Wisteria Lane's burning desires come to a head

The alcoholic Bree has been Housewife of the season

How gratifying it must have been for Bree Van De Kamp to discover at last that her daughter Danielle has inherited one of her talents. The troubled widow has spent most of the past season of Desperate Housewives estranged from her children and plagued by the fear she is not a good mother.

But in last night's season finale (TV2, 8.30pm) was proof that the rebellious Danielle is a chip off the old block. At the tender age of 15, the girl has already succeeded in attracting her first psychopath.

Fortunately, for the pretty, dim teenager, Mom is now an old hand at dealing with the crazed, murderous or just plain misfit male. This speciality has been one of the more rewarding and reliable storylines through this wildly uneven suburban soap-noir.

Bree's doomed doctor husband Rex had that awkward fetish for a bit of hanky spanky with the local dominatrix. Her next beau, the pharmacist, was a fully fledged American psycho. Her attractive AA sponsor turned out to be a bisexual sex addict, lured into bed by her teenage son. And now, Bree is fraternising with a homicidal dentist who in last night's finale shock ran down poor old nice guy Mike.

It is hard to tell whether it's suburban family life or the medical professions that come out worst in this show.

But Bree certainly takes the prize for best Housewife this season, despite far too much indulging in that tired old soap standby, hitting the bottle.

Bossy Lynette comes in second: she looks to have met her match in the form of a woman who seems to have strayed in from Big Love. The mother of a child Lynette's husband Tom never knew he had, she's all ready to settle in and become part of the family.

Elsewhere, the turns in the wheel of karmic destiny have been far more predictable. Gabrielle's flight of infidelity came home to roost as husband Carlos had an affair with the surrogate mother of their child. Well, she would marry a man with that Latino madonna complex. Susan, who burned down Edie's house in the first season, has now had her own place razed by a jealous Edie. And we just knew her romantic evening with Mike was going to be a date with tragedy and heartbreak.

One major hope for this season was in vain: that the show might have graduated beyond those sugary voiceovers from the dead Mary Alice, piling on all the "delicious" ironies of the episode like the over-the-top lashings of icing on one of Bree's cakes. That viewers might find it more satisfying to work these things out for themselves is something not catered for amid all the heavy-handed suburban scandal.

Another disappointment was the arrival of the Applewhites, whose only purpose seemed to be to prove the show's equal opportunity credentials: middle-class black families can be deeply dysfunctional, too.

The best thing about the show lately has been Bree's teenage son Andrew playing against the liberal stereotype, as an evil, insensitive gay guy without a shred of camp. If only the show had found more such intriguing lodes to mine in all those cracks in the shiny facade of aspirational middle American life.