Homebodies
Buzz builds for ABC’s steamy ‘Desperate Housewives’
Cox News Service
From RedEye
October 22, 2004
Welcome to Wisteria (rhymes with hysteria) Lane, an affluent suburban
block lush with blackmail, betrayal, sexual frustration, public humiliation,
repressed rage and the occasional corpse. More than 20 million people
have moved in over the last three weeks, and property values have never
been better.
ABC's deliciously twisted soap-comedy-drama-mystery, "Desperate
Housewives," is more than just a huge hit--not merely the
most popular new series of the TV season, but the strongest new
drama since "ER," 10 years ago.
Controversy lives on Wisteria Lane, too, though, as some conservative
groups are complaining the housewives are too racy for family
television--and at least two advertisers have pulled their spots
from the show.
But the show has gained buzz at a level rarely seen in such a short
time, the hot topic among soccer moms and sororities, all spreading
the word and catching one another up on the latest juicy details.
"As soon as we start talking about 'Desperate Housewives,' the
phone lines start lighting up. We get a ton of calls," says Bert Weiss,
a morning radio DJ in Atlanta.
"As women we can definitely recognize not only ourselves, but we
recognize other women," says Sherri Caldwell, 36, a self-described
"work-at-home mom" with
three young children.
Felicity Huffman, who plays stressed-out Lynette Scavo on
"Housewives," understands the character's conflicted
feelings about leaving a high-powered job for the less glamorous
role of suburban mom.
"Motherhood was the last icon in America," says Huffman,
who has two small children with husband William H. Macy.
"There's one way to be a mother, and that's basically to
go, 'I find it so fulfilling, and I've never wanted anything else,
and I love it.' And if you do anything that diverges from that,
you're considered a bad mother. I didn't know this existed until
I became a mother, and the pressure is phenomenal."
But you don't have to be a housewife or a mom to get into the show.
"We have a group of about five of us that watches it on Sunday
nights, but I think we're getting more people into the show," says
Danielle Murphy, 20, a sophomore majoring in international studies at
Emory University.
The plotlines get complicated. In just three episodes, "DH"
has established a messy, sudsy world that feels, at different times,
like "Melrose Place," "Sex and the City" or
"Twin Peaks."
And our guide is dead: Mary Alice, who committed suicide before the
opening credits the first week, narrates from the afterlife. Her
surviving husband and teenage son are vying for who can be the
creepiest wackjob on Wisteria, which is a crowded field.
The dark underbelly of suburbia is not exactly new terrain in pop
culture; we've done the "suburban noir" thing of "The
Ice Storm" and "American Beauty." But "DH"
does it all with a wink that's more campy than serious.
"It's a guilty pleasure, kind of trashy," admits Emily
Taylor, 27, an accountant. "The characters are all too beautiful
for words, but they're kind of real."
Every Monday, she and her friends are on the phone and e-mailing about
the previous night's show, such as Bree divulging a funny-sad sexual
secret about her husband at a dinner party to the stunned mortification
of everyone.
Although the audience so far is about two-thirds women, that still
leaves a sizable number of men watching.
"It's been really enlightening to me to watch it with my wife,"
says Weiss, the radio DJ. "It's really made me realize there are
some things I need to work on in my relationship, like taking things
for granted. I'm one of those guys that gets lazy, not telling my wife
how much I love her and appreciate her."
The time slot also has helped, because fans of HBO's "Sex and the
City," now gone, were used to watching the struggles of four women
trying to find happiness.
"I was a huge 'Sex and the City' fan, and this kind of takes its
place," says Stephanie McNicoll, 27, a media relations coordinator
at Emory. "It also harks back to my college days with 'Melrose Place,'"
she adds. (Two of the actors also were on that infamous soap.)
A lot of the show's fans may be too young to remember "Twin
Peaks," ABC's surreal soap that burned hot, but briefly, in
1990 before imploding the following year. But "DH" and
"TP" share a kind of dream-state heightened reality, as
well as starting out with a big, fat mystery. On "TP" it
was who murdered Laura Palmer, and on "DH" it's why Mary
Alice killed herself.
"DH" can get a bit steamy sometimes, with its dining-room
tabletop trysting and frank talk. Although it's nowhere near
basic-cable fare "Nip/Tuck," two advertisers--Lowe's
and Tyson Foods--decided this week it was too risque and bailed.
Thousands of members of the American Family Association, a
conservative group, flooded the show's advertisers with complaints
about the on-air raunch, cnn.com reported. When Lowe's and Tyson
withdrew their ads, the group claimed a victory. For a hit like
this, ABC will have others lined up to take their place.
So life on Wisteria Lane moves forward. But there's still an
unexplained body in a trunk, a blackmail note to figure out,
dirty little secrets to be told and exposed. It's a wonder
anybody has time to cook dinner.
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