and as such, you'd be forgiven for just wishing that the bloody aircraft would land on the pair of them in order to shut 'em up. Bree's narrative fares a little better and it's largely due to the fact that some progression is actually made. Orson's reaction when she blackmails him into divorce is genuinely unexpected and provides a nice reminder of the more lovable elements of his character, although this is negated somewhat by the ludicrousness of the mock fight between he and Karl in the makeshift house. And then, of course, there's the Bolens, whose almost exposition might actually have been rather interesting if hadn't been so bleeding obvious from the moment that Mona first spoke to the couple about their 'secret past' that everything would be oh-so-neatly papered over when the plane came trundling along and sliced the woman in half. Yup, that was on the cards in the first five minutes and it became an absolute dead cert when Danny decided to spill everything to her, which in itself is one of the most unbelievable decisions ever to have been made in the series. "Your mom told me everything..." Oh please! Everybody knows you press the other party for what they do know before you just decide 'okay then, maybe I should just spill my deepest, darkest secrets.' Agh!
Instead of being a rip-roaring lead into the winter break, keeping us all on tenterhooks for Desperate Housewives' return, 'Boom Crunch' is a limp exercise in mind numbing predictability that serves to demonstrate just how fraught with problems the show has become. The episode is hopelessly lazy, falling back on storylines and plot decisions that became tired long, long ago, and as such, the supposedly dramatic central event falls horridly flat, feeling like the desperate gimmick that it really is. There are flashes of decency, yes, but they are sadly few and far between. This isn't good enough guys; if you want your show to survive into next year, you're gonna have to do a hell of a lot better. 5.2
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