- Lynette feels her mother is marrying for the wrong reasons; Susan tries to befriend a fellow patient; Carlos gets concerned over Gabrielle's interactions with her doll.
- While Tom is delighted with the prospect of inheriting from rich, ailing Frank Kaminsky, Lynette stubbornly sabotages her mother's wedding to the 'parasite', only to discover another motive. Not Keith, but Bree meets his three years-cohabiting ex and worries. Lee and Bob are pleasantly surprised by Renee's maternal side when she practically appoints herself their nursery decorator. Paul has to face his wife's devious side, Carlos Gaby's sickly obsession with a doll as substitute for Grace. Blabbermouth Susan strikes even during kidney dialysis.—KGF Vissers
- Lynette feels her mother, Stella, is marrying Frank - an abrasive and obnoxious man - for all the wrong reasons and tries to talk her out of it. Meanwhile, Susan tries to befriend a curmudgeonly man during her dialysis sessions who has given up on ever finding a kidney donor, Bree runs into Keith's ex-girlfriend and learns some shocking news about his past, Carlos becomes concerned when he learns about Gaby's obsession with her doll, Bob and Lee hire a non-maternal Renee to decorate their newly adopted girl's bedroom, and Paul has other plans in store for Beth when he books a trip for the two of them at a remote cabin in the woods.—ABC Publicity
- "Desperate Housewives" - "I'm Still Here" - January 16, 2011
The ladies of the Lane are dealing with relatives and old and new friends this week.
Lynette who gets a visit from her dear old drunkard of a mom, Stella. It turns out she's getting married! This would be good news except she's marrying an obnoxious, cranky, racist that she met at the retirement home. Lynette tries to dissuade her from this union but her mom insists that since the guy-- played by Larry "J.R." Hagman-- is rich and has a bad heart it could be good for everyone. Lynette thinks this is not a good enough reason and then her mom breaks down and explains that the primary reason that she's marrying him is because he needs her, unlike everyone else in her life who has shunned her, including Lynette. Lynette understands this and lets the wedding go forward.
Now that she's on dialysis Susan is starting to make friends, including a young man named Ethan. Unfortunately, the other person she meets, Dick, is a grumpy older man who has no interest in making friends. Over time Susan tries to wear him down but Dick tells Susan that he's been on dialysis for four years now and he isn't an easy nut to crack. When he explains to her what they're really waiting for: for someone else to die and someone else's family to be crushed by that loss-- she begins to see why he's so curmudgeonly. At the end of the episode a beeper goes off and suddenly they're all hopeful. The beeper is for Ethan and he departs excitedly. Susan, meanwhile, sits beside Dick and takes his hand, beginning to understand his (and her own) struggle.
Meanwhile, all seems well in the land of Bree and Keith until a young woman named Amber James comes to visit while Keith is out. When Bree explains to Amber that she is Keith's girlfriend and they live together Amber becomes upset and leaves. Bree asks questions about Keith and his past, and it turns out that seven years earlier Amber and Keith were in love and living together but it was a volatile relationship and she ended up leaving him. When Bree visits Amber living at a motel outside of town, she finds that she has a six-year-old son, named Charlie, living with her. Amber tells Bree that shortly after she left Keith, however, she realized she was pregnant. Amber never told Keith because she intended to give the baby up for adoption and then she couldn't and then it just seemed like too much time had passed to tell him. Having met Keith's son, Charlie, Bree asks Amber if she wants Bree to break the news to Keith. Amber likes this idea having struggled with telling him herself, but now Charlie is asking questions about his dad and she wants to tell him something. Back at Bree's house during dinner, she brings the subject of children. Keith bristles, saying they have been over this: he wanted kids, she didn't want more, he wants Bree, end of discussion. When she tries to ask him "but if there was a chance you could be a father..." he cuts her off saying there isn't so there's no use in talking about it. So instead of telling Keith he has a child, Bree says nothing. The next morning, Bree goes to Amber at the motel and delibrately lies to her by saying Keith decided she waited too long to tell him and therefore isn't interested in meeting Charlie. Bree then hands Amber a check for her to leave town. (Ouch). Amber is hurt, but takes the check.
Bob and Lee break the news to Gaby and Carlos that they have adopted a little girl sparking two storylines.
In their own storyline, Renee finds out that they have adopted and demands to know why they have hired a different interior designer to create their daughter's bedroom when they know she started her own firm. They tell her that she never seemed particularly maternal to them. She confesses that she always thought about having children but her career and life conspired against her. They ask her to decorate the room and she does a beautiful job, saying this is the room she always wanted for her daughter. When Bob and Lee's daughter Liza, shows up they introduce her to Renee and Lee asks Renee if they can count on her to talk to Liza when she needs a female/maternal figure to talk to/ask questions of. Renee says she's in. From the look on Renee's face, it is clear that she may be hiding something about her past maternal instincts.
Since Gaby heard the news about Bob and Lee adopting, she is stricken, still pining away for Grace and saddened by not knowing where or how she is. This sadness has manifested itself in an unnatural attachment to the doll she bought, Princess Valerie. When Carlos confronts her with the $800 bill for the doll she defends it saying it hurts no one. When he brings up Grace she again gets upset and says he is the one who deemed they could not talk about her and so she won't. When she notices that Karen McCluskey has a similar doll she talks to her about, essentially, having a playdate together. Mrs. McCluskey is weirded out and goes to Carlos. Later, when they are out on their way to a restaurant Carlos and Gaby are carjacked. Even though she has a gun to her head Gaby is obsessed with retrieving the doll from the backseat, where she has strapped it into a car seat. She's unable to undo the straps and even the carjacker is like "lady, it's a doll!" and speeds off with the car and Princess Valerie, Gaby breaks down in the road as Carlos tries to comfort her.
On the Paul Young front, now that Paul knows that Felicia Tillman is Beth's mother he has nefarious plans for her, beliving that she married him for the sole purpose to harm and kill him. What he doesn't know is that she has truly fallen for him. Paul plans to take her on a trip to a remote cabin in the woods to play out those plans but then the police detectives show up with a new piece of evidence. Just as Beth and Paul are leaving for their trip, the police show up and show Paul the gun which Bree found: a .38 caliber revolver. Paul says he knows for "a fact" that it doesn't belong to his wife and that she definitely didn't shoot him. He clearly recognizes the gun but says no more. The police leave and Paul goes to Beth and tells her the trip is off. Paul tells Beth that he thinks that she just dodge a bullet. The final scene shows Paul looking at an old photo of him and his emotionally troubled, estranged son, Zach. (It is strongly implied that the .38 caliber gun used on Paul is the same one that Mary Alice used to kill herself many years before.) It is clear that's why Paul recognizes the gun... and that he may also know that Zach is the one who tried to kill him.
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