You know how sometimes you'll just be doing your job -- selling real estate, say -- and you open a drawer in a stranger's home and show your client how it's full of ropes. And then your client will just be like, "Oh cool, some Japanese sex bondage rope. Here, let me show you" and then they tie you up with it and then before you know it, you have become a lesbian?

This week on Mistresses, things start out strong: Karen is marginally less of an idiot, April has stopped believing in ghosts, Savi forgets to hate herself for five seconds, and Joss walks into the kitchen at 7 AM, drunk as hell and dressed as Wonder Woman and being a complete delight, and eventually starts handing out the best advice of the show to date. But then before you know it, the exuberant shittiness of the show reasserts itself in the most glorious ways.

BAM! Licensed psychiatrist Karen Kim advises Savannah to lie her ass off about cheating on her husband. Without question, just immediately goes, "Well, whatever you do, you can't be honest with your husband!" I love Karen Kim because she's the sounding board for all the other storylines -- while also having the best storyline her own self -- and yet all she can say to anybody is the worst possible thing you should never say to anybody. It's unerringly awesome.

POW! April Malloy starts stalking her dead husband's secret family -- until the final straw, when she realizes he bought the whore a bright yellow used 2001 SUV, at which point she loses her goddamn mind. Maybe it would have been better to let her believe in ghosts, because now she's just firing blindly into the crowd, screaming at Savi and setting up weird alliances within the group just to fuck with her.

BOOSH! Joss accidentally becomes a lesbian without warning, but doesn't herself seem to know it yet. What begins as weird obsessive life-coaching to Shannyn Sossamon's adorable self becomes goofy sexual obsession, but still nothing actually happens because Joss is just a pretend person. (Having said that, the actress is great and gets a lot more room to breathe this week, which helps the character out immensely.)

KERPLUNK! Karen asks a cute grownup coworker what you should do if somebody likes you -- like like-likes you -- even though they are both goddamned adults, and he's like, "Just be yourself, just be honest" and she writes it down in her notebook because it's the most brilliant thing she's ever heard. And then she goes on a few dates with Sam Grey, who is a little baby child, just because she is a very stupid woman.

ZASP! Everybody lies to the private investigator about Thomas Grey's suicide, including attorneys and widows and his psychiatrist Karen Kim. "Do you have any notes from your several years of treating the dead man?" he asks, and Karen Kim is like, "Notes? What are notes?" Savi asks the widow what happens when they dig up his dead body to prove that he didn't die of suicide, and the wife is just like, "I don't wanna talk about it right now, that's too weird" and Savi just lets it slide.

SHEZOW! Harry flips over 180 degrees and becomes amazing -- even humanly attractive from certain angles -- but Savi's too tortured by her adultery (and the fact that he was right, she has no interest in bearing children because she is a selfish job monster) to even notice, so she gives him a horrific speech about how she started scheduling "SWH" -- Sex With Harry -- into her calendar, it was only a matter of time before she murdered him, or I guess cheated on him and lied forever about it. The good news is that suddenly his sperms have gotten their act together, so when she fucks him 24 hours after Dominic there's a chance her obvious baby she's going to have will not actually be from adultery.

YIKES! Karen finally notices that Little Baby Sam is hot as hell, and does her best to turn him into a crazy person so that he will stop being hot at her and start trying to murder her. (That part was great, because the kid really is a sex bomb and it feels totally inappropriate, so you're right there with her.)

All in all, a somewhat stronger outing than the sudsy silly pilot -- and certainly with much cleverer dialogue, especially in the first half -- but still moderately slow-moving, and the kind of nutty that would fall apart instantly, if not for the show's single science-fiction conceit that in the universe of this show everyone on earth is too stupid to live.

(Think I'm exaggerating? I just saw a synopsis for the episode two weeks from now, and it's like, "April suspects her dead husband had a secret family, while Savi freaks out about her adultery and Joss grows closer to a client." I mean what the fuck is going to happen next week, they get in a time machine to before this episode?)

Next Week: They get in a time machine to before this episode. April suspects her dead husband had a secret family, while Savi freaks out about her adultery. Harry is either awesome or a shitbag. Little Baby Child Sam is way too hot to feel okay about. Joss is kind of a lesbian, in the most irritating way possible. Let's tune right in, shall we?