The Game (Desperate Housewives)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“The Game”
Desperate Housewives episode
Episode no. Season 4
Episode 3
Written by Joey Murphy & John Pardee
Directed by Bethany Rooney
Production no. 403
Original airdate October 14, 2007
Episode chronology
← Previous Next →
"Smiles of a Summer Night" "If There's Anything I Can't Stand"
List of Desperate Housewives episodes

"The Game" is the 72nd episode of the ABC dramedy series Desperate Housewives. It was written by Joey Murphy and John Pardee and directed by Bethany Rooney.[1] It is the third episode of the show’s fourth season and aired on October 14, 2007.[1]

Contents

[edit] Guest starring[1]

[edit] Plot

 The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article.
Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

Susan plans a charades get-together for her neighbors. Her girlfriends are not too thrilled to attend, and make up excuses to get out of the evening. Bree later changes her friends’ minds when she informs them about the fight she overheard in the Mayfair home. (See Smiles of a Summer Night.) They call Susan to accept the invitation and all insist that she invite the new neighbors. Susan sees Bree across the street and runs over to her so she can get the name of Bree’s gynecologist. Bree is hesitant, trying to keep Susan at bay from hugging her (for fear of Susan learning about her false pregnancy), and pretends not to remember the name of her gynecologist. Susan remains persistent, so Bree walks into the house, opens the telephone book to "gynecologists", blindly picks a doctor’s name and gives it to Susan.

When Susan goes to her appointment the day of her party, she discovers that the doctor’s office is not only in a terrible neighborhood, but also the office itself is filthy, and there are prostitutes in the waiting room. One even openly admits to being there to get "clean urine”. Later she confronts Bree about it at the party, and while Bree is horrified and incredibly apologetic, she can not give Susan an explanation for fear her secret will become known.

Meanwhile, Bree spreads the word to the other wives about Katherine slapping Dylan and the conversation she overheard in her house. They decide to try to get Katherine very drunk at the party to see if they can coax any kind of information out of her. Earlier in the episode, we see her husband Adam outside washing his car when a random young blonde woman jogs by and asks to drink from his garden hose. They flirt with each other and she jogs away. Katherine then bitterly confronts him, alluding to the fact that this might be a recurring character trait with Adam.

Carlos begs Gabrielle to give him just two more weeks to dump Edie, and she reluctantly agrees. However, when getting ready for Susan’s party, Edie tells Carlos that she plans on announcing their engagement. Carlos is completely against this for fear of angering Gabrielle and asks Edie to not tell anyone yet. Edie agrees, but has secretly purchased an engagement ring for herself to wear so people will “happen to see it” and figure out Edie and Carlos’ plans. She pulls it out at the party and pretends to have her contact lens slip so everyone can look at her hand.

Gabrielle sees the ring, and angrily pulls Carlos aside. He explains that it will be taken care of, and he needs more time. Gabrielle is not satisfied with this, so she goes into the house and decides to flirt with Adam to make Carlos jealous. Carlos breaks a glass in his fury and walks away. Gabrielle keeps this act up with Adam, not realizing how mad Katherine is getting. Edie sees that Katherine is not happy about this, and pulls her aside to explain Gabrielle’s “reputation” around Wisteria Lane, and tells her about Gabrielle’s secret affair with her teenage gardener, John Rowland, a few years ago.

Later in the party, Gabrielle accidentally spills her drink all over Adam. As she’s cleaning it off of him, Katherine finally has enough and confronts Gabrielle in front of everyone, citing her reputation. Gabrielle is indignant and demands that she explain herself, and Katherine tells her in front of everyone at the party that she knows about her affair with her teenage gardener. Gabrielle, in her blind fury, spills the secret that Bree saw her slap Dylan when she asked about her father. Katherine keeps her already cool composure and admits that while she did lose her temper with Dylan, Dylan’s father had done the most horrible thing a father could possibly do to his daughter.

Lynette’s mom, fed up with seeing her daughter too sick to eat from her chemotherapy, decides to sneak off and buy weed from Andrew, bakes it into brownies, and has Lynette’s son Parker tell her he made them in order to get Lynette to eat them. Lynette, originally too weak and sick to make it to Susan’s party, suddenly feels great – unknowingly thanks to the brownies – and shows up to the charades party stoned and acting goofy.

Gabrielle sees Victor in a bedroom at Susan's house crunching poll numbers. She tries to console him and attempts to reassure him that her affair with John was a long time ago and not a big deal. Victor says that he's not jealous at all, he just wants to figure out how it will affect his poll numbers when he's running for Governor. After that, Gabrielle catches Carlos in Susan's bathroom and kisses him, then hits him over the head. Carlos, needless to say, is pretty confused. Gabrielle explains that the slap in the head was for letting Edie think that they were engaged, and that she not only loves him, but she loves the way that he loves her. She cites that when Carlos saw her with another man, he broke a glass in a jealous rage, whereas Victor just crunched poll numbers when he found out about her affair with John. Just before Gabrielle and Victor leave the party, Victor has a moment alone with Carlos, asking how he could have not killed John for sleeping with his wife. Carlos says that as much as he wanted to, it wasn't worth going to jail over. Victor chuckles and states that, if you're rich, you can make anybody disappear. Gabrielle then comes down the stairs, and she and Victor leave together.

Meanwhile, while the adults are at the party, Dylan and Julie are studying together at the Mayfair house. Dylan tells Julie about her mother freaking out at her over asking about her father, and says that there is a lot of old stuff stored in the bedroom upstairs, but it’s locked. Julie picks the lock and the girls start going through the boxes. Julie informs Dylan that this was, in fact, her old bedroom not the one she is in now like her mother said. Katherine then walks in and catches them, and sends Julie home.

Orson gets a call from the convent where Danielle is staying. She tried to rollerblade and fell, causing possible complications with her pregnancy. Bree and Orson are ready to rush out the door to see Danielle when the doctor calls and says the pregnancy is fine.

At the end, Adam and Katherine are in the third floor bedroom getting it ready for Dylan to move in, in order to “stifle” her curiosity. Adam asks why Katherine had described Dylan’s father to everyone as doing "the worst possible thing a father could do to a child". Katherine said that it made people feel uncomfortable, and uncomfortable people don't ask questions. In the end, we see Katherine lift up the rug, kneel down to touch a dent in the hardwood floor, and cry.

[edit] Title reference

[edit] International Titles

  • Polish: Szarada (The Charade)
  • Italian: Il Gioco (The Game)
  • German: Scharade (Charades)
  • Hungarian: Most mutasd meg! (Charades (figuratively); Show It Now! (literally))

[edit] Reception and ratings

The Game scored an 11.8/18 in overnight Nielsen ratings with a total of 18.892m viewers,[2] slightly up from the previous episode's ("Smiles of a Summer Night") 11.2/17.[3]

14.09 million viewers watched this episode in the UL coming 4th in weekley ratings.

In the UK, the terrestrial outing on April 9 had achieved 5th place with an audience number of 2.83 million. This is the first time this season, viewing figures have risen on a terrestrial episode from the one before. The number may only have increased by 6,000 (0.3% rise) but had dipped in position. The cable airing on April 6 was given the position of somewhere below the top 10. The first time this is ever, that a sneak peak episode of Desperate Housewives hasn't charted in the top 5 also.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c ABC Press release: SUSAN THROWS A CHARADES PARTY, ON ABC'S "DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES", ABC MediaNet, October 1, 2007
  2. ^ Big game, big ratings for CBS Sunday Zap2it Retrieved 2007-10-15
  3. ^ NBC picks off Sunday win Zap2it Retrieved 2007-10-08
v • d • e
Desperate Housewives, season four
Episodes
Actors
Episode list