Holy shit, you guys. So okay, first the boring stuff: Carlos uses a recording of his sex session with Gabby to get a bigger settlement out of the divorce; now Gabby gets nothing but the house, while Carlos gets every item within the house and he no longer has to pay alimony. To retaliate, Gabby starts breaking everything that now belongs to Carlos. Carlos fights back by bashing in the walls of the house. Meanwhile, Snora retaliates for Lynette's threats from last week by announcing that she and Kayla are moving to Mexico, so Tom and Lynette sue for custody of Kayla. Bree confronts Orson with those photos of abused Alma that Jackie gave her. Orson explains that it was self-defense: apparently, Alma came at him with saucepan or something? Yeah, I don't know. Annoyed at being manipulated into doubting Orson once again, Bree spitefully tells Jackie about how Harv(Gar)y cheated on her with a woman named Monique. And now here's where things start to go completely insane. Jackie loses it and shows up at the grocery store where HarvGar works and starts shooting up the place. When HarvGar holes up inside the manager's office, Jackie takes the whole store hostage and half of Wisteria Lane is caught in the crossfire. Lynette and "Art," the new neighbor who just moved into the Young's old house, are there to do some shopping. Snora is there to bitch at Lynette about the custody suit. Julie and Austin are there because even though they arrived separately, they're being detained together after idiot Austin tried to steal a bottle of booze by slipping it into Julie's bag. Edie is there because she got called down to deal with Austin. Susan was there to deal with Julie, but she briefly went outside to instruct Ian to leave for Paris without her because she had to stay in Fairview to focus on what she perceived to be Julie's sudden rebellion (even though Julie is totally innocent). Once shit starts to go down, HarvGar calls the police, and soon the there are cop cars and news vans everywhere. Hilarity ensues when Susan tries to bargain her way back into the market with a stolen police bullhorn. Back on Wisteria Lane, all of the neighborhood has gathered at Bree's to watch the news about the hostage crisis. Bree deals with the guilt she feels over her role in making Jackie snap by whipping up incredible amounts of food for all her guests. News reports about Jackie's behavior make Gabby reevaluate what she's become (a similarly jealous monster), and she and Carlos vow to stop being awful. Finally, finally, finally. Back at the super-crazy supermarket, the whole hostage crisis comes to a head when Snora and Lynette again start to bicker about the custody thing and the Tom-seduction thing. Jackie perceives that Snora is an attempted husband-stealer just like Monique, and Jackie hauls off and shoots Snora in the chest, leaving an entire viewing audience scrambling to scrape their jaws off their floors. Snora dies, and Lynette rants at Jackie. Jackie goes to shoot Lynette but Art throws a can of food at Jackie's head and the bullet goes astray and hits Lynette in the shoulder instead. Austin jumps on Jackie and wrestles with her while some random woman shoots Jackie in the head. And that's why they call it "Bang." Wow.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: All the stuff from last week (Lynette threatened to snap Snora's spindly spine, Jackie gave Bree photos of battered Alma), plus Mary Alice killed herself, Susan and Ian will always have Paris, and boy does Austin sure like to take off his top and oil up his parts. (Bonus cultural learning fact: In the US, an Austin-hard stomach is referred to a "six pack," but in the lovely-chubbly UK, they call this phenomenon "chocolate bar abs." How great is that?)
Okay, as I'm sure you've probably heard by now, this is the craziest, slammingist, rock 'em, sock 'em episode ever. Are you really ready for this? I don't think you're ready. Go get some potable water, a hyperventilation bag, and a pair of elasticized pants. And a power smoothie, with a "get ready to cry like a little girl" boost. And lotion! You'll need some serious face moisturizing to ride this ride, otherwise your skin's going to crack off, what with all the jaw dropping.
Now that I've got your expectations cranked to impossible heights, let us begin.
Everything starts with a series of fantasy-flashbacks, showing what Jackie from Roseanne might have done with her day (baked a strudel, washed the dog, drowned her African violets, mail a letter), if only her plans hadn't been completely derailed by an unfortunate conversation she has with a woman holding a basket of flowers. MAVO tells us that this woman "wasn't her friend" and the thing she told Jackie was something "she wasn't supposed to hear." The way that the scene is shot, we don't see the mystery woman's face; we only see Jackie, looking like her heart is a baby seal and it's just been clubbed into a bloody pulp.
Jackie, looking a frayed around the edges, heads into a supermarket. On her way in, she absently exchanges greetings with a woman in a black dress, only we can't see the woman's face. Jackie walks up one of the aisles, past the sleeve of a woman wearing a striped men's shirt, and then up to her husband. Jackie: "I've been thinking, Harvey, that if you love this Monique woman, maybe you should be with her." Harve(Gar)y, exasperated, reminds Jackie that Monique is dead. Jackie: "I know." She whips out a gun out of her purse and aims the gun at him and fires. Harve(Gar)y makes a slapsticky run for it, and Jackie walks determinedly after him. As he's diving into an office marked "Manager," she takes one last shot and nicks the doorframe. She runs over, but the door is locked. She bangs on it a few times, and then she notices that she's surrounded by customers. She points her gun at them and tells them to get down on the floor. She's shaking and looking very much like the wheels have fallen off the wagon. MAVO says something saucy about how Jackie had planned for a regular, boring day, but "as every housewife knows, plans change."
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