Desperate Housewives

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Template:Infobox television Desperate Housewives is an American television series, created by Marc Cherry, that began airing on ABC in 2004, in HDTV. Set on Wisteria Lane in fictional Fairview, Eagle State, the series tracks the lives of four housewives, following their domestic struggles while several mysteries involving their husbands, friends and neighbors unfold in the background. The tone and style of the series combine elements of drama, comedy, mystery, 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 with almost single-handedly (along with Lost) 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 has arguably committed a major crime.

Tagline: Everyone has a little dirty laundry.

Contents

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Plot and characters

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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First season

Image:DhSeason1.jpg 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, that ultimately is revealed to have contained the skeletal remains of a dead woman's body. The story unravels through Mary Alice's four friends and neighbors. 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-mom of four 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 neighbors, 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 of this information from Paul whom Mike leaves in the desert (rather than killing) after Mike realizes that Zach is his son. As a surprising twist, Bree's husband Rex (Steven Culp) dies of poisoning shortly after George Williams tampered with his heart attack medication.

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Second season

Image:DhSeason2.jpg In the second season, the show's writers introduce numerous new storylines for the housewives: Susan dealing with Mike's quest to reclaim his newly found son Zach; Bree dealing with her new status as a widow; the mystery of the new residents on Wisteria Lane, Betty Applewhite (Alfre Woodard) and her sons Matthew and Caleb, the latter whom she is keeping tied up in her basement; Edie's (Nicollette Sheridan) relationship with Susan's ex-husband Karl (Richard Burgi); Lynette's struggle with her fast-track career in advertising; and a pregnant Gabrielle trying to salvage her marriage from many obstacles, including a lawyer, a nun and Carlos' desire to have an affair with Lynette. Then there are the men: Mike, who wins Susan's heart many times, but they break up when Susan pays Zach to go to Utah to find Paul; Lynette's husband, Tom (Doug Savant), who volunteers to be "Mr. Mom" so his wife can go back to work, but the problem is that he now wants to go back to work as well; Gabrielle's better half, Carlos, in jail at the beginning of the season, who learns of his wife's relationship with the gardener but forgives her; and Mary Alice's widowed husband, Paul, who once again returns to Wisteria Lane to find his son. And Felicia Tilman (Harriet Sansom Harris), Martha Huber's sister, who is something of a trouble maker to the other neighbors (specifically to Paul) but leaves to recover in Utah shortly after her assault involving Zach Young. She resurfaces as frail Noah Taylor's nurse. And finally, Bree's homosexual son Andrew Van De Kamp. In the first season we were given hints that he is attracted to males and is in a relationship with his teenage friend, Justin. In the second season, however, he uses his sexual orientation as an advantage in order to attack the "moral" values of his mother, who finds him and his friend in bed naked. A recently-introduced storyline deals with Andrew's desire to become an emancipated minor in order to access his trust fund prematurely proclaiming Bree is an alcoholic, but his hopes go astray when Bree's father and stepmother arrive. First they convince the court to postpone Andrew's case against Bree, and later his plans to move away with them are dashed when they discover his sexual orientation and nullify his trust fund.

From her unique vantage point, Mary Alice sees more now than she ever did alive, and she's planning to share all the delicious secrets that hide behind every neighbor's closed door in this seemingly perfect American suburb.

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Cast

Main article: List of Desperate Housewives characters
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Starring

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(in order of the opening credits - current season)

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Also starring

  • Shawn Pyfrom - Andrew Van De Kamp (Season 2 -) recurring previously
  • Joy Lauren - Danielle Van De Kamp (Season 2 -) recurring previously
  • Mehcad Brooks - Matthew Applewhite (Season 2 -) appeared previously
  • Brent Kinsman - Preston Scavo (Season 2 -) recurring previously
  • Shane Kinsman - Porter Scavo (Season 2 -) recurring previously
  • Zane Huett - Parker Scavo (Season 2 -) recurring previously
  • NaShawn Kearse - Caleb Applewhite #2 (Season 2 -) started on ep. 31
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Formerly starring

  • Steven Culp - Rex Van De Kamp (Season 1) recurring otherwise
  • Jesse Metcalfe - John Rowland (Season 1) recurring otherwise
  • Page Kennedy - Caleb Applewhite #1 (Season 2) credited until ep. 30
  • Roger Bart - George Williams (Season 2) recurring previously
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Recurring

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Trivia

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  • 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 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 uncanny 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 for unprofessional conduct. 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".
  • 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 pre-production. It will start airing in May 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.
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Production details

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External links

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