The Game (Desperate Housewives)

"The Game" is the 73rd episode of the ABC dramedy series Desperate Housewives. It was written by Joey Murphy and John Pardee and directed by Bethany Rooney. It is the third episode of the show’s fourth season and aired on October 14, 2007.

Plot

Susan plans a charades get-together for her neighbors. Her girlfriends Bree, Lynette and Gabrielle first make up excuses to get out of the evening, but later change their minds after hearing gossip about a fight in the Mayfair home. (see Smiles of a Summer Night.) 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.

Susan asks Bree for the name of Bree’s gynecologist. As Bree doesn't actually have one, she pretends not to remember his name. As Susan remains persistent, Bree walks into the house, opens the telephone book and blindly picks a doctor’s name and gives it to Susan. When Susan goes to her appointment she discovers that the office is filthy and full of junkies. Susan confronts Bree about it at the party, and while Bree is horrified and incredibly apologetic, she can not give Susan an explanation.

Earlier in the episode, Adam is washing his car when a random young blonde woman jogs by and asks to drink from his garden hose. Katherine then bitterly confronts him for flirting, alluding to the fact that this might be a recurring character trait with Adam.

Lynette’s mom, fed up with seeing her daughter too sick to eat from her chemotherapy, buys 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.

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 and asks Edie to not tell anyone yet. Edie agrees, but has secretly purchased an engagement ring for herself to wear. She pulls it out at the party.

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 flirts with Adam to make Carlos jealous. Carlos breaks a glass in his fury and Katherine is mad as well. Edie pulls Katherine aside to explain Gabrielle’s “reputation” around Wisteria Lane.

After Gabrielle accidentally spills her drink all over Adam, Katherine 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.

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. They admit their feelings for each other.

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.

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. At the end, Katherine lifts up the rug, kneels down to touch a dent in the hardwood floor, and starts to cry.

Title reference

• The title of the episode, “The Game”, comes from the Stephen Sondheim musical Bounce, while also being the title of a song from the musical Damn Yankees, with lyrics by Richard Adler and music by Jerry Ross.

International titles

• Czech: Hry (Games)
• French: Jouer pour Gagner (Play to Win)
• French Canadian: Jouer pour Gagner (Play to Win)
• German: Scharade (Charades)
• Hebrew: המשחק (HaMis'hak; The Game)
• Hungarian: Most mutasd meg! (Charades (figuratively); Show It Now! (literally))
• Italian: Il Gioco (The Game)
• Polish: Kalambury (The game)
• Spanish: El juego (The Game)
• Greek: Το Παιχνίδι (The Game)

Reception and ratings

The Game scored an 11.8/18 in overnight Nielsen ratings with a total of 18.892m viewers,^[1] slightly up from the previous episode's ("Smiles of a Summer Night") 11.2/17.^[2]

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. This is the first time, that a sneak peek episode of Desperate Housewives hasn't charted in the top 5 also.

References