(SPOILERS AHEAD)
OK, it’s not what you think. Desperate Housewives may not
be great television a la Prime Suspect,
Battlestar Gallactaca, or yes, Buffy, but neither is it the trash the
title might have you imagine. It is soap
opera, yes, but with sharp writing, flawless performances and surprising story
lines that take soap opera to a new level.
That is not my point though. My point is that I have long suspected DH of harboring
libertarian-minded writers on its staff – and this season’s finale may just
have proven me right.
Earlier in the series, I noticed something that I thought
was unusual in American television: a positive portrayal of private gun
ownership. (In the spirit of full
disclosure, I should note that I don’t actually own a TV, so my knowledge of
what is out there comes from my own selection of Netflix and other rentals. But I don’t think I’m that far off on this.) One of the main characters, Bree, uses her
gun first to protect her daughter from an intruder and when an
overzealous ex-fiance serenades her with a truck-mounted sound system in
front of her house, Bree blows the
speakers off the top of the truck with her shotgun.
There are other hints too – such as Bree’s next fiancé
declaring himself to be a libertarian ("I believe in minimizing the role of the state and maximizing individual rights!") -- but it is in this season’s finale that it all comes together. First: as she helps an undercover cop wire
her tenant’s room in preparation for a drug bust, Gabbie starts to have
reservations about turning in her tenant/friend for selling drugs. She stands up for her friend against the
boorish cop’s claim that “drug dealer equals scum!”, and in the end, as the
police are heading for her door, she does the right thing and tells the woman
to run out the back.
Of course, in true DH fashion, the story does not end
here. The tenant later calls to ask
Gabbie to bring her the teddy bear she left in her room that holds great
sentimental value. Gabbie rips open the
bear to find $118,000 in cash. Gabbie
tells her now-ex-tenant that she couldn’t find the bear, and the woman comes
over (with violent intent) to get it. As
fate would have it, she ends up getting shot in another neighbor’s hair-raising
drama which we’ll get to later, but here’s the amazing thing: GABBIE KEEPS THE MONEY! For now, anyway – which means at least
through the summer. Anyone who knows
anything about the Rules of Television knows that one of the big ones has just been
broken. Characters NEVER get to keep
significant sums of money that they either earn, win, steal, or otherwise come
into during the course of the show (and I’m sure someone will write in
informing me of exceptions to this rule, but that’s my point – they are
exceptions. Rare ones.) We’ll see what happens next season, but
whatever happens to the money, DH gets points for having characters question
the War on Drugs.
There is also a sequence in which Child Protective Services
is portrayed in a none-too-sympathetic light, but I think it would be a stretch
to try to turn this into a libertarian message. The real coup though comes at the show’s climax. And it doesn’t matter if this was written by
a “libertarian” or not. In fact, whether
or not there are “rEVOLutionaries” on the staff of DH is really beside the
point. The point is that someone has made a really powerful
statement about the strength of individuals and community in the face of the
state. If you haven’t seen it yet you
should stop reading now because my pathetic retelling won’t do justice to the
way this plays out on the screen.
So (as you probably know) Katherine has something to hide
about her “daughter” Dylan. Early in the
episode, the other housewives are talking about her, saying she seems distant,
closed off to them. Bree, who is
Katherine’s partner in a catering business, defends her, but Lynette speaks for
all the others when she says “…she’ll never be one of us.”
Meanwhile, Katherine’s abusive ex-husband Wayne has come back and wants to know what the secret is. Wayne kidnaps Katherine’s new husband Adam (played by Firefly’s Nathan Fillion) and beats him to a bloody pulp. When Katherine realizes what has happened,
she reluctantly goes to the police. Oh,
and by the way, her abusive ex-husband Wayne is a cop. Hence her reluctance.
We flash back to the last time Katherine was in a police
station: 14 years previously, when she had gone in to report having been beaten
by her husband. She says that she has
reported him before but that when she called she was told that the paperwork
had been lost. When she tells the
officer the name of her assailant/husband, the officer advises
her to get out of town. Her husband has
a lot of friends on the force, she tells Katherine, and she can’t guarantee
that one of them won’t lose the paperwork again. Katherine takes her advice.
Flash forward to the present, and Katherine is again in a
police station, this time reporting that Wayne has kidnapped Adam and will be coming after her and Dylan next. The detective she speaks with knows Wayne – they play golf together – and has heard him talk about his “crazy
ex-wife.” He accuses Katherine of trying
to exact “payback” for past domestic troubles, but tells her he will look into
it. Then he asks her to fill in some
paperwork.
Katherine knows what she has to do. In order to convince her to come with her
this time, Katherine tells Dylan the truth about her past, and Dylan runs
off in anger. Wayne,
having left Adam for dead in a warehouse, comes after Katherine and holds her at
gunpoint in her home.
OK, there’s also a gay wedding.
Bree, with whom Katherine had been catering the wedding, and
whom Katherine had abandoned at the last minute in order to skip town to get
away from her abusive ex-husband/cop, is furious when she hears that Katherine
is at home. She marches over and bangs
on the door. In the background as two
officers question a witness about the return of Gabbie’s drug-dealing ex-tenant,
Bree is swept off the doorstep by Wayne who now holds her at gunpoint with
Katherine. When Wayne threatens to shoot Bree, Katherine spills the beans: After she fled with Dylan all those years
ago, the little girl died tragically in an accident at home. Knowing that Wayne would come after her, and knowing what he would do to her when he found out
about their daughter’s death, Katherine adopted another little girl and raised
her as “Dylan.”
As Katherine recounts her story, the not-yet-dead Adam
stumbles from the warehouse and commandeers a car. As Wayne prepares to murder his ex-wife upstairs, Adam plows through the wedding party
and bursts in downstairs. Wayne runs downstairs, we hear a thump and soon a bloody and bedraggled Mal
Adam appears upstairs. Bree, Katherine
and Adam go down to find a disabled Wayne lying on the floor. Katherine holds
him at gunpoint while Adam goes to call the police and Bree tends to his
wounds.
Sneering to the last, Wayne reminds Katherine that even if he does end up doing jail time for what he’s
done, he’ll be out one day – probably soon – and will find her and make her
pay. “I know you will,” says Katherine
before she shoots him.
Bree and Adam rush into the living room where Katherine
stands over the dead Wayne with a
smoking gun in her hand. Immediately,
Bree understands what must happen. She
goes outside, where Susan and Lynette are already rushing up to the house. She gathers them to her. “We don’t have much time before the police
get here,” she says. Moments later,
Gabbie pushes her way through the crowd and Susan takes her aside to give
instructions.
As the police comb through the scene, Katherine sits
silently on her sofa. An officer asks
her again and again to tell him what happened but she remains silent. Outside though, her friends are talking. Bree gives her account of how Katherine
grabbed the gun from Wayne as he
was about to shoot them all; Susan and Gabbie tell of how frightened they knew
Katherine was and how Wayne had
been stalking her. “We always knew
something like this would happen,” says Lynette, who knew nothing of the sort,
“and now it has.”
The detective who played golf with Wayne steps up to Katherine. “This was
obviously self defense,” he tells the officer who is still trying to
get her to talk. “Take the cuffs off,
get her to the hospital.” Katherine just
stares in disbelief. As she walks out
her door she sees her friends, standing together behind the crime-scene tape.
It is a beautiful scene. And it is a beautiful example of how individuals can defeat a seemingly
all-powerful state simply by behaving as a community. It’s a lesson those of us in the freedom
movement could all take to heart.
- Bretigne
