Desperate Housewives - Who lives, who dies?

Well, the @#$% really hit the fan last night! We finally learned about the "secret" (Not the Oprah one, Katherine and Adam's! One of them, anyway...) and what happened in Chicago. (Actually, the secret aka "Sylvia" showed up on Adam's doorstep on last week's episode. And I'm sure we pretty much guessed that she had--or said she had--an affair with Adam.) Of course Bree wants all the dirt, so when she sees Katherine spit in Sylvia's face, she invites her over for tea. Sylvia tells Bree that Adam is in love with her and that's why Katherine hates her so much. Then she starts babbling about a tattoo and so on and Bree's pretty sure that Sylvia is a nutcase. Her suspicions are confirmed when Sylvia locks herself in Bree's bathroom--which was supposed the Hodge family's safe place during the tornado--and wouldn't leave until Adam comes.

Adam and Katherine show up and while Adam tries to cajole Sylvia out of the bathroom, Bree and Katherine engage in a pissing match with Katherine accusing Bree of digging for dirt. "I can't help having a sympathetic face!" says Bree. Katherine tells Bree that Sylvia is a disturbed former patient of Adam who fell in love with him and when he did not return her affections, accused him of sexual assault. Bree tells Katherine, "For what it's worth, I would have spit in her face, too!" And the beginnings of the great ice queen bitch bond is formed--only to crumble under duress while they wait out the storm in a closet (since they still haven't gotten Sylvia out of the bathroom). Bree tells Katherine about Sylvia babbling about a tattoo on Adam's shoulder and Katherine realizes that Adam lied to her--he did in fact have an affair with Sylvia. But as for Sylvia, the poor deranged whackjob decides to come out of the bathroom during the tornado and is sucked into the funnel as she walks out of the house. That was a pretty funny scene!

Susan and Mike are still dancing around the drug addiction issue. First, Susan finds out from Bree that Orson KNEW about Mike's drug addiction BEFORE he wrote him a prescription. She confronts Orson while he's with a patient and tells him that if he ever prescribes anything for Mike again, "There's not enough Novocaine in this office to numb the pain I'm going to cause you." Way to go, Susan! Finally showing a little backbone. That newly developed spine came in handy when Mike found the note she left in his pill bottle--instead of his pills. They have an argument because Mike wants his pills back and when he grabs for Susan, she loses her balance and falls down the stairs. Mike takes her to the hospital, but loses his temper with a hospital employee and ends up in handcuffs after punching him. Susan's fine, the baby's fine--but, with new backbone in working order, she tells Mike he has to go to rehab or she will leave him. Mike agrees.

Gabby informs the ladies that she and Carlos are back together and leaving town to get away from Victor. While packing, Carlos chastises Gabby saying, "I told you just to pack the essentials. Is that a boa?" To which Gabby replies, "If you're taking me anywhere I don't need a boa, I don't want to go." Carlos leaves to get his passport from his safe deposit box and tells Gabby to be on the lookout for the accountant with the info about his Cayman Island account. But while Gabby is packing, Edie happens by and intercepts the folder. Gabby sees her and runs after her. They fight over the folder, which gets caught up in the storm. Seeing the funnel cloud bearing down, Edie grabs Gabby and pulls her into the house where they cower in a crawl space--and eventually they forgive each other while the storm rages.

Carlos arrives home and finds Gabby gone, but Victor there waiting. With a gun. Victor starts shooting at Carlos, but fortunately (for Carlos!) he's a lousy shot. Carlos runs outside into the storm and Victor follows him, still shooting. Carlos wrestles the gun away from Victor and manages to knock him out, but as he struggles to get back inside the house Victor comes up behind him with a steel pipe. But before Victor can smash Carlos' head open, he is impaled by a piece of picket fence. Wow--that was intense! When "Mary Alice" intoned that one woman would lose a husband, I immediately thought "Victor." It looks like I was right! Easier than a divorce, eh?

Lynette manages to weasel her way--along with the entire Scavo brood--into Karen McClusky's basement to ride out the storm. I guess the Scavo's don't have a basement...Anyway, it turns out that Tom is allergic to Ida's cat (What asthmatic doesn't bring their inhaler with them? So lame...) and Lynette and Karen argue about putting the cat upstairs so Tom can breathe. While Ida's asleep and Karen's trying to watch the news of the tornado on a staticky TV, Lynette sneaks the cat upstairs. Karen follows her and as they argue about Karen choosing the cat over a friend's husband (to which McClusky incredulously asks "You think we're friends?"), the cat runs outside into the storm. Karen chases after it and Lynette chases after Karen. As the funnel cloud grows closer, Lynette drags Karen into the Scavo home and they hide in a bathtub with a mattress covering them. When the storm passes, they go outside to witness the devastation on Wisteria Lane. Lynette screams upon seeing that Karen McClusky's home--which was sheltering her entire family--has been reduced to rubble.

"Mary Alice" also said all the women would lose a friend. Since Victor was nobody's friend, I predict that either Ida didn't make it through the storm or Karen McClusky will be forced to leave Wisteria Lane due to the decimation of her house. There's a great Yahoo News article about the episode. This was part one of two. Part two has already been shot, but is supposed to be shown as the opening episode for the second half of the season. But who knows when that will be with the Writers Strike...