Paul takes his prison bride Beth to a therapist, male, in the hopes that he'll instruct her to give it up. Instead, the guy tells them to start dating, and maybe someday Beth will -- through the power of haunted houses, potluck suppers and neighborhood picnics -- somehow turn from the kind of lunatic who would marry a murderer in jail to the kind of lunatic that would marry Paul Young. After their first date goes well, Paul leans in for the kiss, gets slapped instead, and kicks Beth out.
Since the only way that storyline could get creepier is if Susan were involved, Susan is involved. To head off Paul's attempt at blackmailing her, she comes clean to Mike about her lame pornography career. Mike immediately starts making up ways to martyr himself and doubt his abilities to provide, over the more obvious route of realizing that he's married to a dangerously incompetent, emotionally retarded head case.
Brian Austin Keith has a female roommate, so Bree gets all Bree for a second and goes through his mail. He's had some assault charges -- no red flags there! -- but Renee says she heard he was just defending his girlfriend. Bree engineers a similar situation and nearly gets a guy beat to hell, and when an ashamed Keith storms off, Bree tells him to chill: This is the point in the relationship at which they start learning the messed up stuff. Like, for example, did he know she was a famously huge alcoholic? Then they make out, and as the only romantic thing in this entire unsavory episode, it's awesome.
Mike decides to kill Paul with a hammer for blackmailing his disabled wife, but Susan decides it'd be way smarter to go over there and intimidate him with muffins. Because one thing that doesn't ever bother Paul Young is getting fucked with. Nobody's ever lost fingers or gotten buried in the backyard from messing with that beehive before. So she shambles on over to Paul's house and does some stupid Susan shit, and of course he immediately retaliates and gets her fired from her teaching job. So suddenly Mike has to move to Alaska, or else they'll have to move their house to the lee of the stone or whatever she's always whining about. Susan's money troubles are symptoms, not causes. You know? It's hard to pay attention.
About twelve hours after it became obvious, Susan finally twigs to the fact that her rampage and abrupt firing might be connected, so she heads over to Paul's house -- dressed like Beth the Clown from Passions -- and almost gets her ass shot by Beth, who (after some heavily coded conversations about how far she's willing to go to stay in Paul's house) has finally figured out a way to keep Paul close and happy: Gunplay and making out.
Juanita and Grace continue to bond, by which I mean of course that Gabrielle and her biodaughter Grace continue to bond while Juanita continues to spin wildly into a dark and chubby madness. She spots that necklace in Grace's stuff and steals it back; no thanks from mom. She dresses up like an adorable puppy; Grace is a princess. By the end of the episode Gabrielle is just straight-up abusing her real kids, so Juanita chops off all of Grace's hair with that glint of crazy in her eye that proves she's Gabrielle's real daughter through and through: Blood's thicker than water, but crazy trumps everything. Juanita calls her mom out in front of the painfully not-present Carlos, and Gabrielle confronts some hard truths about how she's out of control and kind of an asshole. Just kidding, she totally doesn't confront those truths.
The other major storyline this week has to do with Tom Scavo's clearly senile mother, in whom both Lynette and Tom seem to have complete faith even though she SCREAMS IN ALL CAPITALS whenever she talks and generally seems a toilet seat away from Riding The Bus With My Sister. Of course, these are the same people that nominated their tween daughter to be the new mommy of their house last week, so it's not surprising that they're overlooking symptoms.
Lynette finally notices that Mother Scavo is old and bonkers, but then Tom can't believe it on account of how he's Tom Scavo, and you're like, "Countdown to Lynette's mother-in-law killing at least one of Lynette's children starts here." After more symptoms come to light -- hoarding, "sundowning," mood swings -- Tom and Lynette leave her to take care of their entire family so they can go to a party. Of course Grandma goes wandering the streets of Fairview immediately, and Tom panics and walks past her in an old-lady k-hole, and then they ship her off to a home. Seems like the right call, right? Because now they can get a grownup nanny? With all her senses and a rational mind? Right?
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Because Paul Young still hasn't figured out that his prison wife is deranged, he can't understand why they haven't had sex. As their therapist points out, even in her cover story where she's one of those crazy ladies that falls in love with Charlie Manson, she wouldn't be into him, having chosen a jail person to wed because there's no touching in jail. And since that story is also clearly a lie, that's two levels of no sex with Paul Young.
Paul is bummed because he assumed -- as Mary Alice points out, with no more judgment in her voice than the natural condescension with which she says everything -- that a male therapist would be on his side. "Submit to marital rape!" the doctor would say, and Batshit Beth would be like, "Well, if science says so." Instead, the doctor gives them some quackery about "Well, since your relationship is not real and based on the tenuous balance of both your insane membranes, why not start with dating? You know, like how adults would have done it?"
Paul does not want to drop money on that shit because Paul is very much obsessed with his mysterious schemes. At this point, I don't blame him. I feel like just keeping up with his crazy self is something I've never been able to do, and I'm trying it from my relatively non-crazy brain. The noises in there, who knows. Honestly, it's so complicated at this point I plead ignorance. Tell me he cut off that lady's thumb, I'll say yes. Tell me he shot his wife in the kitchen while she was hanging herself, and then traded their son for a record third time with the Solis baby five years ago, maybe I would believe you. I never thought I would have to pay attention to this shit, so I didn't.
It is kind of a bummer that Mary Alice doesn't go Lovely Bones on their asses anymore. She still talks about friendship and whatever, neighbors and how to be neighborly, but how great would it be if she singsonged, "And I hope that motherfucker gets what's coming to him" or "Beth's a virgin? OH SNAP!" Every now and then, I mean. But also, I love what Paul says on finding out that latter fact he's like, "Saving yourself for marriage? GUESS WHAT YOU ARE MARRIED." Then he ruins it by calling her vagina a cookie jar and asking for a cookie, which: Nope. Advantage Beth. Oh, and supposedly she's 30, too.
Renee is having a party, so she lets herself into Lynette's house without knocking. "Yo bitches," she says, "I heard you like being insulted so I put some insults in this invitation so I can insult you while I invite you... To my Halloween party!" Since all of them have carried the crazy ball at this point -- and because all of them miss Edie more than they'll ever admit -- they don't even point out how incredibly rude she is. It's like a built-in reason for martyr Lynette to feel put-upon, and Susan deserves a shovel to the face at least three times a day, but I don't know why the others take it.
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