Desperate Housewives Makes For Bad TV
by DEAN ROBBINS
Up & Coming Weekly
September 29, 2004
In ABC's Desperate Housewives (Sunday, 9 p.m.), a housewife with a
perfect family and a perfect life in the perfect suburbs blows her
brains out. She narrates the pilot from beyond the grave, introducing
us to the friends she left behind. There's the lonely divorcee (Teri Hatcher)
pining for the new plumber in town; the career woman (Felicity Huffman)
now reluctantly making a career of motherhood; the Martha Stewart
homemaker on steroids (Marcia Cross); and the ex-model (Eva Longoria)
whose workaholic husband leaves her time for the young gardener.
To please viewers, Desperate Housewives throws in everything but the
kitchen sink. (Actually, it throws that in too during many heart-to-heart
talks in the kitchen.) At first the series seems like a cautionary
tale about the turbulence behind the suburbs' neatly trimmed shrubs.
Then it seems like a broad comedy, with Huffman's character forced
into the swimming pool in her formal dress. Then it seems like a mystery,
with the menfolk flashing guns and digging furtively in the backyard.
Then it seems like a sex farce, with Hatcher's character asking the
plumber, "Can you come over later to look at my pipes?"
Desperate Housewives? Desperate ABC executives is more like it.
© Up & Coming Magazine 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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