Literally, this week was babies and that’s it. You all can go home. Click back. It’s just so many babies.
Also, Odessa has bone cancer. It was babies and bone cancer this week on Devious Maids. That’s it.
Let’s go into a bit more detail, then, shall we?
So as if to make up for the lack this week, Genevieve — Remi’s mother — has her own subplot this week about how she’s managed to get herself on a week-long cruise for wealthy people, and that she managed to hook an old billionaire to marry her. Which is great, because that solves her money problems. And all she told him was that she was young enough to have his kid. Annoyingly, though. She tries to press the issue that she actually loves him, which is garbage considering the episode before last, her motivations were clearly “I’m poor, I need to get married to keep up my current standard of living” like, there’s nothing wrong with being pragmatic. It would add an interesting layer to an otherwise light, silly character. Could we have that, though? Of course not. So there’s love instead of reality and a fight because of course G’s real age comes out. The happy couple makes up, though, under the condition that Val donate an egg or two so they can have an actual baby rather that adopt.
On the other hand, we have Marisol walking in on her employers — not the Powells, thank God — doing stuff on the kitchen table, because they’re trying to have a baby. But since it’s been months without anything, Marisol suggests a fertility clinic and of course the woman jumps on it — she needs to get herself checked out. There’s no mentioned of her husband doing it, regardless of the fact that he couldn’t knock up his previous wife either. We’re never given the results of her test, however, because this l gets derailed pretty fast by the ex-wife, who’s a little bit unstable. I really didn’t pay much attention to this derailment, though, because I don’t particularly care about these one-off characters. It’s resolved bloodlessly, however, so all’s well that ends well.
And the last baby-subplot has to deal with Rosie and Evalyn and yeah, not going to lie, this was my favourite. So Rosie is working for the Powells to help out Marisol with her save-the-son plot, and she needs to find the Flora adult tape. The trick is, she also has to take care of Spence and Peri’s baby — which, do they not have family or anything? Why is the maid stuck babysitting? — and Evelyn is not having any of that, at first.
Though to absolutely no one’s surprise, due to her complicated past with children and her own late son, Evelyn takes to tiny Tucker when Rosie is indisposed, and is quick to cuddle him and go for a walk with him and steal him for three hours when it was only supposed to be a half an hour. This was one of my favourite parts of the episode, to be honest, watching Evelyn have actual emotions that weren’t crying over a vacuum or bitterness.
Needless to say, Rosie stumbles across Flora’s tape, not in the room full of creepy adult tapes, but in the family safe when Evelyn needs to get cash to pay her for her services. Which means two things: the plot thickens and that we get to see Evelyn with a baby more often, this will be so rad, you have no idea.
Final plot thread of the episode might be my favourite, even above and beyond Evelyn-with-a-baby. It is revealed that Odessa is hding smething, and we are lead to believe that it is a drinking problem, at first, until Carmen goes digging through her medicine cabinet for medical supplies and finds bottles of prescription painkillers that look a wee bit familiar. It’s brought to light that Odessa has bone cancer — and that explains her leg, doesn’t it, so glad to finally have that answered — and that even tough she and Carmen aren’t friends, that Carmen is a decent human being who doesn’t want to see her co-worker in pain. Though I have to wonder how she got her hands on medical marijuana. Like, I realize that it’s California, and I’m Canadian and haven’t a clue about the practices, but can you just pop out to the corner store and get some?
Anyway, I really like how this was portrayed: Odessa isn’t some tragic victim and she refuses to let people pity her for her; she doesn’t even want people to know, not even her employer. The way she dealt with it seemed raw and real. The final scene of the episode of her and Carmen bonding over her old life in Russia (though seriously, guys, a Russian ballerina, how original) was really, really heartwarming. I look forward to see how this relationship develops. Especially considering how antagonistic they were to one another to begin with.
