Despite some mostly predictably plot developments “Suspicion Song” was a solid hour of drama on Desperate Housewives. Again I must apologize for skipping a week with these reviews. I had my own desperate drama to deal with in the form of way too much crap going on at work.

The action kicked off immediately this week with Bree (Marcia Cross) waking up to the sounds of an intruder in her house. Bree is a smart girl though and immediately calls the cops, gives the wrong address (4355 instead of 4354) and rushes downstairs with a firearm where she finds Chuck (Jonathan Cake) lurking around her foyer. The creepy cop claimed he responded to her 911 call but I’m not convinced it wasn’t him snooping for clues now that he is hot on the trail of Gabby’s missing stepfather.

Lynette gets a surprise when flowers arrive from Tom (Doug Savant) for their anniversary and everyone but her realizes they were sent because of a standing order at the florist and not because Tom wants to reconcile. After a conversation when a potential design client she decides to perm her hair, put on a slinky dress, steal a key to his apartment and head over there. Of course she ends up catching Tom and Dana pre-coitus and of course ends up embarrassing herself and her reaction was heartbreaking. You could see the slow transition in her face as she accepted her marriage was over. Well played Felicity Huffman!

I have to say Susan (Teri Hatcher) surprised me this week. After weeks of trying to get Andre Zeller’s approval in art class she has finally had enough, so when he brings in a prestigious and short gallery owner Felix Bergman (Leslie Jordan) she is less than impressed. That is until he heaps praise on her work and insists it be shown in his gallery.

Felix – “You’re like a sexy suburban Georgia O’Keeffe without all those pesky vaginas.”

Felix’s other memorable quote “I smell fear and mediocrity” was an obvious nod to his character on Will & Grace and that’s okay. I love Leslie Jordan to pieces. If you haven’t seen his one man show My Trip Down the Pink Carpet or the movie Sordid Lives rent them both immediately.

Given that Susan’s artistic expressions involve detailed images of the crime she and her friends committed they obviously cannot be displayed so naturally they end up on the wall in the gallery thanks to an intervention from Zeller who thinks it high time Susan had “greatest thrust upon her”. I think this may be the first time that the hurricane of fail that surrounds Susan wasn’t directly Susan’s fault. Granted, she did paint the darn things which are as Bree puts it “an artistic confession” but she did forbid Zeller to display then. And it was Zeller who gave them to Bergman without Susan’s approval, which is something Susan would have done if the roles were reversed actually, so maybe this was Susan’s fault after all.

The snobbish art community of Fairview goes nuts for the paintings of course but no one is as impressed as Chuck who is about 14 seconds away from putting all the pieces of this puzzle together. I loved when Bree got all up in his face and told him to charge her with a crime or “get the hell off her street!” Bree is so badass. And am I the only one who would love to have that painting of the four girls burying the body hanging in their living room?

Down at Casa Du Solis (4349 Wisteria Lane) Carlos is still drunk and rocking a bad fro and it is starting to affect his job. Gabby (Eva Longoria) convinces him to take a week off and heads to the office to take care of payroll where she unwittingly gives a very cute but backstabbing contractor named Geoffrey the means to sabotage Carlos by stealing his biggest client. When the news of the real reason Carlos is missing work gets out the client demands to speak with him. Turns out he was an alcoholic too and he convinces Carlos to go to rehab. It wasn’t shown but I’m guessing Geoffrey ends up getting fired. He’ll be okay though. The pretty boys always are.

With no body to prove the crime it is unlikely that Chuck will ever come up with enough evidence to charge any of the girls with anything at all unless someone confesses or someone on Ben’s construction staff fesses up to finding the body. Bree is at her breaking point though as we saw when she took that drink of wine at the end of the hour, so she may end up shooting Chuck and burying him in the woods too! Okay maybe not. He is a cop after all, but I don’t see this ending well for him. As for the girls I think it’s going to take something big to bring them together again. What else could this final season have in store for us?

Desperate Housewives is taking a break for the holidays and won’t be back until December 4.

Halloween arrived on Wisteria Lane and sadly the real horror was not Lee dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Instead the kids of Fairview were menaced by a post-menopausal Renee and the after effects of her “Women’s Love Juice”. Amusing as the whole situation was it did provide us with some sorely needed character development for Renee who while recovering in the hospital revealed that she hasn’t had sex since her divorce. It seems Renee talks a big game but deep down she’s just another insecure romantic. I’m rooting for her and Ben, but I won’t be surprised if we find out Ben is not what he seems to be.

Susan’s (Teri Hatcher) quest to become a serious artist took a leap forward this week when her teacher Andre Zeller chose her to be an intern on his latest project. Then it took two leaps backwards when internship turned out to be a fancy word for babysitter. The big news here is that Andre has a son who is just as miserable and intolerable as his father and Susan makes cheering the boy up her mission in life. The mission turns out to be pretty easy. Getting Andre to acknowledge he has a son that needs attention took a little more work and Susan did a fine job of it. For once she wasn’t falling over herself or getting naked for dubious reasons. I liked that she told Zeller she was done trying to get him to like her because she doesn’t like him. Go Susan!

At the Scavo’s house Lynette (Felicity Huffman) is finding it hard to manage with Tom’s new girlfriend Jane hanging around and when she offers to make Penny a Halloween costume Lynette swoops in. But we know Lynette can’t even thread a needle much less manage The Black Swan so with some help from Renee she hires an ex-Broadway costume designer to make it. What she gets back is a castoff from the set of Burlesque and Tom isn’t too thrilled about it. His gal comes to the rescue because in addtion to being a doctor she also knits costumes for all the kids in the cancer ward. Lynette tries to mark her territory with Tom (Doug Savant) and Jane calls her out for always wanting a fight which is why they are not togehter in the first place. I think that is what we call “getting told” Lynette. Snap. Kitten with a whip indeed. Penny did look cute though.

Now on a more serious note, I am not enjoying drunk Carlos at all. I don’t have any issues with them heading down this particular road but drunk Carlos doesn’t do anything but hallucinate and drink quietly by himself in a corner. I want drunk Carlos dancing on a table in his underwear while singing the National Anthem at little Juanita’s birthday party. I want some Postcards from the Edge stuff going on up in here. Maybe it’s a slow build and Carlos will crash spectacularly in time for Christmas. Everyone loves eggnog right?

Speaking of alcoholics Bree (Marcia Cross) is doing pretty well staying on the wagon in light of recent developments. She has kept a cool head concerning the news that Ben’s real estate development is about to break ground and uncover their little secret. And this wouldn’t be a week in Fairview if the girls didn’t embark on a woefully unrealistic attempt to manipulate the situation in their favor. This particular one involved trapping rare frogs to plant on the site and only Gabby (Eva Longoria) would wear a mini-dress and waders to go trolling for exotic amphibians. One would think that after this many years of friendship Bree would know better than to ask Gabby to help handle anything slimy. When they finally do get out to the woods with their shovels they find out he’s already dug up which they sort of gave away in the first few seconds of the episode. And who was the man chasing them through the woods?

The fragile thread that holds the colorful quilt of drama we call Desperate Housewives together has begun to slowly unravel and we are only five episodes into the final season. Friendships are strained, marriages collapsing and it is only a matter of time before that dead body in the woods is dug up, and by matter of time I mean just in time for November sweeps.

Lynette (Felicity Huffman) and Tom (Doug Savant) have finally started couples counseling and it is going just about as well as you would expect it to be with Tom doing alot of pointing and eye rolling and Lynette making inflamatory noises in his general direction. At least they have established that they both should be dating and/or sleeping with other people so they can be 100% sure they can’t find anything better and Lynette is not one to take a challenge lying down…well maybe except this one. After a disasterous attempt at online dating Renee talks her into a night of bar hopping. This is also a generally terrible idea until Lynette meets a handsome divorced father of two (Richard Ruccolo) whom she mistakes for the valet. After some small talk she finds herself liplocked with the hunk back at his apartment, but freaks out and bolts after she drops her wedding ring.

Gabby’s (Eva Longoria) first big job as the president of the PTA isn’t going so well either. When she’s late for a meeting because of a hot-stone massage that ran long the ladies with “normal lives” are not amused. And Gabby, more out of touch than ever before buys them with a visit from her beauty squad which just makes things worse. Meanwhile Carlos is at home getting drunk because he’s sad about the man he killed and Mike (James Denton) won’t let him talk to his BFF Susan about it anymore. I have to say I was surprised by Mike’s reaction here after being so supportive of Susan. Seems like he could appreciate the benefits of being able to talk to someone about it and his assuming that Susan doesn’t want the same is no doubt leading her down a road to a big nasty breakdown…probably involving nudity and or more internet porn. Sorry I got sidetracked a bit. Gabby calls Carlos to help finish setting up for the big PTA Teacher Appreciation Night and he arrives all drunk and tragic which surprisingly gains her the sympathy and support of the other PTA ladies.

Also a bit tragic but not drunk…yet…is Bree (Marcia Cross) who is feeling very unholy and less than Godlike now that she has participated in the cover up of a murder. To regain her status as the moral compass of Wisteria Lane she reaches out to neighbor and Aussie hunk Ben to offer her help at the homeless shelter. It isn’t long before the sad state of the meals being served to the poor and downtrodden has Bree whipping up one of her famous bisques. When the news gets out local hipsters and food bloggers start showing up instead, because food bloggers and hipsters would totally go hang out at a homeless shelter with their laptops right? Reverend Sykes guilts her into kicking her adoring fans out and she does so with a heartwrenching speech about the homeless which prompts Ben to seek her help convincing the city council to let him build his low income housing project. I’ll give you two guesses where he wants to build it. We’ll come back to that.

Oh Susan (Teri Hatcher), how long has it been since we’ve seen you naked? It feels like only last season when you barely had any clothes on ever so this week when art genius Andre Zeller told the class he wanted them to paint in the nude it was like coming home again. And to think the whole thing was your fault because you got the giggles while painting a naked man. Imagine that! At least you piqued the interest of Zeller enough for him to come begging you to rejoin the class after your dramatic exit. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that very soon we’ll see a dramatic painting expunged from the corrupt and tormented depths of your soul depicting a dead body in the woods surrounded by four weeping housewives and one annoyed looking Renee. Am I close?

Next week is Halloween on Wisteria Lane and I’m betting our girls get a few more tricks than treats. Tune in Sunday at 9pm on ABC to find out.