Giving plot summaries of soap operas is a tricky business. And make no mistake, despite high falutin' comments from its creator and stars about Thoreau's lives of quiet desperation, "Desperate Housewives" owes much to previous prime-time soaps like "Dallas," "Dynasty" and "Falcon Crest." The plots deal with beautiful people involved in sex, murder, betrayal, and generally behaving badly towards one another. The only difference is rather than occurring in mansions and vineyards they take place on a typical suburban street. This street, Wisteria Lane, is only typical if you live on a street where the murder rate is higher than West Baltimore during the height of the drug war. Also, if all of your neighbors look like current or former underwear models, if all the kids carry guns and know how to use them, and if no one seems to actually do any work (unless, of course, it advances the plot.)
The basic story lines involve the four main Housewives, Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman), Bree (Marcia Cross), and Gabrielle (Eva Longoria.) Susan deals primarily with tangled relationships, including her ex-husband, plumber boyfriend (who both live on her street), and her doctor. Lynette goes back to work while her husband stays at home with their four kids. Eventually, he joins her firm causing some conflict at work and at home. Bree buries her husband Rex, who died last season, and takes up with her pharmacist, who is not all he appears to be. She also develops a substance abuse habit and gets more out of AA than she bargained for. Gabrielle tries to get her husband Carlos out of jail and has to fight to keep him away from a local nun and their Chinese maid.
The main Housewives are supported not only by their various husbands, boyfriends, and families, but Edie (Nicolette Sheridan) as Susan's rival and the current girlfriend of Susan's ex-husband, and Betty (Alfre Woodard) who keeps a secret locked up in her basement... literally. The supporting players are very good, but Woodard seems way out of place here, both as an actress and a character. Her section isn't particularly humorous and when the secrets of her basement are revealed, the tendency is to shrug, rather than gasp. Brenda Strong returns to narrate (and appear in flashbacks) as deceased neighbor Mary Alice, leading to one of my pet peeves when watching this set. It's possible that when you watch the show weekly, Strong's narration seems clever, but after watching two or three episodes in a row, you wish you could rip your ears off. What is supposed to sound witty and cutting is just annoying. By episode five I was fingering the mute button whenever her voice rang out.
The shows themselves are pretty funny at times (as Cherry says "It's SATIRE.") Huffman and Hatcher especially are strong comic actors and anchor their plot stories pretty well, but the show weakens when it has to focus on the other main Housewives (especially Longoria.) For some reason, most of the season has little interaction between the four main characters. They have one or two brief meetings at some point in each others' episodes, but are almost never involved in each others' plots. In fact, it was episode 11 before two of the main four women interacted on a main plot point (a stupid one involving Longoria kissing Huffman's husband.) This means at least 50% of each show drags on until Hatcher and Huffman show up to spice up their sections.
Supposedly Cherry is returning to a more hands on role in Season 3 and promises to restore the show to the heights of its breakout Season 1. Hopefully that will result in the Housewives interacting more, which was reportedly one of the things that propelled the show the first year. This appears to be the typical sophomore slump, when the originality of the first year has worn off but the show has yet to hit its long term stride. |
Desperate Housewives - Season 2 : The Extra Juicy Edition 
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