Francais | English | Espanõl

Desperate Housewives

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations. This article has been tagged since December 2006.
Desperate Housewives
Image:Desperate titlethem.jpg
Desperate Housewives title screen

</small>

Genre Comedy-drama
Picture format 480i (SDTV)
720p (HDTV)
Running time 61 minutes (including commercials)
Creator(s) Marc Cherry
Starring Teri Hatcher
Felicity Huffman
Marcia Cross
Eva Longoria
Nicollette Sheridan
Narrated by Brenda Strong
Country of origin Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Original channel ABC
Original run October 3, 2004–present
No. of episodes 56 (plus four specials)
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary
Desperate Housewives's ratings
USA Image:Flag of the United States.svg TV-PG/TV-14
GBR Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg Not Rated
CAN Image:Flag of Canada.svg PG
AUS Image:Flag of Australia.svg M
NZL Image:Flag of New Zealand.svg AO
MYS Image:Flag of Malaysia.svg 18-SX

Desperate Housewives is a popular Emmy award-winning American television series, created by Marc Cherry, that began airing on ABC on October 3, 2004. Set on Wisteria Lane in the fictional town of Fairview (license plates show the motto "The Eagle State," but no state name), the series tracks the lives of five women (only one of whom is actually a housewife as of November 2006), 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, thriller, farce, camp, 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 and The Dr. Phil 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. It stars Golden Globe-award winning actress Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer and Emmy-award winning actress Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo. On the second pilot episode, Brenda Strong is the current narrator of the series.

The show focuses on five women living in suburbia, whose friend recently took her own life and is now, as the narrator, sharing all their juicy secrets from beyond the grave. The show has come under critical fire by religious and conservative groups due to the lack of morality amongst the characters. Though it is not uncommon for soap opera characters to make ethically 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. Its pilot episode which aired in October 2004, gained a stunning 21.3 million viewers making it the best new drama for the year, the highest rated show of the week, and also the best performance by a pilot for ABC, since Spin City in 1996.

Contents

[edit] Plot and characters

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
See also: List of Desperate Housewives episodes

[edit] Season One

October 3, 2004 - May 22, 2005

Nielsen Ranking (2004-05 U.S. TV season; based on average total viewers per episode): #4 (23.7 million viewers)<ref>"2004-05 Final audience and ratings figures", Hollywood Reporter, May 27, 2005.</ref>

Image:Desperate housewives series promo.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 (Cody Kasch), 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; married Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) tries to be super-mom 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 Deirdre. 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 Deirdre'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 Deirdre finds them, Mary Alice refuses to give up the child. Upon being accused of being back on drugs, Deirdre 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 Tilman (Harriet Sansom Harris), (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 (Deirdre'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 and Bree intentionally prolonged his desperate attempt to reach medical help in a hospital. Bree's behavior is caused by the knowledge that her husband had visited a dominatrix just recently since Bree was hostile towards his needs regarding BDSM.

[edit] Season Two

September 25, 2005 - May 21, 2006

Nielsen Ranking (2005-06 U.S. TV season; based on average total viewers per episode): #4 (22.2 million viewers)<ref>"2005-06 primetime wrap", Hollywood Reporter, May 26, 2006.</ref>

In the second season, Susan found herself involved in a rather complicated and at times frustrating love-pentagon with ex-husband Karl, Mike, her newest love interest Dr. Ron McCready, 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 her son 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, who himself was a reformed sex-addict, and 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 (Mehcad Brooks) and Caleb (NaShawn Kearse). 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 hold 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 her husband 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 whoever 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, whom 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/gardner and sought to salvage her marriage, after a run-in with Caleb Applewhite resulted in her losing her unborn child. Meanwhile her husband 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 maid, Xiao-Mei, 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 rode 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 (Deirdre's father) 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 turned off the respirator which had been keeping Noah alive and inherited the entire estate. Realizing his newfound wealth, Zach ended the season by telling his increasingly agitated "father" (who had lied to Zach about murdering Dierdre) that he wouldn't be able to visit him in jail for some time and coolly 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.

[edit] Season Three

September 24, 2006 - May 20, 2007

Susan has moved on from Karl, her ex-husband, who is no longer a regular, but a recurring character. Mike is in a coma after being hit by Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan), and Susan has been dutifully attending to Mike. In the hallway of the hospital, Susan meets a man named Ian Hainsworth (Dougray Scott) whose wife, Jane, is in a coma. They have coffee together, and then begin to date and later make love. When Mike wakes up from his coma in the third episode, he is a peculiar man and he has a darker personality, thinking that this was not an accident. He also has amnesia, and has no recollection of his relationship with Susan. Edie, who is continuing to hate Susan, takes advantage of this by convincing Mike that she was always his girlfriend. Mike is later on arrested, and Edie breaks up with him. Susan tries to help him out of the case.

Lynette is having a hard time integrating yet another kid, Kayla Huntington (Rachel Fox), into the family. Kayla's mother, Nora (Kiersten Warren) is forcing herself into the family and makes life difficult for the Scavos, especially Lynette. Lynette is desperate to find Nora a man, as she wants her out of the house as much as possible. She hooks her up with Carlos. Nora is killed in a huge hostage situation at a supermarket, and Tom and Lynette take full custody of Kayla. Art Shephard moves into the Youngs' old house with his sister, Rebecca. When Lynette wanders into his house to deliver a cake, her son Parker wanders down into the basement and Lynette follows. Not only is the house filled with kid-attracting toys and games, one wall is papered with Polaroids of half-naked little boys in bathing suits, which brings Lynette to believe he is a pedophile. When Rebecca dies of cardiac arrest, Art moves away and tells Lynette that he quit molesting children because he loved Rebecca and he wanted her to love him back, and she wouldn't if she found out the truth about it, but now that she is dead, he can go back to being a pedophile.

Bree and Orson became engaged in the season premiere. Bree wants to wait until they are married before having sex, but is overcome with lust when he tells her his secrets for removing difficult stains. When Orson attempts to perform cunnilingus on Bree, she protests that she doesn't do that. When Orson asks why not, she explains, "I'm a Republican." Bree relents, and apparently has her first orgasm. At the party announcing their engagement, Orson's former neighbor Carolyn Bigsby (played by Laurie Metcalf) shows up, and loudly tells Bree and the party guests that Orson murdered his ex-wife, who has not been seen since she (according to Orson) left him. Bree and Orson get married on the second episode of the season. Andrew also returns, and we learn that he has become a hustler shortly after Bree dumped him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Orson's mother moves in the the Hodges and tells Bree that he was cheating on Alma "for his precious Monique." Bree kicks Orson out of the house but later welcomes him back in when he elaborates. Bree and Susan are having a feud, whether to believe Mike or Orson is Monique's murderer.

Carlos and Gabrielle get divorced early in the season. In the season premiere, their surrogate maid Xiao-Mei (Gwendoline Yeo) is confined to bedrest because of her pregnancy. Gabrielle is her reluctant -- and obnoxious -- caretaker, threatening Xiao-Mei with deportation to China when she is too demanding. Xiao-Mei has the baby on the second episode of the season, except it isn't Carlos and Gabrielle's baby, but an African-American baby. Their embryo has been switched with someone else's, and was never implanted. Xiao-Mei moves into an apartment after giving birth, which Carlos and Gabrielle paid for. During her bitter and unpleasant divorce from Carlos, Gabrielle tries to hook up with other men. She runs into John the gardener at a restaurant and has sex with him at a hotel, only to find out he's engaged to another woman. Gabrielle starts mentoring young girls in pageantry with her former-personal shopper, Vern. One of the girls, Amy Pearce, has a widower father whom Gabrielle begins a romantic relationship with.

Edie's 18-year-old nephew, Austin (Josh Henderson), moves in with her. Julie gets annoyed at his loud music playing while he is cleaning his bike. Julie goes to confront him, but there is a spark between the two of them. They begin to date, much to Susan's displeasure.

The big mystery this season revolves around Bree's new husband, Orson, and his mental hospital friend, Amanda (Julie White). The mystery brings all the housewives together, as Susan, Lynette, and Gabrielle are all concerned about him. His secret is of a psychological nature. He also cares about Bree and wants to make their relationship work, and anything that gets in the way of that becomes an immediate threat. Orson was married once before to a woman named Alma, who planned on leaving Orson. However, how their marriage truly ended is a mystery and Bree is suspicious that Orson killed her. Also, when Orson and Alma were married, they had a nosy neighbor, Carolyn Bigsby (Laurie Metcalf). The mystery will include the answer to the question why Orson ran over Mike. James Denton (Mike) has revealed that Orson and Mike do have a history, and it is slowly revealed. Their history has something to do with Amanda, who has taken a vow of silence. It has been proven that Orson did not kill Alma. She is indeed alive and plotting something with Orson's mother.

Two characters are killed in a storyline involving a hostage situation at a supermarket, while Lynette, Nora, Edie, Austin, Julie, and others are there. The shooter is Carolyn Bigsby, who discovered through Bree that her husband - the store owner - had an affair with a woman who is now dead. Outside the locked-down store, Susan steals a police megaphone and begs Carolyn to allow her to trade places with Julie, but she refuses. The story is featured on the news, and Bree hosts an impromptu hors-d'œuvres party to watch the drama unfold. Bree is horrified when she learns the shooter is Carolyn, and feels as though she is to blame for Carolyn's actions. After Lynette inadvertedly tells Carolyn during an argument with Nora that Nora tried to seduce Tom, Carolyn shoots Nora in the chest, killing her. Before she dies, Nora entrusts Lynette with her daughter, saying that "Kayla was the only good thing that I've ever done in my whole life." After Carolyn says that Lynette wanted Nora dead, Lynette, horrified, starts screaming at Carolyn. She says that everyone has pain, but "what we don't do is go around shooting strangers!" and, at the end of the diatribe, that "maybe you [Carolyn] deserved to be cheated on." Carolyn points the gun straight at Lynette, but Art - the new neighbour who moved into the Youngs' old house - causes Carolyn to shoot Lynette's left arm when he throws a can at her head. Carolyn drops the gun and Austin jumps on her as she crawls over to grab it. As Austin struggles with Carolyn on the floor, one of the hostages, Maya, picks up the gun and kills her with a shot to the head.

Mary Alice Young is continuing to watch over the neighborhood from her grave and sharing with us, through narration, the juicy secrets inside each house.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] DVD Releases

Main article: List of Desperate Housewives DVD releases
DVD Name Cover Art Region 1 Region 2 Region 4
The Complete First Season Image:Dhdvd1.jpg September 20 2005 October 10 2005 November 28 2005
The Complete Second Season Image:Dhdvd2.jpg August 29 2006 November 13 2006 October 4 2006

Note: In Belgium and the Netherlands (Region 2), the DVD for season 2 was released on September 06.<ref>[1] Article (in dutch) about the release in Belgium.</ref>

[edit] Games

In 2005, British company Re:creation published Desperate Housewives Dirty Laundry Game, a board game based on season one of Desperate Housewives. Players attempt to guess their opponents' secrets while keeping clues to their own secrets concealed by answering trivia questions.

Buena Vista Games released the sim computer game Desperate Housewives: The Game in 2006. The game is set in Wisteria Lane and features an original storyline spanning 12 episodes.

[edit] Cast

Main article: List of Desperate Housewives characters

[edit] Starring

(in order of the credits)

[edit] Also starring

[edit] Formerly starring

[edit] Recurring

[edit] Trivia

  • Most of the episode titles are names of songs by musical theatre composer Stephen Sondheim.
  • 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.
  • In the pilot that aired on ABC, Mrs. Huber mentions looking after Edie's son the night that Susan burns Edie's house down. However, in an example of a plot inconsistency or deliberate retcon, Edie's son never makes an appearance and is never mentioned again.
  • In the supermarket shootout, Carolyn Bigsby was carrying a gun that could only carry five bullets, although six shots were fired from it during the episode.
  • In relation to its comparison with Sex and the City, Eva Longoria on Oprah mentioned that she hopes Desperate Housewives can do for married women what Sex and the City did for single women.

[edit] Awards and Nominations:

-Screen Actors Guild:

  • 2005
  • WINNER: Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series [Teri Hatcher]
  • WINNER: Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
  • 2006
  • WINNER: Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series [Felicity Huffman]
  • WINNER: Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series

-Golden Globe Awards

  • 2005
  • WINNER: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Teri Hatcher]
  • Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Marcia Cross]
  • Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Felicity Huffman]
  • WINNER: Best TV Series: Musical or Comedy

2006

  • Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Teri Hatcher]
  • Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Marcia Cross]
  • Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Felicity Huffman]
  • Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series: Musical or Comedy [Eva Longoria]
  • WINNER: Best TV Series: Musical or Comedy

-Primetime Emmy Awards

  • 2005
  • WINNER: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series [Felicity Huffman]
  • Nominee: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series [Marcia Cross]
  • Nominee: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series [Teri Hatcher]
  • Nominee: Outstanding Comedy Series
  • WINNER: Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series

[edit] Production details

[edit] U.S. Broadcast History

  • October 2004 - present -- Sundays 9:00pm/8:00pm

[edit] References

<references/>

[edit] External links

Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.png
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Official websites
Other websites


Desperate Housewives
Episode list | Official site
General Original airdates | Characters | Awards and nominations | DVD releases | Music</small>
Main
characters 		Susan Mayer | Lynette Scavo | Bree Van de Kamp Hodge | Gabrielle Solis Marquez | Edie Britt | Mary Alice Young
Carlos Solis | Tom Scavo | Orson Hodge | Mike Delfino | Julie Mayer | Andrew Van De Kamp | Danielle Van De Kamp | Austin Britt
bn:ডেস্পারেট্‌ হাউজওয়াইভ্‌স

bs:Očajne kućanice da:Desperate Housewives de:Desperate Housewives el:Νοικοκυρές Σε Απόγνωση es:Desperate housewives fa:کدبانوهای درمانده fr:Desperate Housewives hr:Kućanice it:Desperate Housewives he:עקרות בית נואשות lt:Nusivylusios namų šeimininkės hu:Született feleségek nl:Desperate Housewives ja:デスパレートな妻たち no:Frustrerte fruer nn:Desperate Housewives pl:Gotowe na wszystko pt:Desperate Housewives ru:Отчаянные домохозяйки (телесериал) sq:Desperate Housewives simple:Desperate Housewives fi:Täydelliset naiset sv:Desperate Housewives zh:欲乱绝情妻

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Desperate_Housewives"
Personal tools