The Game (Desperate Housewives)

Infobox Television episode
Title = The Game
Series = Desperate Housewives


Caption =
Season = 4
Episode = 3
Airdate = October 14, 2007
Production = 403
Writer = Joey Murphy & John Pardee
Director = Bethany Rooney
Guests =
Episode list = List of Desperate Housewives episodes
Prev = Smiles of a Summer Night
Next = If There's Anything I Can't Stand"The Game" is the 73rd episode of the ABC dramedy series "Desperate Housewives". It was written by Joey Murphy and John Pardee and directed by Bethany Rooney. [http://abcmedianet.com/Web/progcal/dispDNR.aspx?id=100107_06 ABC Press release: SUSAN THROWS A CHARADES PARTY, ON ABC'S "DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES"] , ABC MediaNet, October 1, 2007] It is the third episode of the show’s fourth season and aired on October 14, 2007.

=Guest starring=

*Nathan Fillion as Adam Mayfair
*John Slattery as Victor Lang
*Polly Bergen as Stella Wingfield
*Rachel Bailit as skanky woman
*Kristi Clainos as young woman
*James Luca McBride as Al Kaminsky

Plot

Susan plans a charades get-together for her neighbors. Her girlfriends Bree, Lynette and Gabrielle are not too thrilled to attend, and make up excuses to get out of the evening. Bree later changes her friends’ minds when she informs them about the fight she overheard in the Mayfair home. (see "Smiles of a Summer Night".) They decide to try to get Katherine very drunk at the party to see if they can coax any kind of information out of her. Then they call Susan to accept the invitation and insist that she invite the new neighbors.

Susan sees Bree across the street and runs over to her so she can get the name of Bree’s gynecologist. Bree is hesitant and pretends not to remember the name of her gynecologist. As Susan remains persistent, Bree walks into the house, opens the telephone book and blindly picks a doctor’s name and gives it to Susan. When Susan goes to her appointment the day of her party, she discovers that the doctor’s office is not only in a terrible neighborhood, but also the office itself is filthy. One prostitute even openly admits to being there to get "clean urine”. Later she confronts Bree about it at the party, and while Bree is horrified and incredibly apologetic, she can not give Susan an explanation.

Earlier in the episode, Adam is washing his car when a random young blonde woman jogs by and asks to drink from his garden hose. They flirt with each other and she jogs away. Katherine then bitterly confronts him, alluding to the fact that this might be a recurring character trait with Adam.

Lynette’s mom, fed up with seeing her daughter too sick to eat from her chemotherapy, decides to sneak off and buy weed from Andrew, bakes it into brownies, and has Lynette’s son Parker tell her he made them in order to get Lynette to eat them. Lynette, originally too weak and sick to make it to Susan’s party, suddenly feels great – unknowingly thanks to the brownies – and shows up to the charades party stoned and acting goofy.

Carlos begs Gabrielle to give him just two more weeks to dump Edie, and she reluctantly agrees. However, when getting ready for Susan’s party, Edie tells Carlos that she plans on announcing their engagement. Carlos is completely against this and asks Edie to not tell anyone yet. Edie agrees, but has secretly purchased an engagement ring for herself to wear. She pulls it out at the party and pretends to have her contact lens slip so everyone can look at her hand.

Gabrielle sees the ring, and angrily pulls Carlos aside. He explains that it will be taken care of, and he needs more time. Gabrielle is not satisfied with this, so she goes into the house and decides to flirt with Adam to make Carlos jealous. Carlos breaks a glass in his fury and walks away. Gabrielle keeps this act up with Adam, not realizing how mad Katherine is getting. Edie sees that Katherine is not happy about this, and pulls her aside to explain Gabrielle’s “reputation” around Wisteria Lane, and tells her about Gabrielle’s secret affair with her teenage gardener, John Rowland, a few years ago.

Later in the party, Gabrielle accidentally spills her drink all over Adam. As she’s cleaning it off of him, Katherine finally has enough and confronts Gabrielle in front of everyone, citing her reputation. Gabrielle is indignant and demands that she explain herself, and Katherine tells her in front of everyone at the party that she knows about her affair with her teenage gardener. Gabrielle, in her blind fury, spills the secret that Bree saw her slap Dylan when she asked about her father. Katherine keeps her already cool composure and admits that while she did lose her temper with Dylan, Dylan’s father had done the most horrible thing a father could possibly do to his daughter.

Gabrielle sees Victor in a bedroom at Susan's house crunching poll numbers. She tries to console him and attempts to reassure him that her affair with John was a long time ago and not a big deal. Victor says that he's not jealous at all, he just wants to figure out how it will affect his poll numbers when he's running for Governor. After that, Gabrielle catches Carlos in Susan's bathroom and kisses him, then hits him over the head. Carlos, needless to say, is pretty confused. Gabrielle explains that the slap in the head was for letting Edie think that they were engaged, and that she not only loves him, but she loves the way that he loves her. She cites that when Carlos saw her with another man, he broke a glass in a jealous rage, whereas Victor just crunched poll numbers when he found out about her affair with John.

Just before Gabrielle and Victor leave the party, Victor has a moment alone with Carlos, asking how he could have not killed John for sleeping with his wife. Carlos says that as much as he wanted to, it wasn't worth going to jail over. Victor chuckles and states that, if you're rich, you can make anybody disappear. Gabrielle then comes down the stairs, and she and Victor leave together.

Meanwhile, while the adults are at the party, Dylan and Julie are studying together at the Mayfair house. Dylan tells Julie about her mother freaking out at her over asking about her father, and says that there is a lot of old stuff stored in the bedroom upstairs, but it’s locked. Julie picks the lock and the girls start going through the boxes. Julie informs Dylan that this was, in fact, her old bedroom not the one she is in now like her mother said. Katherine then walks in and catches them, and sends Julie home.

Orson gets a call from the convent where Danielle is staying. She tried to rollerblade and fell, causing possible complications with her pregnancy. Bree and Orson are ready to rush out the door to see Danielle when the doctor calls and says the pregnancy is fine.

Adam and Katherine are in the third floor bedroom getting it ready for Dylan to move in, in order to “stifle” her curiosity. Adam asks why Katherine had described Dylan’s father to everyone as doing "the worst possible thing a father could do to a child". Katherine said that it made people feel uncomfortable, and uncomfortable people don't ask questions. In the end, we see Katherine lift up the rug, kneel down to touch a dent in the hardwood floor, and cry.

Title reference

*The title of the episode, “The Game”, comes from the Stephen Sondheim musical "Bounce", while also being the title of a song from the musical "Damn Yankees", with lyrics by Richard Adler and music by Jerry Ross.

International Titles

*Spanish: "El juego" (The Game)
*Polish: "Szarada" (The Charade)
*Italian: "Il Gioco" (The Game)
*French : "L'herbe ne fait pas le bonheur" (The grass doesn't make happiness)
*German: "Scharade" (Charades)
*Hungarian: "Most mutasd meg!" (Charades (figuratively); Show It Now! (literally))
*French Canadian: "Jouer pour Gagner" (Play to Win)

Reception and ratings

"The Game" scored an 11.8/18 in overnight Nielsen ratings with a total of 18.892m viewers, [ [http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-ratings101407,0,483972.story?coll=zap-tv-ratings-headlines Big game, big ratings for CBS Sunday] "Zap2it" Retrieved 2007-10-15] slightly up from the previous episode's ("Smiles of a Summer Night") 11.2/17. [ [http://www.zap2it.com/tv/ratings/zap-ratings100707,0,811654.story?coll=zap-tv-ratings-headlines NBC picks off Sunday win] "Zap2it" Retrieved 2007-10-08]

14.09 million viewers watched this episode in the UL coming 4th in weekley ratings.

In the UK, the terrestrial outing on April 9 had achieved 5th place with an audience number of 2.83 million. This is the first time this season, viewing figures have risen on a terrestrial episode from the one before. The number may only have increased by 6,000 (0.3% rise) but had dipped in position. The cable airing on April 6 was given the position of somewhere below the top 10. This is the first time, that a sneak peak episode of Desperate Housewives hasn't charted in the top 5 also.

References