The world of Wisteria Lane is dominated by nasty suburban secrets and there were some real corkers in last night’s season three finale. After the embarrassing fluff of last season, this year’s Desperate Housewives has been a marked improvement. And as a dramatic showcase for the newly re-claimed dominance of the domestic darlings, the show went out, (for now), in a blaze of glory. We had the much-hyped return of fastidious redhead Brie and the weddings of Gabrielle and Susan (though not to each other, I don’t know if TV lesbians are allowed to live in the ‘burbs.) Such events promised many soapy scandals all in lovely frocks, and we weren’t disappointed…

Lynette, recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma kept her sad secret to herself, refusing to confide in her chums for support. This left the burden of help on sad-sack hubbie Tom. Now Tom might be your go-to guy for pizzas, but not much else. Tom was once one of the more appealing men on the show – immature but sweet, but now he has devolved into a grade A chump. Left with a sorry lump of a husband and a sea of disobedient children that Annie’s Miss Hannigan would be proud of – life for Lynette was looking bleak.

Money was another dark cloud looming over the Scavo household, as Tom and Lynette struggled to scrape together the required $10,000 for surgery. Sick, poor, stuck with endless sprogs (the most offensive of which isn’t even your own) and the flirtation with hunky chef Rick over. Poor Lynette needed a wealthy guardian angel. What she got was her mother.

Having pleaded with her sister not to let their mum know of her illness, it was shocked faces all round as the unwanted woman marched into their house and back into their lives. The sister had blabbed and now Lynette was faced with a blast from a past she would have preferred to forget. We learned that her mother, Stella, had endured breast cancer herself when Lynette was only 13 and that as the eldest, Lynette had taken care of her siblings whilst her sick mum recovered. There were allegations of Stella’s boozing and many men and the two clashed throughout the episode.

But when your grumpy mum is prepared to stump up the cash, nurse you back to health and baby-sit your Hellish offspring – you gotta bite the bullet. Lynette finally did, but not after putting up a jolly good fight. Stella had coerced news of Lynette’s attraction with Rick from the gobby step-daughter and used this as ammunition against Lynette, who had deemed her mother’s brush with cancer as suitable punishment for being a bad mother. Was this Lynette’s punishment for her lust for Rick? Ooh, karmic philosophical debates on DH – whatever next?

And so onto the weddings.

Susan’s plans for her big day with Mike were becoming increasingly far-fetched. Doves and champagne/ chocolate fountains were on her agenda and poor Mike indulged her showy and shallow whims as much as any love-struck fool. But such ‘romantic’ pap does not come cheap and Susan soon found that Mike had become a 24-hour plumber. Toilets don’t unblock themselves and he was summoned to nasty errands at all hours of the night. All this to pay for a wedding so bloated and oversized that it would rival the unholy union between David Gest and Liza Minnelli.

Why was Susan allowing Mike to do this? With so much spent on the wedding, the over-priced photos would surely reveal the dark circles and swollen bags around his sleep-deprived eyes. But soldiering on, our blue-collar hero was determined that Susan should enjoy all the glitz of the wedding she had been planning with previous fiancé Ian.

Susan finally began to appreciate the common dilemma we all face when she found Mike asleep at a crowded place in the middle of the day. The choice between an expensive wedding and comatose groom versus a cheapie event but a bright eyed and bushy-tailed love machine with energy to go all night. Hmm, let me think. As a cunning ruse, Susan got her boring daughter Julie (challenge – you name anything interesting that has ever happened to her. Can’t? See, told you so) to pretend to be a client calling Mike for another round with the plunger. Off he duly went, unaware that it was all a set-up and that he was actually heading to his own wedding.

Mike found the caller’s location, a quiet patch of forest that was all decked out in pretty, coloured paper lanterns and candles. There stood Susan and daughter sheepishly awaiting him for an impromptu marriage ceremony. Now, the cynic in me wanted to sneer at the predictability of the scaled-back but still oh-so-lovely ad-hoc wedding. Pick holes in the practicality, the logistics, not to mention the huge risk of fire involved with naked flames in an enclosed woodland area (think people, think!) But oh shucks, I gotta come clean. I found it all quite disarmingly cute. Sure Teri Hatcher is one helluva anti-Botox advert and her character might tempt me to get murderous were she my next door neighbour – but I gave myself up to the moment and went with it. All bitching aside, this was handled quite nicely and it was good to get a moment of proper romance between two characters in a show dominated by mis-matches and horrible break-ups.

Speaking of break-ups, Carlos ended it with Edie. After finding she was still taking her birth control tablets and therefore not inviting his sperm in with a welcome mat, warm bed and a hearty meal, he broke it off. Crazy wild for a child, Carlos didn’t so much want a relationship as a baby, and Edie was the excess body around the desired uterus. Now this being DH it couldn’t be a dignified, private moment, oh no. Carlos needed an audience to really bring it home, and so ditched Edie at the back of the congregation assembled for Gabrielle’s wedding ceremony. Classy.

Devastated by the dumping, Edie’s plans to make Carlos fall in love with her, before she conveniently provided him with a child, had dramatically and tragically failed. Now here, yet again, the depiction of Edie has confused me. When her and Carlos first started dating, she stripped for him in what was a metaphorical revealing of her real self. No social crutches for her to lean on, no masks for her to hide behind. We were asked to believe in someone more than a vain slut and root for the vulnerable woman she truly was. So why do this – make us like her and acknowledge her vulnerability if only to reduce her to needlessly lying to her boyfriend? If she were so smitten with him, why take the risk of lying? Her network of lies was the main threat to what she valued most, the relationship, so why not genuinely try for a baby? Could it be as bad as losing the man she loved? Yet again the character of Edie was compromised and undermined for plotting. There is no way a sensible woman would have made such a rookie mistake, Jesus – at least hide the damned pills. Really it must be so tiring as an actress when the writers value your creation as a mere plot device. So when once we were told to like Edie, now we were informed in no uncertain terms that she was a liar and we should turn on her. What?

We are inexplicably meant to like and support Gabrielle for being a self-serving wench, but are meant to dislike Edie for the same reason. I just can’t work it out. Does Eva Longoria have a better agent than Nicollette Sheridan, or is there something more sinister at work? Really, I cannot fathom it. I much prefer Edie, as I think Nicollette stands head and shoulders over Eva (literally, the woman is a dwarf). Her acting is superior and the depth and charm she gives to the character is so much more the lingerie parade the writers provide them both with. And so, Edie was alone again.

Personally, I don’t see the appeal of Carlos. How is he a great catch for a woman, when he is prepared to use them just to service his paternal desires? How anyone could fall in love with a man with such a shamelessly self-serving agenda is beyond me. Come on Edie, chin up, you deserve better than Gabrielle’s cast-offs.

But was Gabrielle finished with Carlos? Yes, she had the huge wedding with sleazy politician Victor (who was incidentally also a sleazy politician in Sex and the City), but the sexual tension between the ex Latino lovers had never fully disappeared. Gabi almost aborted the wedding when Victor’s father revealed plans for his son’s political career path that clashed with her own. She wanted an end to the posturing and campaigning, while Pops dreamt of his son soon becoming Governor. A little bit of tender coercing was required of both gents to stop the diminutive diva throwing a full-scale strop, and the wedding was back on.

This meant the big white gown and all the neighbours and bit-part extras wheeled in to flesh out the congregation. Victor took Gabi, Gabi took Victor and the deal was done. Gabi flaunted a beaming grin as she thanked her guests for attending only for celebrations to come to an unexpected halt. Finding Victor and his father talking covertly away from the crowds, Gabi overheard her newly beloved label her “an asset to manage” and thrill at the approval of Hispanic communities that their union would warrant him in voting polls. Aghast at finding herself merely a political tool and not the worshipped goddess she so often mistakes herself for, Gabi retreated away from her guests to a secluded spot, only to find (you’ve guessed it) her ex, Car-loos (well, that’s how she pronounces it.)

Drinking heavily after his break-up, Carlos whined about how he had screwed up everything he had previously cherished – his career and his marriage. Such fond remembrances were all too much for the confused Gabi and she leapt on Carlos like a She-Devil. Immediately fooling around with your ex hadn’t been my interpretation of the wedding vows, but the writers are obviously desperate to keep these two together, and so I’m sure it won’t be long until we’re treated with a proper re-union.

And so lastly, the return of Brie and hubbie Orson. Yep, they were back in town and she had some big news for the girls – she was pregnant. Sporting a large bump, Brie talked the talk of a happy mum-to-be and her and Orson looked the very picture of domestic bliss. But don’t be fooled readers – this is DH. Nothing can ever be accepted at face value, everyone has a dark side and a sordid secret behind the smile. In this instance, we found that Brie was far from with child and was only wearing a fake bump. The real baby belonged to that of her trampy daughter Danielle, sent away from prying eyes and twitching net curtains to a faraway convent to birth her bastard child, the result of reckless romping with Edie’s nephew Austin.

The bump would mean that on the birth of the baby, Danielle could return to Fairview and Brie could pretend to raise her granddaughter as her own. How very Jack Nicholson. A pretty good show and reveal that added some extra spice to the return of two much missed characters from DH. This however was not the biggest shock.

That came in the final seconds as Mary Alice’s voiceover provided the soundtrack to Edie forming a noose to hang herself with. As I noisily wailed at the screen, “No Edie No!”, we soon saw her feet dangling in the air, lifeless and limp.

I’m sorry writers. I take back all the criticism I have ever leveled at you. I would get down on my knees and beg if I wasn’t cursed with such a tall desk for my computer. PLEASE DO NOT KILL EDIE. I don’t care how big a pay raise the actress might be asking for, or whether she has plans for new projects. Get her back for season 4. Throw an ‘it-was-all-a-dream-thing’ like they did in Dallas if you really have to. Just don’t write off one of the best characters, even if you fail to appreciate her as such.