The Little Things You Do Together

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“The Little Things You Do Together” is the 61st episode of the ABC television series, Desperate Housewives. It was also the fifteenth episode of the show’s third season. It was written by Marc Cherry and Joe Keenan and directed by David Grossman. It aired on February 18, 2007.

[edit] Guest starring

• Valerie Mahaffey as Alma Hodge
• Dougray Scott as Ian Hainsworth
• Dixie Carter as Gloria Hodge
• Kathleen York as Monique Polier
• Cody Kasch as Zach Young
• Pat Crawford Brown as Ida Greenberg
• Ernie Hudson as Detective Ridley
• Carl Mueller as Edwin Hodge
• Stephen Mahoney as Paramedic #1
• Wendy Worthington as Nurse Parker
• Donna Cherry as Nurse #2
• Richard Penn as Dr. Gainsburg

[edit] Plot

Just as Orson Hodge is falling off the hospital roof, due to Mike Delfino pushing him off the parking-lot border at the end of the last episode, he starts to flash back about what happened the night when Monique Polier died. Orson returns home to find Monique on the floor surrounded in blood, with his mother Gloria standing right next to her with one of Mike’s plumbing tools. The doorbell goes. Mike is at the door waiting for Monique to answer but before he walks in the house to find Orson in a rather suspicious position, Orson and Gloria quickly hide Monique’s body behind the kitchen counter and Gloria goes into hiding. In order to stop Mike seeing anything, he quickly tips Mike off and says he can carry on the plumbing job from there. Mike leaves, and soon after Gloria and Orson are at the country club digging a hole, Orson gets into a row with his mother, as his mother is trying to remove Monique’s teeth (so she cannot be identified by dental records, which Orson regards as disrespectful to the corpse) and instead of burying Monique, he pushes Gloria into the ditch, causing her to break her hip (which explains why she walks with the aid of a stick). It cuts back to Orson just as he is about to meet his death, but he’s in luck. A tree breaks his fall and paramedics standing by call for help. The narrator Mary Alice states that Orson’s departure into the “white light” was not scheduled for this day.

It is opening day at the Scavos’ pizzeria, but Lynette ends up getting into some big trouble with her husband Tom. A contract guy shows up with some baby seats but brings more than what is required. However, there are not enough normal seats, so Lynette has to borrow some from a hungover Gabrielle Marquez who ended up spending the night with Zach Young.

Gabrielle is a little taken aback when her ex-husband Carlos confesses to her that he is still not yet over her, but is stunned to learn that Zach spent the night with her. – That is until he takes a trip to the toilet and cannot help noticing the big size of Zach’s penis. Carlos informs Gabrielle of what he saw in the toilet reassuring her nothing happened between her and Zach, because even if she was under the influence of alcohol, she would have remembered. Gabrielle though using Carlos’s feelings for her tries to persuade him to scare off Zach – but this fails to work.

Susan Mayer meanwhile takes her relationship with Ian to the next level, but whilst on her way to collect Ian’s dead wife Jane’s things with him, Andrew Van de Kamp informs her of his mother Bree’s fall from a ladder. Bree is delighted that Susan is willing to be her friend again after telling Susan she knows Mike Delfino was not to blame but does not let on to Susan who really did it.

Later on that night, the residents of Wisteria Lane, all except Bree, Orson, his ex-wife Alma and his mother Gloria turn up at the opening of Pizzeria Scavo where some bizarre things occur. After Tom and Lynette say their thankyous, Ian and Zach both have some propositions of their own. Ian proposes to Susan in a typical “Susan Mayer moment” and she agrees to marry him. Meanwhile Ian’s proposal encourages Zach to propose marriage to Gabrielle. She is absolutely horrified and takes Zach outside and tells him she does not want to be his friend anymore because she knows he would always be wanting more than a friendship from her.

Back at the Hodge house, Gloria arrives to take care of Bree whilst she is in hospital. Gloria gives Bree’s daughter Danielle some of her homemade soup upstairs to Bree – unbeknown to Bree and Danielle, Gloria put something in it. Danielle then goes to the pizzeria. On her way out, Alma tries to escape from the attic Gloria locked her in. While Alma is on her roof, she tries to get Danielle’s attention, but accidentally loses her balance and falls off the roof shortly before realizing that Orson did not love her, and that she was going to move on with her life, much to the disapproval of Gloria. Danielle fails to notice Alma’s fall and goes onto the pizzeria.

When Bree wakes, after being sedated by spiked soup, Gloria admits to that it was easy to kill Monique as she was a “slut” and that that she will feel remorse after killing Bree, remarking she is "a good Christian woman" who got caught up in the affairs of the Hodge family. She believes, the vows Orson made to Alma under the eyes of God are still sacred, and that Orson's divorce from Alma meant nothing, making Bree Orson’s mistress. Gloria goes to run Bree a bath, and stages it with photographs of Orson and Bree together, as well as candles. Gloria’s idea is that she will get Bree into the bath, and cut her wrists, making it look like a suicide.

Andrew is stunned when Danielle turns up at the pizzeria and shouts at her for leaving Bree when she is most in need, Danielle tells him to calm himself, as she left Bree with Gloria. Suspicious of Gloria, Andrew heads for the house. Orson, meanwhile has escaped from the hospital and is intent on getting home, to rescue Bree from Gloria. Gloria hears Andrew come through the door and he runs up the stairs to try and rescue Bree. Gloria hits him with her walking stick and he takes a fall, rendering him unconscious. Orson comes to Andrew’s rescue and confronts Gloria as she is about to slit Bree’s wrists. It strikes him as to the fact that Bree’s staged suicide resembles his own father’s. He then realises that his mother was responsible for that death also. Gloria used Orson’s father's alleged suicide as something against him, as she told him that he could have saved his father's life. He pushes Gloria away from Bree. Gloria falls and has a stroke, leaving Orson and Andrew free to rescue Bree. Bree wakes up and begins having nightmares about Gloria. Orson fills her in on what happened. He left Gloria (who is unconscious after the stroke) next to Alma’s body as well as the fake suicide note, which she wrote when trying to attract Orson's attention, and the bag of teeth belonging to Monique, removed by Gloria.

In morning they are found. The police believe Alma committed suicide because she felt guilty for killing Monique and that Gloria found her and had a stroke. The doctors tell Orson that his mother, though completely paralyzed physically, still has the same mental capacity. Orson feels relief that the fact that he was an accomplice in Monique’s burial will remain secret and with his mother. He tilts her head so that she can see him walk out of her life for the last time. On leaving the hospital he imagines his future life with Bree.

[edit] Title reference

• The episode title, The Little Things You Do Together is a song taken from the Stephen Sondheim musical, Company.

[edit] International titles

• French Canadian: Un hôte indésirable (An Undesirable Host)
• French: Suicides, mode d'emploi (Suicide, a how-to)
• German: Teuflisch (Devilish)
• Italian: Le piccole cose che si fanno insieme (The Little Things You Do Together)
• Español: Las cosas que hacemos (The Things That We Do)
• Hungarian: Az utolsó pillanatban (In the Last Moment)

[edit] Awards notes

• Shawn Pyfrom and Kyle MacLachlan both submitted this episode for consideration in the category of “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series” on their behalf for the 2007 Emmy Awards. ^[1]

[edit] References