There Won't Be Trumpets (''Desperate Housewives'')

"There Won't Be Trumpets" is the 17th episode of the first season of the ABC television series Desperate Housewives. The episode was written by John Pardee and Joey Murphy and was directed by Jeff Melman. It originally aired on Sunday, April 3, 2005.

Plot

Mama Solis awakes from her coma and runs to call Carlos. However, she slips on the freshly washed hospital floor and falls down the stairs. A nurse finds her and before she dies Juanita tells her to tell her son that his wife is cheating on him, but the nurse cannot hear what she is saying. Carlos takes the news of his mother's death hard since she died so suddenly. Gabrielle quietly celebrates Mama's death since she can no longer tell Carlos about her affair with John. At the funeral (which all of the housewives attend), Gabrielle is shocked to see the tribute Carlos has put together for his mother which includes a horse-drawn carriage carrying her remains and an expensive crypt. Gabrielle tells Carlos that they cannot afford the funeral he arranged and that "at least Mama will have a roof over her head". She demands he take the plea bargain he's being offered; it means eight months in jail, but it also means they can keep their house. He agrees to take the plea bargain, but makes her promise to be faithful while he's gone.Then the hospital administrator tells her about the lapse in care that resulted in Juanita's death, and they're willing to make a monetary settlement. Gabby checks with her lawyer: the government can't claim any of the money if it's awarded after Carlos goes to jail. So she says nothing to Carlos, for now. Mike leaves Susan a note explaining about his past, but she's afraid to open it. Then her car gets a flat tire and she figures out where the nail came from, Edie's construction site. When Edie's handsome contractor, Bill, asks her out, she decides to ask Edie's permission first, since Edie said they were dating. Edie tells her no, even though she's not all that interested in Bill herself. But when he comes over to fix her tire, she agrees to go out with him and then spends the whole date talking about Mike. Then Edie shows up and tells Susan she'll "hate her forever," and also fires Bill. As Susan drives them home, Bill tries to convince her to tell Edie she threw herself at him so he can get his job back. As they argue, Susan loses control of the car, the tire's gone flat again. "I was meaning to take it in," she says as they wait for a tow truck. Lynette makes a new friend, Alisa, the deaf mother of one of her boys' classmates and invites her and her husband over to dinner. But she's horrified when the husband starts criticizing Alisa right at the dinner table. "It's not like she can hear me," he says. She tells Tom that she has to say something about it, but Tom tells her not to. When they all play tennis together, the husband continues to be rude, so Lynette tells him to stop saying such awful things about his wife. The next day, an enraged Alisa comes in and yells at her, her husband has left her and it's all Lynette's fault. Later, Tom reassures her that her urge to help people is one of the reasons he loves her. Meanwhile, Bree and Rex find out that Andrew was caught taking drugs again and that he ran over the school's parking attendant when he refused to cooperate, and Andrew was expelled from school. Bree decides that a punishment is in order and plans to send him to a deprogramming camp. In the middle of the night, Bree and Rex wake up Andrew and inform him that he is being sent away. He ignores their statement and puts his head back on his pillow. Rex then says "we're ready", and two men enter Andrew's room. Andrew quickly looks at them and tries to make a run for it. The two men grab and restrain him, while Rex says that these men will help Andrew get dressed then drive him to camp. Andrew then spits in Bree's face, but she still tells him that no matter what he does she will always love him.

Notes

• Although credited, Paul Young (Mark Moses), Zach Young (Cody Kasch), and John Rowland (Jesse Metcalfe) do not appear in this episode.
• The dream sequence where Susan (Teri Hatcher) imagines various scenarios occurring between her and Mike (James Denton) was not going to originally include all of the scenarios. Only the one where Mike holds her at gunpoint giving her an ultimatum was going to appear as it left more of an effect, but this was later changed to feature all scenarios.
• Before an altercation with Bree, Andrew can be seen watching the pilot episode of LOST.
• The episode title "There Won't Be Trumpets" is a song written for the Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle. It was replaced by a dramatic monologue and was not used in the actual production, though versions have been recorded by Lee Remick, Barbra Streisand, Bernadette Peters, and Mandy Patinkin.
• Juanita "Mama" Solis dies after falling down the stairs and the hospital staff takes financial responsibility so they won't get sued. However, later on in the series' 7th season this is completely discarded as Andrew confessed to Carlos that he killed her and Carlos was mad and blamed Bree, but Carlos was very aware in this episode that his mother died after falling downstairs. So Carlos should have only been mad that Andrew hit his mother and not accused him of killing his mother.

International titles

• Finnish: Hiljaiset sankarit (Quiet Heroes)
• French: Honneur aux héros (Honour for heroes)
• German: Helden (Heroes)
• Hungarian: Nem szólnak majd a harsonák (The trumpets won't sing)
• Italian: Eroi (Heroes)
• Spanish: No habrá trompetas (There Won't Be Trumpets)

References