Overdone in more ways than one

Watching Desperate Housewives usually puts me at ease, allowing me to forget about the stresses and worries in my life and float down Wisteria Lane without much to think about. But after last nights show, (I know, I am very late in writing this blog, please forgive me,) I was just plain annoyed. I’m not going to stop watching though, there are two episodes left this season and I feel they will redeem themselves.

It seemed as though the characters were just a bit too into themselves, and overacted their personalities, playing directly to the stereotypes most characters usually try to gracefully break free and evolve from.

Teri Hatcher’s character Susan always annoys me, but last night really left me wanting her to duct tape her to a tree, as her hiking instructor, Toni advised her to shut up and relax. Toni really was the saving grace for me last night, telling the “dippy brunette from the suburbs” that she was the real reason behind her love troubles with Mike and Ian. Because she loves drama, Toni so eloquently put it, Susan cannot just be happy. Susan becomes insulted by Toni’s dose of reality, and decides to hike up the mountain by herself to find Mike—not a dramatic gesture, whatsoever (insert sarcasm here). And then, like we all didn’t already know it was going to happen, Mike rescues a sprained-Susan and they get back together.

In another all too much like her stereotype storyline, Gaby obnoxiously proclaims herself “First Lady of Fairview” after her fiancé, Victor (John Slattery) is elected mayor. She tears up parking tickets and kicks a cop in the knee. A little heavy on the spiciness there, Gaby. Finally Victor warns Gaby that her behavior is unacceptable and inappropriate—another fine helping of a reality-check.

And finally, usually my favorite housewife, Lynette was much too desperate for me to handle. After becoming mutually attracted to Rick, her restaurant chef, Rick decided to let Lynette know how he feels, prompting her to fire him and dramatically weep over her emotional infidelity to her husband and her family. Each character in the Tom-Lynette-Rick love triangle sub-plot overacted, which is a shame because the Scavo’s are usually the most realistic family on Wisteria Lane, and last night they were more soap opera than sincere.
However, Edie’s situation with Carlos and her son Travers was done just right. Nicolette Sherian’s character is usually so outrageous that she provides the fun on an otherwise scandalously average street.

All of this leaves me begging for the return of Marcia Cross’ Bree. We were reminded last week that Bree was finally taking her honeymoon with Orson (who is the other Sex and the City alum along with Slattery, this show just keeps proving so many critics’ points). Bree is so overly neurotic and obsessive, and the absence of her comedic antics and perfect portrayal of the porcelain housewife are leaving a gaping hole in my love of Desperate Housewives.

Thinking about my dissatisfaction with last night’s episode, I am wondering what I am getting so upset about. This is a dramedy, not reality TV or the lives of actual people, yet I still expect a connection with reality in its episodes—which is probably why I think sci-fi television is a joke, soap operas are boring and The OC was one of the more worse depictions of teenagers in entertainment. It seems as though so many (good) television shows, scripted or not, are showing us something that is real and relatable, and those that aren’t seem no more important than childish cartoons.

Susan and Mike’s love saga has been done countless times before. Gaby is always causing a ruckus to shoot out from her teeny-tiny stature. A married woman falling for a handsome co-worker has been seen. Even though the housewives may not be the most exciting bunch of women in the world, we would at least like to see something that makes us want to reconnect and relate again to the housewives that normally intrigue, not annoy.

The housewives are ridiculously endearing

The ridiculous housewives have finally returned to Wisteria Lane in the insane, eye-catching grandeur that we previously so admired and despised.

It’s been a while since ABC treated us to the pleasure of a new episode of Desperate Housewives, and after watching Sunday night’s episode (a couple of days late I’ll admit but, hey, The Sopranos and Entourage came back, I had to make some important decisions here,) I missed the gals, and am glad to see that Marc Cherry and co. have recaptured the fading flame of a seven-year (or three year in this case, but you get the metaphor,) marriage.

What attracted the high ratings to DH in its first ever-popular season were its clever, intelligent writing and the incredible behavior that these seemingly average housewives were capable of. Edie (Nicolette Sheridan) squeezing out a wet sponge on her chest while washing her car is a classic example of an absolutely silly stunt that made these women so wonderfully watchable in its heyday, not to mention the fashion show of Agent Provocateur’s newest collection of lingerie on Eva Longoria. Good news for good TV fans and boys everywhere: Sunday’s episode had all of that (except Edie was taking all her clothes off this time).

Even though one of my favorite housewives didn’t make an appearance in this episode, (Marcia Cross just had twins. I guess it’s alright she didn’t have to deal with her fictional teenage daughter’s unplanned pregnancy,) the antics of the four other abnormally attractive suburban housewives (I say abnormally attractive because I have yet to see a residential block with so many women and men that are that easy to look at,) satisfied my craving for what drew me to this show during its first season.

I like this show, I do, but I don’t love it. I don’t think its great, but it is good. None of the issues it deals with are particularly groundbreaking, even though they are somewhat controversial. Where DH marvelously succeeds is its execution of ideas and plots. Intrigue is never in short supply, neither is entertainment. I am encouraged to care about these women. Even if I find Teri Hatcher anorexicly obnoxious, I care about her, too, and I want her to be happy.

But what makes this show so special are the unbelievable lengths these women go to, and the mistakes they make. Susan (Hatcher) is a klutz, known for tripping, stumbling, accidentally burning houses down, and getting locked out of her house completely naked. This week she accidentally sets her future proper British mother-in-law on fire and spills wine all over her shirt. She then catches her future proper father-in-law wearing her bra and nightgown.

Gabrielle (Longoria) steals clothes from the closet of her boyfriend’s ex-wife’s closet by slipping about ten dresses underneath her coat after her closet full of immaculate clothing is immaculately destroyed. Upon finding out, Mrs. Ex-wife makes Gaby strip in the bathroom and leaves her in a bathroom stall in her skivvies.

Edie’s three-week sex drought has brought her attention to Carlos (she brilliantly compares buying too much lingerie while horny to buying too many groceries while hungry,) and resorts to bribing her son and breaking part of his model airplane to get some alone time with Carlos, and then shoves her boobs in his face. And amazingly he doesn’t jump at her rack.

And here is why this show works—the outlandishness of the women leads them to find out a bit more about themselves, and allows us to respect and understand them on another level.

Susan shows how much she loves her fiancé, Gaby opens up to the man she was trying to resist, and Edie reveals herself (emotionally and physically) to Carlos. This episode presented a great deal of character development that had been lacking in recent episodes, mostly in season two where disconnection to the characters that were supposed to feel like good friends were unrecognizable.

Explicit Entertainment

Desperate Housewives is getting cushy into its third season, and if you aren’t watching by now, its safe to say you won’t start. If you are keeping tabs on the less- scandalous/more-ridiculous-than-the-ladies-of-Sex and the City, ladies, you know that things are starting to not necessarily push the envelope, but at least stuff it some more.

Someone once said that Desperate Housewives is like what would have happened if Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte met the right man, got married, had kids, moved to the suburbs and still weren’t happy. I don’t think I necessarily agree with this theory, but its something interesting to think about.

Susan, Lynette, Bree, Gabrielle and Edie are neighbors. They live in beautiful houses on the fantastical Wisteria Lane. The men in their lives are handsome, wealthy and crazy about them, (if not just crazy.) The women on Sex and the City didn’t even have half that, and I don’t think were even looking for it. What I see as the main difference between the characters on Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives is their quest for self, self-fulfillment.

The Sex and the City women knew that what they had in their lives wasn’t enough for them, but they were doing whatever they could to make themselves happy. They looked to themselves and each other, and depended on those elements for satisfaction, (Ok, maybe they sought a certain kind of satisfaction in men, but let’s not go there quite yet.)

It seems as though if the Sex and the City crew did fulfill their destiny as outlined above, they sure did become a whole lot more desperate. The Wisteria Lane ladies are desperate because of the outward approach they take to life’s course. And while Sex’s push of the envelope may have made them more watchable, and therefore, successful, but its DH’s character’s flaws make them more relatable. People don’t want to watch themselves; they want to watch the sexier, richer, more intelligent version of themselves.

It would be nice to think that women everywhere are totally self-dependent; that we don’t need men, hot cars, big houses, or expensive jewelry to be happy, and that all it takes is a couple pairs of some four hundred dollar shoes. But as we all know, shoes (while they are nice) don’t stop the visits to the shrink. And the desperate ones on Desperate Housewives have realized this and are searching for what that actually is.

But let’s be honest–women (and men) aren’t all that implicit. People (being fair to both genders,) look outside for a sense of completion to their lives, and DH shows this. The women need their men, just as much as the guys need their girls.

The second and beginning of the third season exemplified this idea, tossing the ping-pong ball back and forth between the women needing their men, then their men needing their women. Back and forth, back and forth. Wisteria Lane was taken over by the sit-communists, and not the dramatic narrative that gave ABC hope three years ago when male audiences still thought Eva Longoria was hot and not T.P.’s over-exposed fiancé.

We’ve got the back-story and character development, and we’ve all already complained that we’re bored. The dramedic (that’s dramatic and comedic) narrative has returned, and we’re actually wondering what it going to happen next, rather than already knowing.

Hopefully after the writers took major cop-outs of the subplots that kept the first half of the third season trudging along, they’ve got something else up their sleeves that isn’t so ridiculously outrageous (Alma and Gloria dying in the episode two weeks ago?) and are letting us reach outside of our desperate selves and enjoy the entertainment of others, even more desperate than us.