"Desperate Housewives" - Mother's Love, oy vey

Tonight's "Desperate Housewives" had all the twisted mothering impulses we would find in a caricature of a comedy about Jewish mothers.  Not even one attempt at mothering comes off okay.  Where to start?

Mike the Plumber's mother comes to visit.  Oy vey.  Underneath that Southern accent is the most manipulative of Jewish-style mothers who resent their son's choice of a wife.  What winds up coming out in all her acidic comments to Susan is how Mike has been badmouthing his wife to his mother.  When this all sinks in, Susan is bound to rethink how much she gave up - e.g. financial security and upper-class manners - to marry this struggling uneducated working-class guy.

Lynnette is driven to slap that step daughter she can't stand.  Her husband and the quack therapist blame her.  The Demon Child reports the child abuse to her therapist and in the coming attractions it looks like the police are entering the picture. 

Katherine is up to something in her crazy relationship with her daughter Dylan.  We just don't know what.  Meanwhile, in all this emotional confusion, Dylan is the one caught in the middle of Katherine and Katherine's former husband. 

Bree managed to become the mother of her daughter's child in order to have a second shot at motherhood.  Now the secret is out.  But we still don't have a clue whether she will do better on this second try than the first.

Gaby's drug-dealer boarder has bonded to her as a mother figure.  Unfortunately Gaby and Carlos had to turn her into the police because if they didn't Carlos could have been violating his probation.  Because the police are trying to catch the big fish in the dope ring Gaby and Carlos have to play the charade of everything-as-usual.

Shut out by all the women on Wisteria Lane, Edie is now turning to being a mother to her son.  We can only fear for him in this attack of desperate love.

The darkness in tonight's episode went beyond the usual manipulations of Wisteria Lane.  Evil hovers over the neighborhood. 

Next week with be the two-hour finale.  Will evil triumph?  Or will the essential humanity we sometimes saw among the desperate housewives save the neighborhood?