Did the police (FBI I think) say it was an ADULT female in the box? that would contradict that it was Dana…
Bree’s solution to the pot dilemma was clever.
Brian
Some nice twists. And it was great seeing Hamilton Camp. 
Yes, they did and that was very clever of the writers. They did the reveal of Zach killing his baby sister so we think that solved the msytery of who was in the chest and then shortly after we find out it was an adult human female that was in the chest!
Damn! Was that on tonight? I TIVOed Survivor and the reunion so it didn’t pick up Desperate Housewives tonight. Can someone give a quick recap? I’ll try tomorrow (or sometime this week) to download the episode.
I missed last week’s episode and the beginning of the conversation where Zach unloaded about the sister.
Did he really do any such thing, or was it a false memory? All I heard was that he saw his mother cleaning up blood, she told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he had been having dreams. Do we know that he ever had a sister? Maybe an imaginary friend?
I also missed why Mr. Cuckold got arrested. What was that about a set-up?
I don’t think it was. It got her son kicked off the swim-team, which was actually keeping him motivated and focused on higher education. She pulled that stunt and blew everything for him – and he knows she did it. Now he doesn’t give a shit. Watch his education hit the toilet. His only reaction to her walking up now when he’s smoking pot is to shut the door in her face. Not an improvement. What’s she going to do now? She has no real way to punish him, she can’t pull any more passive-aggressive stunts, and he’s pissed off enough that nothing she can say is going to be attended to.
She screwed up on that one, big time.
They haven’t told us yet why he’s been arrested – this is just the hook for the next plot thread. (And damn am I hooked!) Apparently he’s been doing something shady in his business, but he’s blaming it on his Japanese (partner? customer? boss?)
I think it’s a false memory, in that his sister died, and he thinks he did it, but I think there’s more to it than that. Remember, his father has killed at least one person and gotten rid of the evidence. I would submit Paul is an old hand at covering up murder.
She and Rex screwed up by not turning him into the police for running over Juanita. I applaud her for turning in her son for the pot, but that boy has bigger issues. The sooner they call the cops on his ass, the better.
I’m curious about the nanny. I couldn’t see anything on the teaser, but a hot nanny like that will probably end up in bed with the husband. Fairly standard for this type of show.
I missed the part where garden boy’s mom got the idea that it was Hatcher doing the cheating. How’d she make that mistake? Did she see when Hatcher confronted the kid?
Seems Bree handled her entire family with the iron fist of perfection, but she’s handled everything extraordinarily bad. However she has run the ship up until the present, it’s obvious the boy has no respect for her and she has no control over him. Openly smoking pot in the bedroom? I’d be in a grave in Potter’s Field for that!
Yes. She was watching from her car.
I was surprised that Gabrielle fessed up to Mrs. Rowland that she was the one having the affair with him.
Poor Susan. Once again she was humiliated in front of people. She has the worse luck. Where was Mike? He’s too hot to be missing from any episodes.
I think it’s pretty clear that Zach’s parents conspired together to kill the unnamed woman.
An idea ocurred to me-- I’ve missed a couple episodes so please let me know if we’ve been told anything that could support or contradict this:
Zach = Dana.
He was an intersexual child, initially raised as female. The parents (Probably mainly Paul) opted for surgical sex assignment when he was a toddler, and have tried to keep it from him, and everyone else to “protect” him.
“I know what you did, and I think it’s disgusting.” About what you might expect from Mrs. Huber – and Paul seems like the type who would go to any lengths to conceal a secret like that.
Zach says that his parents “got all wierd” whenever he mentioned Dana’s name. He doesn’t actually remember his sister, he just has dreams about her. Now that we know it wasn’t Dana in the box, could it be that their reaction was just discomfort surrounding a subject that they were keeping a secret, even from Zach?
Zach = Dana? Well, good googly-moogly, that’s the ding-dong-dangedest theory I’ve ever heard, Larry Mudd. I might have gone for it too, if Zach had not kissed Susan’s daughter Julie tonight. Primetime’s first openly intersexual child is one thing; primetime’s first intersexual sexually curious lesbian is not something ABC would touch, I think. Well, maybe after the second season during sweeps…
Mary Alice was complicit of covering up the dead woman’s death, but not necessarily of her murder. I think it was Zach’s fault despite anything he says his mother told him. I think Mary Alice couldn’t cope with what her son did and once she got (presumably) Mrs. Huber’s anonymous note, that sent her over the edge and made her kill herself. Paul’s been griveing and despondant covering up for Zach all this time and is angry and saddened by Mary Alice’s suicide because she essentially bailed on him. And, yeah, I think Zach’s fully capable of killing someone – remember when he decked his dad in the living room? Clearly something went very, very wrong in that house.
Mrs. Huber died firmly believing that Mary Alice killed a baby.
One thing that’s bothered me for awhile, because I think it’s a series of really stupid contrivance: that trunk with the chopped up remains was initially buried in the foundation of the pool in the Young’s backyard. OK – somebody explain to me how did it get there without the cooperation of whoever constructed the pool. Remember when Paul dug it out in the middle of the night? (Like no one on Wisteria Lane found that pickaxe noise suspicious – rii-III–ight.) Why, after burying a body in as unlikely a place as the bottom of a pool, did he take it out and throw it in a friggin’ lake without weighing down the trunk? OK, OK, OK – shortly AFTER that Paul tried to sell the house. Now tell me – how successfully does one sell a house with a big honking hole in the bottom of the backyard pool? How does one explain something like that to the buyers without arousing suspcion? A pool repairman? Realtor Edie?
Stupid contrived plot!
Oh yeah, I know it.
You’re misunderstanding my hare-brained idea, I think.
It’s actually surprisingly common for folks to be born with ambiguous physical sexual characteristics. Sometimes, sex is (perhaps arbitrarily) decided by doctors and parents, and genitals are surgically remodelled to conform to their choice. My speculation is along the lines of Zach having XY chromosomes, but being born with both apparently female external genitalia and internalized male genitals.
In some cases where this happens, a child will be raised as female, and then later undergo penoplasty and other surgeries to relocate their testicles to “correct” their genital arrangement.
If this happened to Zach (a big if, but a fun WAG), then there would be nothing sapphic about that kiss. As far as he’s concerned, he’s always been a boy, because his parents kept the whole picture from him. He has dreams and vague memories of “Dana”, senses that the mention of the name makes his parents uncomfortable, and also senses that their guilty silence is intended to shield him from something. He fills in the blanks: “Dana was here. She’s not now. Mom & Dad refuse to talk about her, and their motivation to pretend she never existed is to protect me. Ergo, I killed Dana.”
Sorry, can’t have it that way. If Paul killed her, and she knew it, helped clean up, and never reported him, she’s an accessory after the fact. She’s totally complicit.
Okay, but it’s a leitmotif of the show that everyone is constantly misinterpreting the little glimpses into their neighbors’ lives that they get, arriving at the wrong conclusions.
Yeah, that’s pretty silly – the writers really belaboured the metaphor of nasty things lurking under the surface of seemingly perfect things. While it’s not that hard to imagine him contriving to get the body there (it’s fairly typical for an excavation to made in advance of the concrete forms being put in, and he could have done a bit of night work undetected,) but it made absolutely no sense for him to panic and dig the body up. Drove the plot along nicely, but…
I think I’m following your theory well, Mr Monk…er Mr. Mudd. but if so, then who is the dead adult in the found chest? The physician who did the 'shameful , secret home gender assignment surgery? The au-pair who freaked out after finding out their “dirty little secret” and had to be quieted? Am I already supposed to know this and missed it? And who DID hear the old dead newspaper mogul say “Rosebud” when he was supposedly alone?
Agreed. The writers for this show don’t know a whole lot about real-world parenting. The swim team was the only wholesome activity in the kid’s life, and Bree took it away.
Another “clang” wrong-note: the nanny. This is a family that admitted they can’t really afford a nanny, and yet she offers a 20% increase to one that’s probably already well-compensated.
Maybe they don’t know real-world parenting, but they know how some parents respond in the real world. Does every parent, regardless of economics, make the best decision all the time, especially when being emotionally assaulted by the divorce, the car accident response, and the open defiance? Do parents never get vindictive, even if it is not the best response?
As for the nanny thing, yeah, she’s not thinking right about the financial end, only about the relief. Again, emotions and the thrill of the chase overriding common sense. That also never happens in real-world parenting, but it is how some parents respond to situations in the real world.
Larry Mudd. Enjoy your posts, as always. Whern I wrote “complicit” in the earlier post of mine, I should have simply said “involved.” She is definitely compilcit, although she may not have been involved (at least, not until after the fact).
My WAG:
Dana is Zach, but not intersexed. Mary Alice isn’t Zach’s biological mother. Dad may or may not be Zach’s bio-dad. The dead chopped up woman is Zach’s bio-mom. Possibilities:
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Dad had an affair which produced Zach (who the bio-mom named Dana). Dad took him to raise or maybe bio-mom showed up with him at some point looking for support/blackmail/to foist the kid off on Dad and they killed her (perhaps accidentally, in the heat of an argument).
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Dad and/or Mary Alice kidnapped Zach (originally named Dana) and killed bio-mom when she showed up to take him back.
I lean toward the elements of 1 because if 2 were the case I don’t think they’d keep the blanket around. Either would explain the absence of a girl’s body and the presence of an adult woman’s body. I’m trying to remember if Zach said anything which indicated he ever actually saw “Dana” or had any memory of her other than his assumption that she existed and he must have killed her.
It would have to be someone who felt strongly enough that she knew what was right for the kid – so I’m thinking birth mother, too – although I suppose it could be someone less close, maybe someone from an IS support group. Birth mother seems more likely, though.
Nope, in fact he specifically says he doesn’t see her, which is what lead me into outlandish speculation:
His conclusion is obviously confused, but the actual facts as he related them could fit this idea. Someone who is upset that “Dana” has been remade as “Zach” shows up, maybe demanding that they give her back her little girl – she’ll never let them do this to her baby. In this hypothetical argument, you would expect both names to be yelled pretty emphatically. “You’re not taking Zach.” “It’s Dana!” Paul deals with the stressful situation in his usual way, and Zach comes down in time to see the crime scene. Mary Alice’s reassurance to him that “It’s not your fault,” could have been referring to the way he was born, which was what the argument was about – but he naturally thinks she’s talking about whatever happened that night. This, combined with their unwillingness to even mention the name “Dana,” leads him to think he killed her.
OTOH, it makes it more likely that whoever Mike is trying to find out about (that one girl’s sister) is the body in the trunk, and the two plotlines are interlinked.
“Dana” is not necessarily (though it is usually) a girl’s name. And the baby stuff we’ve seen has been yellow or multi-colored, not pink. We know that Mary Alice was once named A-something-or-other (I’ve forgotten). Zach could be Dana, even without the complication of gender ambiguity. And the whole family could have changed names all at once, which would explain his parents nervousness whenever he used the name “Dana.” (It is not unusual for little kids to refer to themselves in third person)
AFAIC, Bree’s biggest mistake was in letting her son know that she turned him in. The knowing looks were stupid.