Desperate Housewives

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Desperate Housewives
File:Desperate titlethem.jpg
Desperate Housewives title screen
Created byMarc Cherry
StarringTeri Hatcher
Felicity Huffman
Marcia Cross
Eva Longoria
Narrated byBrenda Strong
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes46 (plus three specials)
Production
Running time60 minutes (approx. 44 mins)
Original release
NetworkABC
ReleaseOctober 3, 2004 –
present

Template:Infobox TV ratings

Desperate Housewives is an American television series, created by Marc Cherry, that began airing on ABC in 2004. Set on Wisteria Lane in the fictional town of Fairview, Eagle State, the series tracks the lives of four housewives, following their domestic struggles while several mysteries involving their husbands, friends, and neighbours unfold in the background. The tone and style of the series combine elements of drama, comedy, mystery, farce, soap opera and satire.

Cherry initially pitched the series to HBO, CBS, NBC, Fox, Showtime, and Lifetime, but all turned him down. The series rocketed to the top of the ratings from the premiere episode, and immediately the term "desperate housewives" became a cultural phenomenon, warranting "the real desperate housewives" features in magazines and such TV shows as The Oprah Winfrey Show. The show has been credited, along with Lost and Grey's Anatomy, with reviving the long-dormant fortunes of ABC, whose last major ratings hit had been Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

The show focuses on four housewives living in suburbia, whose friend recently took her own life and is now sharing all their juicy secrets from beyond the grave. The show has come under critical fire by religious and conservative groups due to what some consider the seeming lack of morality amongst the characters. Though it is not uncommon for soap opera characters to make melodramatically questionable decisions, in the first season of Housewives, almost every character arguably committed a crime.

The show was a big success of the 2004-2005 television season and gained much critical acclaim. All four actresses, especially Cross and Huffman, were critically praised for their roles on the show.

Plot and characters

Template:Spoiler

Main article: List of Desperate Housewives episodes

First season

October 3rd, 2004 - May 22nd, 2005

Desperate Housewives promotional picture for the first season.

The show opens with the suicide of Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), who narrates the episodes from beyond the grave. Mary Alice's suicide leaves behind a mystery involving her husband Paul Young (Mark Moses), her son Zach, and a mysterious toy chest, which Paul digs out from underneath the family's pool. Ultimately, it is revealed to have contained the skeletal remains of a dead woman's body. The story unravels through Mary Alice's four friends and neighbours. Each has her own storyline that ties into the theme of being a desperate housewife: accident-prone single-mother Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) trying to find love; perfect housewife Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross), mother of two problematic teenagers, who struggles to save her marriage; harried Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) tries to be super-mum to four children while longing to return to her life as a corporate executive; and materialistic, adulterous ex-runway model Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) who tries to keep her husband from finding out about her affair, and then finds out she's pregnant.

In its first season, the show reveals the mystery of why Mary Alice took her own life and the quest by a mysterious "plumber" named Mike Delfino (James Denton) to find out the fate of his former lover, drug addict Dierdre. By the end of the season, the show resolves the mystery with the revelation that 15 years ago, when Mary Alice's name was Angela Forrest, she buys the heroin-addicted Dierdre's only son Dana, and then flees with her husband Todd (now Paul) to Fairview (the town Housewives is set in) to keep the child (now named Zach) from being taken away from them. When Dierdre finds them, Mary Alice refuses to give up the child. Upon being accused of being back on drugs, Dierdre hits Paul (Mary Alice's husband) and goes to get her son. Mary Alice, shocked, murders her, checks her arm for signs of drug use (she was not), and has her horrified husband dismember the body, put it in Zach's toy-chest, and bury it where the family is building a new pool in their backyard. All this happens while a 4-year-old Zach is watching them from the staircase. What Mary Alice does not count on is that one of her neighbours, Martha Huber, learns of Mary Alice's secret from her sister, Felicia, (with whom Mary Alice had worked before coming to Fairview). After learning the secret, Martha attempts to blackmail Mary Alice. Rather than face the blackmail, Mary Alice kills herself. Later, when Paul finds this out, he kills Martha after she tells him she does not have any regrets about her blackmailing and its result. Mike (Dierdre's former lover) learns this information from Paul, whom Mike leaves in the desert (rather than killing) after Mike realizes Zach is his son. As a surprising twist, Bree's husband Rex (Steven Culp) dies of poisoning shortly after George Williams, a pharmacist in love with Bree, tampered with his heart attack medication.

Second season

September 25th, 2005 - May 21st, 2006

File:DhSeason2.jpg
Desperate Housewives: Season Two

In the second season, the show's writers introduce numerous new storylines for the housewives: Susan found herself involved in a rather complicated and at times frustrating love-rectangle with ex-husband Karl, Mike, and neighbor/nemesis Edie, that culminated in Edie burning down Susan's house after Karl rejected her for Susan. Susan ultimately rejected Karl in order to reconcile with Mike, only to have Mike be the victim of a hit-and-run at the hands of a new friend of both Bree and Susan, a dentist named Orson.

Bree struggled with being a widow and, after learning George had murdered her husband, stood back as George committed suicide in a desperate bid to guilt Bree into loving him. The revelation that George murdered Rex drove Bree to drink, which Andrew used to try to become emancipated from Bree (and coincidentally get access to the trust fund Bree's parents had set up for him). Bree countered by outing her son's homosexuality to her father and step-mother, resulting in them abolishing the trust fund. At the same time, Bree and Justin (Andrew's boyfriend) met and talked, leading to Bree realizing how wrong she was to condemn her son for his homosexuality. Bree sought to bridge the gap between mother and son with the help of her AA sponsor/boyfriend, whom Andrew seduced into having sex in order to spite his mother. Andrew's actions made Bree think he was a sociopath and led her to abandon him outside of town. Andrew gloated that "he won" and that his evil actions towards his mother was all part of a plan to make Bree hate her son, since in Andrew's mind it was better to make Bree hate him for being evil and cruel towards her than being hated by his mother for simply being gay. Bree responded by telling Andrew that she never stopped loving him unconditionally until that moment, at which point Bree told her son that so long as he allowed himself to be consumed by hatred for himself and his mother, that she can't give him unconditional love.

Bree's story would intertwine with the mystery of the newest addition to Wisteria Lane, Betty Applewhite (Alfre Woodard) and her sons Matthew and Caleb. The two had fled to Wisteria Lane when Caleb was accused of murdering Matthew's on-again/off-again girlfriend and held Caleb as a prisoner in the Applewhite family's basement. In spite of Betty's demands that the family not interact with the neighbors, this became hard when Caleb slipped out of the house and caused Gabrielle to miscarry and Matthew began dating Bree's daughter Danielle. In the end, Betty discovered that Matthew and not Caleb had murdered Matthew's ex-girlfriend. But by the time she figured out the truth, Danielle had ran off with Matthew and the bitter goodbye letter Danielle left Bree had caused Bree to check herself into a mental health facility. When Betty got ahold of Bree and warned her that Danielle was in danger, she fled the facility and confronted the two. Bree told her daughter the truth about Matthew, but her daughter refused to believe her. When Bree tried to prevent the two from leaving, Matthew pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot her. Despite Danielle's shock, he attempted to but was shot by a SWAT sniper. Her murderous son dead, Betty took Caleb and left Wisteria Lane.

Lynette struggled with her fast-track career in advertising and Tom's growing resentment. Tom was upset that Lynette got him fired (she was upset that she was stuck at home while he had a career). Lynette reluctantly got her husband a job at her advertising agency but when her boss forced her to help him write sexually provocative instant messages to his wife, her boss blamed Tom for the messages when his wife refused to believe her husband had written them and demanded that he fire whomever was the real writer. When their boss threatened to reveal incriminating information about Tom, Tom punched the boss and was fired. Lynette was then informed by her boss that Tom had been making regular trips to Atlantic City. Lynette thought her husband was having an affair but then found out he was actually visiting his other child, who he'd fathered during a one-night stand before he married Lynette. The child's mother demanded eleven years in back child support, which Lynette and Tom could not afford. To get her to go away, they decided to pay her a large sum of money in exchange for signing away all child support claims. The single mother instead used the money to put a deposit down on a home near Wisteria Lane, to be closer to Tom.

As for Gabrielle, the adulterous housewife fired her lover/gardnerer and sought to salvage her marriage, after a run-in with Caleb Applewhite resulted in her losing her unborn child. Meanwhile Carlos was convicted and paroled with help from a fairly attractive nun, who sought to seduce Carlos away from Gabrielle. In order to make peace with Carlos over her sleeping with another man, Gabrielle agreed to allow Carlos a one-time free pass to have an affair of his own. After making a clumsy pass at Lynette, Carlos ended up carrying on an affair with the couple's Asian maid who the two had convinced to be artificially inseminated with the couple's child which ensured she would not be deported. At season's end, Gabrielle finally discovered the two were sleeping with each other and kicked Carlos out of their house while insisting the maid continue to work for her until the birth of Gabrielle's child.

Mary Alice's widowed husband Paul, meanwhile returned to Wisteria Lane to find his son Zach and deal with the possibility that Zach was Mike's biological son. Complicating things was the return of Felicia Tilman (Harriet Sansom Harris), Martha Huber's sister. Felicia alerted the frail Noah Taylor of the existence of Zach and Noah decided to leave his entire empire to Zach. Felicia was angry that Mike had not murdered Paul and began a harassment campaign that culminated in her severing several of her fingers and draining enough blood from her body to create a bloody murder scene and frame Paul for "killing" Felicia. From jail, Paul asked Zach to ask Noah to provide money for Paul's defense. Noah refused, and chided Zach for being a weakling, saying he no longer thought Zach deserved his empire and planned to change his will. With Noah egging him on, Zach killed the respirator keeping Noah alive and inherited the entire estate. Realizing his newfound wealth, Zach ended the season by telling his increasingly agitated "father" that he wouldn't be able to visit him in jail for some time and cooly requesting Noah's assistant get him a new cell phone and number so his father could not contact him, apparently having adopted the requisite attitude for running the empire.

DVD Releases

File:DH2-Fine-print.jpg
DVD Cover art for Desperate Housewives Season 2
DVD Name Region 1 Region 2
Desperate Housewives Season 1 September 20 2005 October 10 2005
Desperate Housewives Season 2 August 29 2006 November 30 2006

Cast

Main article: List of Desperate Housewives characters

Starring

File:Desperate housewives series promo.jpg
Promotional poster of Desperate Housewives series premiere.
File:Desperatehousewives3ad6po.jpg
Desperate Housewives Promo Picture for the Second Season.

(Main cast members as of the 3rd season)

Also starring

Formerly starring

Recurring

Trivia

File:Op 3.jpg
Sheryl Lee as the original Mary Alice
File:DhMAY.jpg
Brenda Strong as Mary Alice Young
File:Dhtheme1.jpg
Opening Credits
File:Dhsolis.jpg
The Solis House
File:Dhgame.jpg
The PC game.
  • Before Touchstone offered Desperate Housewives to ABC, in the original pilot, Mary Alice Young was played by Sheryl Lee; Gardener John by Kyle Searles; and Rex Van De Kamp by Michael Reilly Burke. Lee was replaced by Brenda Strong; both had played regular roles as dead people before, Strong on Everwood and Lee on Twin Peaks. Strong also guest starred in two Twin Peaks episodes during their second season. Also, in the original pilot, when the camera is pulling away from the housewives after they found the note, there is a ghost of Mary Alice standing on her lawn looking at them.
  • A majority of the episode titles are derived from songs by Stephen Sondheim: they include Every Day a Little Death, You Could Drive A Person Crazy, The Ladies Who Lunch, Your Fault, Don't Look At Me, It Wasn't Meant To Happen, No One Is Alone, and Children Will Listen.
  • Oscar-nominated British actress Miranda Richardson turned down a year-long stint in the second season of the show because "it snowballed into something that would be so disruptive", after producer Marc Cherry created a character for her, weeks after meeting her at the 2005 Golden Globe Awards. The character she was set to play was Bree's sister, inspired because of the visual resemblance between Richardson and Marcia Cross.
  • The show's set is on the Universal Studios backlot and has been used for decades in many TV and movie productions to represent a typical American suburban neighborhood. It includes the houses used in The Munsters and the 1989 film The Burbs. A photograph of the set (prior to production or filming on the show *picture believed to be taken late 2003-2004 seeing as the set does not match the set of Wysteria Lane) is available from Microsoft Corporation's Windows Live Local service. [1]
  • Charles Pratt, Jr., former head writer of ABC's successful daytime soap General Hospital, is a consulting producer on the series.
  • In the middle of the first season, there was a special on CBS, which showed families that lived on the real Wisteria Lane, in Wantagh, Long Island. The "desperate housewives" appeared on the cover of Newsday, and on the cover of the newspaper in England. These people stated that "some people take drugs, some people aren't always sane, and that's very different than what you see on the TV show." Another person stated that "it's a funny show, but I don't want their problems."
  • By the end of the first season, all the housewives were nominated for both a Golden Globe and Emmy with the exception of Eva Longoria. Longoria responded with a skit in the Emmys with Ellen DeGeneres mocking her situation. The following year all four were nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy. None took it home, though.
  • At a 2005 dinner for White House correspondents First Lady Laura Bush famously quipped "I am married to the President of the United States, and here's our typical evening: Nine o'clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep, and I'm watching Desperate Housewives — with Lynne Cheney."
  • Page Kennedy was fired from Desperate Housewives in November of 2005, because, as he understood, the writers "wanted to go in a different direction." It transpired in fact that Kennedy had flashed his genitals intentionally to two female cast members. Kennedy was replaced by NaShawn Kearse who took over the role of Caleb. During the broadcast of episode 30 "Color and Light", Kennedy was blurred out during his scenes. Whether this was a last minute change by the producers or how it was originally conceived, the episode marked the final appearance of Kennedy. Scenes from episodes 31 "The Sun Won't Set" and 33 "Coming Home" were reshot with Kearse. Reshot scenes from episode 33 "Coming Home" were originally planned for episode 32 "That's Good, That's Bad". Kennedy told TV Guide in April 2006 that "[Caleb] looks like he is more creepy now as opposed to how [Kennedy] was trying to play him."
  • The entire first season appeared for the first time on China's state-run CCTV8 in 7 days with 3 episodes being shown per night. Episodes were cut down and toned down to be less racy, by order of the Communist Party of China. [2]
  • An Argentine version of the show is currently in production and it will start filming on May 8th. Spanish versions of the show will air in Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador, and a Portuguese version will air in Brazil. It will be on Argentina's small screen after the Football World Cup, on Canal 13. [3]
  • Marcia Cross originally auditioned for the role of Mary Alice Young, but instead got the role of Bree Van de Kamp. Nicollette Sheridan (Edie) originally auditioned for the role of Bree, but Marc Cherry said it himself "She's a terrible Bree."
  • When Susan fell into the cake in episode 1-5 Come In, Stranger, actress Teri Hatcher broke two ribs.
  • Buena Vista Games have recently announced a computer game based on Desperate Housewives, in which Brenda Strong reprises the role of the disembodied voice of Mary Alice Young. The game is due in September 2006 for Windows (XP or higher) computers, and conveniently deals with murder, blackmail, stealing, love and even husband-stealing. There were reports that Teri Hatcher is being paid $1 Million dollars US to lend her voice as Susan Mayer for the PC game, but there is no actual evidence to support this, especially considering her salary per episode.

Production details

External links

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