Melissa Harrold, Staff Writer

When it comes to conflicts over marriages, kids, prospective boyfriends and current boyfriends, the these desperate housewives and their neighbors pull out all the stops.

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Images: Episode 4 Images: Episode 3

Lies, violence, blackmail, thievery, manipulation and even drugs were among the weapons in the formidable Wisteria Lane artillery this week.

Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) spun even more lies into her already tangled web in order to keep her husband from discovering her affair with the teenaged gardener, John (who, by the way, still calls her "Mrs. Solis." It's pretty apparent where the balance of power lies in this relationship).

Gabrielle's husband, Carlos (Ricardo Antonio), blamed the cable guy instead of the gardener when he found a man's gym sock under the bed.

His suspicions raised, he decided to undertake some creative conflict resolution himself by showing up at the cable guy's home and punching him in the face. That was before he noticed the pictures of scantily clad men all over the house, and a framed photo of the cable guy and his very male significant other. Gabrielle escapes again!

Creepy Mrs. Huber reared her mentally unbalanced head again in this episode to wreak havoc on Susan's life. Something's very, very wrong with Mrs. Huber, as she made apparent when she brought a mince meat pie to Susan.

"I was just thinking of that expression, 'I'll make mince meat out of you.' Mince meat was an entrée made out of little bits of meat. So it was like saying, 'I'll chop you up into little pieces,'" Mrs. Huber said.

Hmm ... I think she might have been talking about something besides pastries, here. This was Mrs. Huber's (creepy) way of telling Susan (Teri Hatcher) that she had found the measuring cup Susan dropped when she accidentally burned down Edie's house.

"Oh, Susan, you don't know how good it feels to finally be able to help you," Mrs. Huber said.

I don't think a sane person would think they were helping someone by threatening to "chop them up into little pieces," but maybe that's just me.

Mrs. Huber took this as her opportunity to con Susan into paying for her groceries. She also seemed to be trying to dissuade Susan from dating Mike, although her motivation behind this is really unclear.

Susan, however, remedied the situation by sending her ever-helpful daughter into Mrs. Huber's house to steal back the measuring cup. Problem solved!

Bree and Lynette both had problems with their children in this episode, and they used their respective creative means to try to solve them. After Rex left Bree (Marcia Cross) during last week's episode, their teenaged son Andrew started spending less time at home, and more time in strip clubs. No, I'm not kidding. The kid looks like he's about 13, and Bree finds him drinking beer and ogling scantily clad dancers in a place called "Topsy Turvey."

In perfect Stepford form, Bree sat down next to her wayward son, ordered a chardonnay and offered an oration on the hardships of the lives of strippers until another patron begged Andrew to get his mom out of there.

The ever-frazzled Lynette (Felicity Huffman) wasn't as successful as Bree in manipulating her children. After her twins' teacher practically begged her to put them on medication for attention deficit disorder, Lynette decided that drugs weren't the way to go, and accepted her fate as the "mother of the boys who painted Tiffany Axelrod blue."

Although each of these four ladies attempted to creatively solve their known problems, the overarching conflicts of Desperate Housewives remain unknown and unresolved. What was wrong with Mary Alice? Where did that note come from? Why does Mary Alice's husband Paul act so "malignant," as Gabrielle described him?

The key to this problem seems to be Paul, who knows more than he's telling Mary Alice's friends about her state of mind before her death. The decision in this week's episode by Gabrielle, Susan, Lynette and Bree to reveal the contents of that note has brought him -- and us -- one step closer to knowing the reasons behind the biggest conflicts of all.