Desperate Housewives: MIKE!

This week on Wisteria Lane, Lynette sort of implies that she wouldn't be completely devastated if Nora killed herself (not cool, Lynette), and Nora helps her realize that Tom isn't happy with his life, either. Bree finds out that Andrew is living on the street (not Wisteria Lane, mind you, but the big bad streets of the city where one is forced to do things for money and food), but Orson convinces him to come home, because why have one psychopath in your house when you could have two? Gabrielle sleeps with John, who now owns a landscaping business with a lucrative hotel contract, but is engaged to the daughter of the hotel chain's owner (oops!). Finally, Susan (oh, Susan) goes to Ian's love nest in the mountains and prepares to get biz-ay until he basically calls her a whore for having slept with 11 men before him. Of course, she ends up sleeping with him anyway. Oh, and Edie stops by Mike's hospital room to get her CD player, and he wakes up. Yeah.

I gotta say, despite the show's flirtation with hooking Julie up with Edie's bad-boy nephew (blergh) and the whole Nora thing (double blergh), I'm liking this season a LOT better than last season. Creator Marc Cherry has clearly listened to the criticisms of last season (which pretty much defined "sophomore slump") - that the core group of women didn't spend enough time together; that the central mystery didn't involve them enough, took too long to develop, and wasn't that interesting - and has specifically addressed all of them. I'm loving the Orson mystery, and actually looking forward to each week's episode, compared to the strong temptation I felt to quit watching the show last season. And all this, despite the fact that Mike is in a coma and has almost no screen time! (Yeah, the insanely hot James Denton may be why I kept watching last season. Shut up.)

So here's to Desperate Housewives and Veronica Mars, my two favorite shows from the class of Fall '04, overcoming sophomore slump and starting off their junior year on the right track!