Reid About It

Obvious spoiler alert for everybody who hasn't watched the show this week, as always.

With this week's episode, the tradition of killing off characters on Desperate Housewives just to end a bad storyline continues. The Babymomma bit it this week, killed off by Roseanne's sister.

With her death, that officially ends the tug-of-war over Tom with Lynette. It seems as if they've heard our outcries about how badly the second season of DH sucked. Let's examine last year's major plotlines, and see what's happened since Marc Cherry returned to hopefully save the show.

Gaby and Carlos want a baby. After Gaby lost hers, Xiao-Mei was serving as a surrogate mother. The baby she delivered wasn't theirs, so they gave it up in favor if a divorce. Xiao-Mei is gone, and neither of them mentions having a baby anymore.

Susan gets popular. Susan won back Mike the plumber, then wound up sleeping with her ex-husband. Mike's just coming out of a coma under the thrall of Edie, and the ex-husband hasn't been seen all year. She's quickly moved on to the British guy. Edie was also engaged to Susan's ex last year, and that's never mentioned either.

Bree is involved with another crazy man, and becomes an alcoholic. Bree continued her string of losers by hooking up with the crazy killer pharmacist, then letting him die. She finished out the season by becoming an alcoholic, spending an episode in treatment, and then throwing her son out on the streets. Season three? She marries a different, better actor playing a crazy guy, and goes and picks her son up from the street. He's still weird, but they don't mention the abandonment again, as he's back to his old only-slighty disruptful self, and the alcoholism magically goes away.

The Applewhites and their killer retarded ice-cream loving son. Alfre Woodard's big plotline was so universally despised, there were entire episodes last year where she and her family didn't even appear. She's gone, and except for a brief mention by Bree's daughter, nobody's noticed. The Applewhite's son, killed by cops, is just another forgotten person killed on Wysteria Lane. The body count has got to be over a dozen so far.

Paul and the plumber's boy. We spent a whole year finding out that Mike had a son, and he was being kept by Paul Young. The year ends up with Paul thrown in jail for the murder of the sister of the woman he actually killed, and Zach kills his real grandfather to inherit all of his money. And that's it. We haven't seen them or heard from them since, even though Edie is supposed to be selling their house.

Lynette and Tom go to work. Lynette spent all of last season getting Tom a job, and then making him lose it. She was left in a horrible situation at work, with her boss pretty much forcing Tom out. Everything seems fine this year, though, because they've been saddled with the Babymomma plotline.

So now, we've got a hard restart for season three.