Desperate Housewives

LOVE it! If you missed the premiere early in October (Sunday nights on ABC), catch the encore and get into this program. Ladies, we have our replacement--finally!--for Sex and The City: four new friends, married with children, living in suburbia.

That actually sounds really boring and disappointing, doesn't it? Who cares about the secret lives of housewives? That's our whole problem, right? No recognition, no respect, no interest. That might just change with this show.

In fact, I was really surprised Monday morning after the premiere, in a radio interview I was doing with Charlie Papillo and Ernie Farrar on WVMT Sports Radio in Vermont--they wanted to talk about Desperate Housewives--Rebel Housewife opinion and insight! And the buzz through the rest of the day on Monday, talking with single friends, listening to the radio, on the phone with my publicist--everybody is talking about this show!

I do believe Desperate Housewives could be the successor to Sex in The City on Sunday Nights. Instead of, "Are you a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte?" the question will now be:

"Are you a Susan, Gabrielle, Lynette, or Bree?"

(Mary Alice is not an option--she's the desperate housewife who kills herself in the first sixty seconds of the first show, and then narrates from The Beyond. Yes, there is an element here, a little Twin Peaks vibe, with Mary Alice's secrets, Susan's inadvertent arson, and the mysterious, hunky widower who has just moved onto the street. I hope they keep it real.)

The female cast and characters are fantastic, although I would say the men in the first episode were cardboard stand-ins, as the women were introduced and their characters and relationships were developed in this first show. That's okay--this is Desperate Housewives. There will be time enough for the men, and they are somewhat secondary to the main focus anyway, as they were on Sex. (Sex and The City, not sex in general.)

Desperate Housewives is about the women, and all the beautiful facades, the PERFECTION of life on "Wisteria Lane," a perfect little street in a perfect little suburb somewhere in America. It is very much as if the Sex girls finally all got married, and moved to Suburbia:

Susan (Teri Hatcher) is the Carrie of Desperate Housewives--creative, vulnerable, funny, and attractive-without-really-believing-it. (Not the character I expected for Teri Hatcher, but it works!) Susan is a divorced, single mother with a pre-teen daughter who seems to be the caretaker. Susan is still reeling from her husband leaving, and gets into competition with Edie Brit (Nicollette Sheridan), the free-lovin' blonde bimbo down the street, for the new neighbor's attention and affection (that hunky plumber/widower).

Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) is the over-sexed Samantha of Wisteria Lane--a former model, almost unapproachably gorgeous, married to a very wealthy man who is all about the next Big Deal, and his money, and the show of wealth, power, and status. Gabrielle is his beautiful accessory wife, with nothing to do all day but shop, work out, dress couture, and find love in the arms of her much younger stud/gardener--You GO, Girl! (Whew! Just kidding, Honey--got a little excited there...)

Lynette (Felicity Huffman) is a Miranda--former high-power career woman, ten years later, married with four children and a husband who flies into town for a "quickie" before he has to fly back out the next morning on another business trip, leaving her ill-equipped to handle the house, the kids, and everything else. But Lynette is funny and very true-to-life for some of us: Threatening her kids (with Santa) to be good; Walking into the pool fully clothed at the funeral to drag her kids out; Running into a former colleague, who is still unmarried, without children, and utterly professional, while Lynette is trying to chase her kids down in the grocery store--she straightens her hair, smiles, and gives the half-truth we all do in that situation to the innocent, yet dangerous, question:
"How's domestic life? Don't you just love being a Mom?"
"Well, to be honest......it's the best job I've ever had."
(Not necessarily true, but the easy way out--and what is expected.)

And Bree (Marcia Cross), counterpart to Charlotte on Sex--a woman trying so hard to be PERFECT, she's just plain scary! (Apparently, her husband and children think so, too.)

And yet, in the four stereotypes, even blown all out of proportion for the sake of ratings and entertainment, these are typical housewives, found in most suburban neighborhoods--you really think nothing is going on all day?! We know these women--we are these women.

So, are you a Susan, Gabrielle, Lynette, or Bree?

Link to Desperate Housewives