From 2005 till 2010, I started watching Desperate Housewives, the first American tv series I ever started following periodically. A show I enjoyed in its first seasons, though after the fifth and sixth seasons rendition, I decided to leave the show as I felt the quality wasn’t worth it anymore and that the show lost its potential from the start: the chance to deal about suburban life in a realistic way and to deal with the gossip-judgemental hypocrisy culture of our society. For those who’d want to know my full take of the show, here is a compilation of all my reviews about Marc Cherry’s Desperate Housewives.
Season 1
Welcome to Mary Alice Young’s old neighbourhood. Wisteria Lane!
After seeing the “Desperate Housewives” commercials, back in 2005 on the canadian channel Radio-Canada, I was intrigued by Marc Cherry’s show, which was supposed to be claimed controversial in the United States. And after watching its pilot, I was, for the first time, seeing an incredible and unique dramedy. A universe where Mary Alice Young, a wonderful housewife married to an excellent husband and raising a charming son, kills herself in less than a few hours. And as the season unfolds, we discover the lives of her four best friends — all living on the same street — who try to figure out the mystery of the suicide of their closest friend.
Now the first thing that amazed me is how Mary Alice, instead of just being a narrator who tells us what is happening on the screen, is a real character. She comments what she sees and manages to pinpoint to us several things that occur during the episode. Not only that, her narration is well integrated in the editing and the story of each episodes. And personally, I think her character is one of the main reasons why “Desperate Housewives” is fun and exciting to watch.
As for the other characters, it was amazing to see how they interacted between each other, even though their personalities were completely different. While Gabrielle is superficial and vain, Bree is a perfectionist and Lynette is a control-freak. As for Susan, she’s a very desperate romantic who almost worships her gorgeous plumber, Mike Delfino. And even though the viewer’s ideals can be in conflict with certain characters actions and mentalities, the writers manage to give to their characters believable emotions and reactions. And so we get some empathy for all these characters, with the way they interact with their family, and even when they argue or do some horrible things to each other. Once again, it is as if we are witnessing real characters interacting with each other. And witness several incidents that could, or did, happen in our lives, whether at school or on our own street. With excellent guest characters like Maisy Gibbons and Helen Rowlands, whom I would have loved to see again more in future seasons, but either lasted one of two seasons as guest appearances whereas Carlos Solis became a main character in future seasons.
As for the directing, I just loved the frenzy and the sweet madness that the director of the pilot, Charles McDougall , managed to put. An I adored the music by Steve Bartek for the first two episodes. They were both important reasons as to why people just adored “Desperate Housewives” and it is sad really that they couldn’t collaborate on more episodes than that. Fortunately , we got Steve Jablonsky for the music and Larry Shaw as a director. Two great additions to the series. Including Danny Elfman’s excellent main theme.
Thanks to all these ingredients, we got a dramedy that stood out of the ordinary for its humour, its incredible and mysterious atmosphere and especially for the incredible, but believable, incidents that can, and sometimes do, happen in our neighbourhood.
Season 2
Then came the backlash…
After its extreme popularity back in 2004-2005, and the numerous awards it got for the quality of its first season, it became inevitable that the second season of Desperate Housewives would suffer comparisons with its first season, be a subject of backlash, and drop of ratings from the medias and the “sheeps” in the public. It happened with “South Park”, “Beavis and Butthead”, so this is no surprise that it happened again with “Desperate Housewives”.
Unlike some critics who said that it was the worst season, I believe that the second season was awesome. Though a few comments were right. Like how the Housewives, whom we were so used to see them speak and talk together, now spent, starting from the second episode, a bit too much time separated from each other, having plot lines which didn’t intertwine with them, and how Susan Mayer became less interesting and more annoying. So much that I first wondered, sorry Teri Hatcher, if it wouldn’t have been better if Susan Mayer got shot by … at the start of the first episode and became the new narrator so to speak. Eventually, her stories improved mid-season thanks to Marc Cherry’s input and the many scenes with Edie Britt, although I wasn’t too fond of how she got separated from Mike. And considering the special contents in the DVD, where they present some abandoned plot lines for Susan that got shot and abandoned — a good thing for it wasn’t that much great — I would have loved to see more of Susan Mayer’s art career in the series, more episodes on her book publishing (eg: story ideas, fans, book sellers, book fairs, etc. and not just for one episode), her art crafts like they did in the fifth season, and less goofy situations that I didn’t find much funny. Fortunately for us, Marc Cherry gave more input on his episodes instead and Susan Mayer’s life became more interesting. But I can say that as seasons went on, Susan’s storylines became frequent cases of criticism for audiences and reviewers of the show. And made her the least interesting housewives of the show.
Back to the subject of the narrator, I have to say that Mary Alice brings an unique voice to the series, which would have lost some of its charm if it had been replaced.
As for this season mystery, I pretty much loved it. Of course, it would have been better had the Applewhites been more present in the Housewives lives than just some new family who didn’t try to be sociable with their neighbours. However, the actors, Alfre Woodard, Nashawne Kearse and Mehcad Brooks, were just excellent and gave a lot of credibility to their mystery. As for its ending, I have to say that I was pretty well surprised.
Among the special guest characters, I have to say that my favorite is Lee Tergesen, who played Bree’s new boyfriend for a few episodes. After their story ended, I was a bit disappointed that the writers got rid of Lee’s character a bit too quickly, in such a way that we will never see him again. It was evident that there was a great chemistry between Lee and Marcia. If any of the Desperate Housewives writers is reading this, I just want to say to them that I would have loved to see Lee Tergesen’s character, Peter Macmillan, back in the series. Either as a main role or as recurrent character. I adored him so much and I feel he deserved more than a couple of episodes.
And that also goes for Helen Rowland, played by Kathryn Harrold, who plays her brilliantly. Her scene with Gabrielle was just amazing as she humiliated Gabrielle and Carlos in a vicious way. Indeed, considering how John Rowland was a main character and a special guest in the following seasons, the writers should have tried to bring her back. She brought a lot of energy to the show. And so did Marc Cherry, whose talent I believe is the main reason to the success of the series. But with what went on during the fifth season, maybe that esteem I had was mistaken.
See you in the third season.
Season 3
Still going strong on its third season
Two years after its pilot, Desperate Housewives started its third season. And what a great set of ideas Marc Cherry got. First of all, he brought in a very good mystery, which involved not only one of my favourite characters, Orson Hodge, but the other Housewives, most of all Bree and Susan Mayer, now in a new romance with a British businessman called Ian. Which was great because although the second season’s mystery was great, I felt it could have been perfect had the Housewives been more involved in its story, and not just Bree. But for this season, this mystery was well-paced, exciting, and set at a better rhythm than the other seasons. For the writers got the brilliant idea of ending their mystery at the fifteenth episode and not at the finale. That way, Orson Hodge’s mystery didn’t drag on and on like in the fifth and sixth seasons. And the writers got to use the other episodes to prepare us for the fourth season, give more space to Edie’s storylines and even include a mystery with Karen Macklusky, which I really liked and dealt with the gossip culture of suburbia; thematic I loved in the show and which I felt should have been studied deeper over the seasons.
Now for the episode “Bang”, I felt that it was the best episode of the show for it had lots of suspense and tension, but it also involved Lynette Scavo in one of her best scenes against Katherine Bigsby. This episode was such a success that Marc Cherry reused the concept of an accident in each season. Though I still think that only the tornado was up to par with the quality of the episode “Bang”. As for the fire and the plane crash, we’ll talk about it in the next reviews.
Finally, the third season was great because the Housewives interacted more between each other, but also because we got other interesting guest characters, such Dixie Carter, who was perfect as Orson’s mother, Lynn Redgrave, Laurie Metcalf, Matt Roth, Gwendoline Yeo, Jason Gedrick, and Rachel Fox. All excellent actors who brought lots of energy to the show and to their characters. An energy I wish the show had kept in its last seasons.
Season 4
9 reasons why season 4 is the best one of Desperate Hosuewives.
Although I loved the first three seasons, I think this season of Desperate Housewives is the best so far.
Especially for these reasons:
Firstly, Dana Delany. She is an excellent addition to the show and her mystery was captivating. And its revelations throughout the season were better balanced than in the sixth. Not only that, she gets to play with Nathan Fillion, who is just marvellous as her new husband. When you see those two act together, you can sense their great chemistry.
Secondly, the charade episode. For once, all the main characters are reunited in a big evening of charades. Which involves lots of interactions and conflicts between the characters and it reminds to us that Wisteria Lane’s residents get to meet and have fun when they are not trying to find each others’ secrets or cleaning their dirty laundry. But it also proves that the show’s main characters have enough material together to input more intrigue and clashes. Without having to rely on secondary characters that are expendable or neglected.
Thirdly, the tornado episode. An episode that not only gave a sense of drama for the series, but also gave way to lots of high production values, with its special effects and dramatic cliffhanger. Which the show managed well and stuck well to the reality of this Middle American state.
Fourthly, Rick Coletti and Kayla. A conclusion to a half-solved storyline from last season, but which opened the way to a young girl’s revenge on Lynette Scavo, whom she believes is responsible for the death of her mother.
Fifthly, Bob and Lee. A new couple on the street. Funny and great to watch! And with a great chemistry between the actors. Would have been fun to see them involved in a mystery. Because after that, they became more or less comic relief and secondary characters instead.
Sixthly, the Halloween episode. Mix Oingo Boingo’s music in a Halloween party, Susan Mayer’s first meeting with her father-in-law, Danielle Van De Kamp’s Halloween costume and what do you get? A great Halloween episode. Something that didn’t happen in the Christmas special of Season 6 which relied on a bad choir incident and an over-the-top tragedy.
Seventhly, the making-of-bonuses. In them, the authors reveal to us how they did the hurricane episode, including how they managed to do their visual effects and soundtrack. They even said that it took them the double of time they did to shoot an episode, which is normally ten days.
Eightly, the actors commentaries bonus. In them, each couple on the street got to give their comments. The most funniest was Eva and Ricardo’s, who are like brother and sister when they talk. The most pleasant to see was Marcia and Kyle’s for you could definitely see that they are not the compulsive perfectionists that their characters are. Why, they even had difficulty trying to find out what to say for their commentary. And as they shot this episode’s commentary, you could even hear some trucks that were working on the Wisteria Lane set for the second part of the tornado episode, where everything is in ruins.
Ninthly, Edie Britt. Still as mischievous as ever. Even more as she uncovered one of Carlos Solis’ secret’s, which is his offshore account in the Cayman islands. Something that had been introduced in the first season, but was never fully solved. And its her involvement in this season that makes me wish her character hadn’t been disposed in the fifth one.
Finally, the Writers strike. Instead of having 23 or 24 episodes per season (which means 16 or 17 interesting episodes with 6 or 7 episodes with secondary plots that could have been used in later seasons, considering what happens in seasons 5 and 6), we got 17 episodes. This gave more concise and better structured plotlines and everything moved along to a great rhythm. Nothing seemed to drag on like in the following seasons. That strike definitely confirmed to me that shows that work with plotlines that stretch over several episodes should not have the same number of episodes as in sitcoms or cop dramas, who have in general one plotline per episode. Even the creators of Lost understood this and it made their series shorter, but with better scripts than if they had had too much episodes.
In short, “Desperate Housewives” was at its peak with this season. And maybe should have ended there considering the tumble it took in the fifth year.
Season 5
Five years later! For better… And for worse (A few spoilers, so beware!)
At the fourth season’s end, the story fast forwarded five years into the future (a move close to what the Lost series did on their side), and we now see life on Wisteria Lane starting from 2013, one year after the show’s last season was on TV. Much has changed for our housewives. Susan has left Mike and raises her son MJ, Bree is a professional caterer with Catherine ever since Orson went to jail and Danielle took back her son, Lynette’s children are teenagers, and Gaby’s a mommy. As for Edie, well, she is back and for the better for of all the Wisteria Lane characters, she is truthful about who she is, what she wants in life, and she doesn’t hesitate in saying it out loud. Not only that, she is married to a new husband whose intentions are not that honest.
Of what hasn’t changed, Fairview still has a Season Mystery in which our Housewives are involved, while their own lives get out of control as we see them solving their problems with unethical solutions. However, I think that Marc Cherry, instead of preparing his plotlines with the same care as in the first four seasons, started to lack direction and fresh ideas in his storylines. Indeed, at the first season, Desperate Housewives intrigued me because it was a clever satire/tragicomedy on Suburbia under the covers of a Soap Opera. Which was how the show could be sold according to Cherry’s sayings during a fan meeting with the other cast members. But after the incredible success of the first season, which never happened again during the show’s course and went downhill, I felt Marc Cherry wanted to recapture this success by reusing the same plotlines that made the first season a success.
For instance, Lynette learns that one of her sons has sex with the mother of his friend (similar to Gaby and John Rowland’s story), a mother whose husband beats her. When he is unmasked, her son warns Lynette that if she tells that man the truth, he will leave Lynette’s house. And this is where I found the show less interesting because to me, and to other people who agreed with me, this plotline, along with others in the final seasons, were too similar to storylines used in the first four seasons. And I was glad to see that in the Bonus Feature “What more do I need – A Very Good Read”, which discusses the writing process for the episode in which Lynette’s son is unmasked, a writer warns everyone that the storyline is too similar to what Bree lived through when Danielle warned her mother that she would leave home if Bree tried to stop Danielle’s relationship with her History Teacher.
Secondly, several contradictions appeared in the show. First in Mary Alice’s narration, and then into the dialogues. For Mary Alice’s narration, she says that, after Lynette’s son is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, the breakfast the Scavos did was the last they ever took together as a family. But guess what? A few episodes later, they were all back and happily eating together again. What happened in that sudden change of storyline? Was Cherry afraid of upsetting some of his viewers, which the “What more do I need – A Very Good Read” revealed as some of the writers showed concern of not upsetting fans with their storylines? And for the dialogues, I was astonished to see Lynette say at the twenty-sixth minute of the episode 17 (The Story of Lucy and Jessie) that she is forty-three while Tom say he is two years younger, which means forty-one, the same age Tom was in the first season when he said to Lynette that if he didn’t get a high position in his office, he would be nothing. Did Tom and Lynette drink at a secret fountain of youth or what?
Back to the warning Marc Cherry got from a writer in the bonus feature, Cherry agreed with the storyline’s similarity and gave a subtle difference to what Lynette does in comparison to Bree. However, it was while watching this making-of, along with the uninspiring bonus features “I Know Things Now: Desperate Housewives celebrates 100” and “So Very Teri”, that I felt the show became complacent. Which even Nicolette Sheridan said in interviews after her controversial departure from the show, both behind-the-scenes and in the show. And speaking of Edie Britt, her death bothered me because apart from Mary Alice’s mystery, Gabrielle Solis and Bree, she was the other reason why I loved watching “Desperate Housewives”. She was funny, she had guts, she was an unfair loner and the social ugly duckling who deserved better respect, and one of the few that did and said what the other housewifes wanted, but never admitted to themselves and their families. And as Edie dies in the middle of the fifth season, I cannot help finding her accident, and the special episode dedicated to her, sour-tasted as Marc Cherry got rid of one of his show’s most popular character. One I definitely preferred over Susan’s relentless romances and annoying clumsiness.
Of the season’s highlights, my only favourite episode was the 100th, dedicated to Eli Scruggs, a handyman whose actions influenced all the housewives on Wisteria Lane. Even though this episode was made up at the last minute, as Cherry said in the commentaries, it was nice to see a small tribute to the consequences of a secondary character’s actions.
As such, I appreciated this season mostly because of the season’s excellent mystery, and for Edie Britt, who has always been to me one of the main housewives on the show.
PS: Did any of you noticed how Nicolette Sheridan’s face was blurred in the making-of “What More do I need – A Very Good Read”? Did her conflicts with Marc Cherry and ABC resulted in this censorship or did something else happened? Very weird to see that blurred face on the screen.
Season 6
It was good while it lasted
It’s not easy deciding when it’s time to leave a show that you’ve been involved in for several years. But after watching the sixth season of Desperate Housewives on DVD, which I think didn’t live up to the potential that was there in its first seasons, I just think it’s time for me to leave the Lane. For after seeing the downhill quality in term of plotlines and writing, I just don’t want to buy the last two seasons of a tragicomedy-satire I think should have been finished since its fourth season instead of becoming this daytime soap opera.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the actors. They all did the best job with what they got, even Teri whose storylines became dull after the first season and made me think that Susan should have been the one to die from …’s gun in the second Season Premiere. But as Marc Cherry became more interested in delegating his writing to other people while organising TV pilots (the failed “Hallelujah” and the upcoming “Devious Maids”) or a mini-series called “Another Housewife”, An uninspiring, ridiculous and self-satisfied cell phone plug, I just think Desperate Housewives became a joke with rehashed storylines. For once again, we have Housewives cheating their husbands with other men, secret children, people trying to bribe their neighbors to escape their frustrating lives, a mystery, and of course a big tragedy happening in the middle of the season. Now as for the tragedy episode, it worked well when it was the Supermarket shooting or the Tornado, but as for the plane landing on the street, I felt this was over the top and made me wonder what would happen in the next seasons. Would we have aliens, zombies, Mecha Streisand (wait, they did it in South Park)? Because by the time we get to the fifth season, we find out that this accident episode becomes a plot device to get rid of dangerous or secondary characters that have no more use in the show, and to bring bigger ratings.
As for the two mysteries in this season, I found them the only things that made the show worth watching. But of them, I found the Bolen, which was good, to be too separated from the other Housewives lives and I think it should have been instead an original series rather than a “one season” mystery. As for the mysterious strangler, I thought it was all right, but it should have been finished at the middle of the season instead of the final episode. And as for other Housewives storylines, Bree’s were probably the most terrible as she has to deal with an adultery relationship that looked too much like a conventional soap opera, and a second one involving Bree’s new employee whose situation is too similar to Kayla and becomes a plot device to reintroduce a first season plot line that should have been dealt seasons ago: Andrew running over Juanita Solis in season 1. Not only that, I think it should have been Orson Hodge who should have had the chance to act more viciously rather than some character who only appears in this season. As for Lynette, her baby storyline that only happened in the awful “If” episode should have been instead a major plotline for the rest of her show since it would have allowed her to see her life turn into a new perspective and make her grow.
On another point, I think the main problem the show had is that the Housewives’ lives became separated and dull compared to the mysteries that secondary characters always got to do. To me, what made Mary Alice’s mystery worked so well was that the Housewives were involved in her life and so there was the possibility that they could have witnessed something that they never got to see before. Personnally, I think it would have been great if that show’s mystery had opened a Pandora Box that would have revealed dangerous secrets in the Housewives’ lives that would have become the main focus in the seasons, that almost everybody would have found out, and that it would have brought forth consequences as major to them as to what Mary Alice had to live.
But unfortunately, it didn’t happen. And so, I have come to see a show go from a clever tragicomedy-satire on suburbia to a dull complacent, and self-satisfied, day-time soap opera. Of which I don’t want to invest myself anymore.
It was good while it lasted but for me…
So long Wisteria Lane.
Conclusion
And so ended my experience with “Desperate Housewives”. Though I saw once in a while some episodes of season 7 and 8, the show never caught on to me again. Even people I worked with at a Film Institute told me they saw excerpts on TV and they felt the show had become a big joke. Something that it shouldn’t have become. And as for me I stand by what I felt the show should have been and presented before. A tragicomedy on suburbia and its gossip culture that should have dove more deeply into the mysteries of its main characters, fuelling more tragedy into the lives of its characters and where we see in a finale which ones have grown up and become better persons from those that ended in tragedy like Madame Bovary. For to me, I always felt that had it not been for the mystery concept, “Desperate Housewives” wouldn’t have been a success and would be another umpteenth soap opera set in a posh suburbia filled with dandies and obnoxious snobs. And even when “Devious Maids” went on, I never caught on that spin-off as I felt it reused concepts from “Desperate Housewives”; becoming furthermore a “Desperate Housewives” show set in LA’s self-serving and hypocritical showbiz culture. As a whole, the show’s success, then evolving loss of interest from the public and ardent fans, and the lack of inspiring ideas is something to consider for fans of television and makers of TV entertainment. Make them question on what makes good television and disappointing one. A show that strives forward and is ready to confront and surprise viewers? Or a show that replays its concepts and keeps focusing on what audiences might say and expect?
Omnes's Oasis 