THIS WEEK'S L WORD VOCABULARY:

Sippy cup: A sign that Bette can't always get what she wants, or even what she needs.
Poverty: That warm and fuzzy feeling.
The devil and the deep blue sea: Who Shane loves and where she lives.
Heterosexual cooties: We all know someone who has them. It's nothing to be ashamed of; just stay informed and be safe.

THIS WEEK'S GUEST-BIANS: Rosanna Arquette frolics and mocks; Karina Lombard sashays back into our hearts and living rooms; Élodie Bouchez co-stars with her teeth; Jane Lynch shows Narcissus how it's done.

The "previously" — Man, how crazy was Season 3? Yep. And how fresh is it all in your mind? Watching the "previously" is like listening to your grandma tell you the same story for the third time in three hours. Except with more swearing, depending on the grandma in question.

How to breathe underwater — Look! It's a manatee! No, it's a beluga whale! No, it's the opening sequence of When Night Is Falling! No, it's Shane, underwater and wearing the remains of what I guess would have been her wedding suit. Whatever this scene is, it's strangely soothing, sort of like staring at a fish tank (and just as intellectually stimulating).

The execrable, intolerable, tuneless, almost-universally-hated theme song — And what makes the theme song even worse this season? In the accompanying images, Alice is on the motorcycle by herself. Without Dana. Because we all needed to experience an even deeper kind of rage.

Small favors are nice — Let us pause for a moment to celebrate the absence of any kind of art-schooly opening vignette. No nuns, no minor demons and no semi-nude men. Hooray!

Big favors are even better — This episode begins where the Season 3 finale left off. Read that again. Can you believe it?! Sorry. Lost my cool for a minute there.

We're in Whistler, Canada, just after Shane's nuptial no-show and Bette's bone-headed babynapping. And we're in Alice's hotel room, where you can get anything you want. No, that's Alice's restaurant. Er.

Kit asks whether there's been any word from Bette, and then asks where Lara is. The answers are "no" and "she took that job in San Francisco." Best to get these things out of the way, which is exactly how the information is delivered: dismissively. We'll miss you, soup chef.

Kit and Alice talk around "the Lara thing" a little, agreeing that it was "incestuous." Yeah, but I kinda liked it. Alice says, "Something happened to me up here and I'm really ready to just sorta go home and —" Well, we'll never know what, because Jenny's trundling into the room, dropping her suitcase and muttering "ffaaahhhkk." A graceful entrance as always.

Jenny wants to get "this" started because Claude is about to leave for Montreal. "This" turns out to be an intervention, otherwise known as leaving Bette a voice mail to tell her it's not cool to steal your own kid. Max figures maybe he should leave, but everyone insists — why, oh why? — that he stay.

They tell Bette they understand why she ran off with Angelica, or at least sort of:

Jenny: We totally understand what you did, because if we had been in your position, Bette, we would have done exactly the same thing.
Alice: [after a double take] Well, maybe not the same thing; maybe, you know, uh, something …

They assure her that not even a court of law can take Bette's daughter away. Yes, they're full of hyperbole and hubris, this bunch. The scene is sort of pleasantly zany until Tina storms in. And I do mean "storm" — she seems to create a little eddy around herself, propelled as she is by hideous overacting and an even more hideous scarf.

Helena: [just before Tina comes in] Tina might —
Tina: [whooshing in] — have your ass thrown in jail and ruin your brand-new goddamn career, not to mention the rest of your f---in' life.