See Also: 'Who's That Woman?' Episode Guide

Synopsis

Lynette is called down to the twins' school where the boys have painted another child blue. Lynette suggests splitting the twins into different classes.

Lynette, Gabrielle, Susan and Bree are gathered around the tape that Bree stole from Dr. Goldfine's office. On it, Mary Alice discusses the nightmares she has about a girl being trapped underwater while screaming "Angela." Mary Alice then discloses that "Angela" is her real name. The women decide to show Paul Young the note Mary Alice received the day she committed suicide.

While Mike is out doing yard work, Edie is washing her car. Susan decides to go to Mike's on the pretext of returning his mail. While she's there, Mike asks Susan to the movies. Meanwhile, Edie storms back inside and complains to Mrs. Huber that Susan is throwing herself at Mike.

Lynette's twins refuse to be separated. Lynette has to go in and physically remove one of the twins. Gabrielle and John are once again in the bath when the cable guy arrives, late. John sneaks out but leaves behind a sock. While working, the cable guy slips and falls. He's taken out on stretcher as Carlos comes home. Carlos sees the candles around the tub and is suspicious. Bree is putting dinner on the table while Andrew and Danielle van de Kamp discuss the fact that they're father has left. When Bree lies to them about where Rex is, Andrew storms out. Mrs. Huber brings Susan a pie and informs Susan that she found the measuring cup in the ruins of Edie's house.

Andrew and Bree have an argument over the lie he told about where he'd been the night before. He refuses to tell the truth citing her own lie about Rex's whereabouts as reason enough. Carlos finds John's abandoned sock under the bed. As he looks at it Gabrielle rushes downstairs and shoves a pile of socks into the closet. When confronted by Carlos, she claims that the maid always uses socks to dust. At the grocery store, Susan denies to Mrs. Huber that she has any feelings for Mike, since Mrs. Huber thinks Susan burned Edie's house down on purpose due to their rivalry over Mike. Mrs. Huber ends up blackmailing Susan. The four women finally decide to bring the note to Paul. He gets visibly upset and leaves.

Carlos walks downstairs and sees the maid dusting with a sock. He asks if she always has and she says yes. Andrew doesn't come home for dinner so Bree storms his room, looking for any sign of where he could be. She finds a matchbook with the name of a strip club on it. She arrives at the strip club and proceeds to sit down and embarrass Andrew until they leave. Mrs. Huber tries to blackmail Susan again and wants to come clean but Julie stops her, saying she doesn't want to live with her father if Susan loses custody.

Susan and Julie devise a way for Julie to sneak into Mrs. Huber's house to get the measuring cup. Susan, in an attempt to keep Edie from entering the house, sets her up to go to the movies with Mike who, unfortunately, has already been asking Susan why she's been acting distant. Julie successfully steals the measuring cup. Carlos, who still suspects Gabrielle of cheating, goes and roughs up the cable guy. He soon figures out that the cable guy is gay and leaves. Paul tells Gabrielle and Lynette why he reacted the way he did to the note: he says Mary Alice was actually a very troubled person who would write threatening messages to herself. Gabrielle and Lynette suspect him of lying.

Lynette, after denying several times that the twins have ADD, decides to give them their medication for it. When the twins refuse to take it, Lynette relents. Bree apologizes to Andrew for lying about Rex's whereabouts. Meanwhile, a police sketch of Carlos appears on the TV news, labeling him as an unknown suspect in a hate crime. Mrs. Huber confronts Susan about stealing the measuring cup but Susan still denies any knowledge of how the fire at Edie's house started. Paul hires a private investigator to figure out who sent the note to Mary Alice. Mary Alice's voice over implicates one of the Wisteria Lane neighbors.

Analysis

Where to start, where to start? Well, since the show itself opened with Lynette's dilemma with the twins, I'll start there too. So far, it looks as though Desperate Housewives is attempting to keep at least the individual plotlines of each woman in the realm of the believable. Lynette's denial that her children need to be medicated in order to behave strikes me as a decision that many mothers, at least lately, what with all the fuss in the media over doctors needlessly medicating children, have to deal with nowadays. In the end, with Lynette's decision to let her kids be kids, it possibly seems like the show might be trying to make the point that so many have been trying to make these days: kids will be kids and medication shouldn’t be an option.

Have I ever mentioned that I love Bree? I have to admit that at first it was as though the writers didn’t want the audience to like her. However, ever since we were allowed to see some of her reasons for why she's so prim and proper, she's been cast more into the "victim" role. And yet, even then I hesitate to label her as a "victim" because she's still so strong. Going to the strip club and calmly embarrassing Andrew to the point of leaving was one of her finest moments. Perhaps she had made the wrong decision in not telling her children that their father had left but it certainly seemed to be the right decision to deal with Andrew the way she did. And, in the meantime, it made for interesting entertainment!

The Carlos-Gabrielle-John triangle kicks up a notch with Carlos finally becoming suspicious of Gabrielle. Kudos to the writers for making this episode's requisite close call the most interesting one so far. I can't say I expected Gabrielle to jump into action so quick and shove all those socks in the closet. However, it was interesting that after all the ominous threats we’ve heard Carlos make about not being made a fool, to actually see him put those threats into action...albeit it was the wrong man, but that didn’t matter. Gabrielle understood the point he made with it.

Mike, Mike, Mike...I have to say he’s a trifle confusing. If I recall, Susan made the realization that Mike was still in love with his deceased wife...so now he's putting the moves more aggressively on Susan? Perhaps the writers decided to change tactics, if they continue to portray Mike as a secret threat then the logical way to proceed would be to have him intimately involved with a main character, thus creating maximum drama when the truth (whatever it may be) is finally revealed.

With this episode, the writers seem to be trying to give Edie some personality. So far she's been rather two-dimensional as she's acted as merely a foil and a roadblock for Susan. However, in this episode the viewer comes to understand that Edie seems to have somewhat given up hope that she'll land Mike and is angered at seeing Susan move ahead with him. Th's brings up the question of whether or not Edie can be considered a ‘Desperate Housewife.' She was certainly included in the introductions of characters on Wisteria Lane, complete with backstory. Perhaps this new insight into her personality means that the writers will utilize her as a more concrete character in the future.

So, Mary Alice's real name was actually Angela. However, Gabrielle mentions having seen Mary Alice's driver's license, which didn’t have the name Angela on it. Was a legal name change just one of many hoops Mary Alice had to go through to hide whatever it was the note threatened to reveal? Also, does the significance of the girl being underwater in her nightmares have anything to do with a certain trunk being buried under the pool? We seem to have taken several more steps forward in the Mary Alice mystery and yet we still don’t really know any more than before. The writers will have to work hard at revealing enough to retain interest without giving the whole story away before it's due.

All in all, "Who’s That Woman" seems to perpetuate the notion that life on Wisteria Lane is mostly a façade. That perhaps some of the characters are stronger than they appear or that some are actually more vulnerable than they outwardly show. It's a nice observation to pursue in a drama of this nature but to be perfectly honest, it's one of those concepts that helps give breath to the story arc and thus should be (and actually rather has been so far) doled out in natural increments. However, given that some of the personality revealing was about more minor characters (Edie, Mrs. Huber and Carlos) it was still natural enough in the long run.

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