"Desperate Housewives" is a wicked pleasure
Friday, October 01, 2004
Kay McFadden / Times staff columnist
ABC's superb new series, "Desperate Housewives," debuts
at 9 p.m. Sunday. The cast includes Nicollette Sheridan, Brenda
Strong, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria and Teri Hatcher.
What is it with suburbia?
Meant as an ideal compromise between city and country, the
suburbs wind up loathed or spoofed - even by people that
live there. From John Cheever to "The Stepford Wives"
to "South Park," that pretty spot halfway to heaven
is the object of scorn and expos\'e9. Now it's the turn of ABC's
superb new series "Desperate Housewives," debuting at
9 p.m. Sunday.
Equal parts social satire, soap opera and mystery,
"Desperate Housewives" is the scary, hilarious
synthesis of what happens after you live happily ever after.
It's as if the women of "Sex and the City" had gotten
their wishes and were dealing with the consequences.
As we see from the first helicoptering shot, "Desperate
Housewives" is set in a place of winding streets and
lovely houses with front porches, gleaming wood floors and
fireplaces. It has no McMansions, but the genteel stink of
money is unmistakable.
Viewers have a narrator for the excursion. Her name is Mary
Alice (Brenda Strong) and she just happens to be dead when
the show begins.
In silken tones, Mary Alice recalls the day she surprised the
neighbors of Wisteria Lane with her untimely decision.
"I performed my chores. I completed my projects. I ran my
errands," she tells us. "In truth, I spent the day as
I spent every other day, quietly polishing my life until it
gleamed with perfection."
That's a brilliant introduction. In "Desperate Housewives,"
suburbia is the external manifestation of our quest to get everything
just right and assume that happiness will follow. No wonder we have a
love-hate relationship with the place.
But happiness is a sometime thing for the women of Wisteria Lane. We
meet Lynette (Felicity Huffman), the career woman who's given up her
job to raise the kids, currently numbering four.
In a hectic moment at the store, Lynette runs into a former
co-worker. "Don't you just love being a mom?" asks
the woman. Lynette pauses as the unseen Mary Alice comments,
"For those who asked it, only one answer was acceptable,
so she lied."
Sprinkled throughout the action in "Desperate Housewives,"
Mary Alice's sly and wry observations dismantle Wisteria Lane's facade.
Trophy wife Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) is an ex-model who
snagged a mergers and acquisitions executive (Ricardo Antonio).
When her husband proposed, he had tears in his eyes, but,
"She soon discovered this happened every time he closed a
deal." She's now having an affair with the gardener.
Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), having burnt perhaps one too many
macaroni-and-cheese-dinners, was dumped by her unfaithful husband
and is raising their daughter (Andrea Bowen) alone.
Now, she's making a determined bid for newly arrived single man
Mike Delfino (James Denton). But she must compete with Edie
(Nicollette Sheridan), Wisteria Lane's predatory slut.
Perhaps the most delicious character is Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross),
the inevitable Martha Stewart stand-in known for making her own clothes,
doing her own gardening and reupholstering her own furniture.
"Everyone thought of her as the perfect wife and mother," Mary
Alice purrs. "Everyone, that is, except her own family."
In subsequent scenes, Bree's family rebels and her husband, Rex (Steven
Culp) requests a divorce. Bree quickly will scotch it by serving a salad
that sends Rex to the hospital in the throes of allergic arrest.
Was it deliberate? We don't really know. And that's part of the thrill.
To the normal conventions of soap opera, "Desperate Housewives"
adds two subversive layers.
The first is a tongue-in-cheek look at the busy work of suburban life
juxtaposed with piercing revelations of the inner treadmill existence.
The former reaches heights of hilarious exaggeration so we can comprehend
the latter: fear, boredom, disappointment.
And just so "Desperate Housewives" doesn't ever get to be a
drag, cloudy questions that have nothing to do with metaphysics begin
to gather over the residents of Wisteria Lane.
Why did Mary Alice kill herself? Why is her husband digging underneath
the built-in pool late at night? And why is that nice, eligible bachelor
Mike carrying a revolver and giving cryptic telephone updates to an
unseen third party? Is he really just a plumber?
In Sunday's final scene, the women are packing up Mary Alice's clothes
when a note flutters to the ground. They gather around to read it and
are shocked at the contents.
"Oh, Mary Alice, what did you do?" asks Susan, as a concluding
helicopter shot whisks us away from Wisteria Lane.
I intend to stick around and find out. Cleverly written and conceived,
executed by a terrific cast of lovely veteran actresses, "Desperate
Housewives" is a fanged pleasure from start to finish. It's
impossible not to watch.
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