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.
Four play
“Desperate Housewives” is narrated by Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), one of five women living in picture-postcard-perfection on Wisteria Lane in Upper-Middle-Class-Suburbia. There’s one important catch, however: Mary Alice doesn’t live there anymore. She committed suicide in the opening moments of the show’s first episode and now offers an omniscient point of view on the secret lives of the four friends she left behind.
Lynette Scavo
(Played by Felicity Huffman)
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Former advertising executive who gave up her career to become the frazzled mother of four young children–a bawling, brawling quartet that seems bent on driving her mad. When Lynette’s husband, Tom (Doug Savant), suggested during an intimate moment that they dispense with birth control and “take a chance” on her getting pregnant again, she knocks him out with a hard right to the jaw.
Bree Van De Kamp
(Played by Marcia Cross)
The Martha Stewart of the group is seemingly perfect in every way, from her meticulous grooming to the gourmet meals she cooks each night for her family of four. When her husband, Rex (Steven Culp), says he wants out, she tries to kill him by putting onions in his salad and setting off an allergic reaction. She then tries to keep their marriage counseling a secret by telling friends they’re taking tennis lessons.
Gabrielle Solis
(Played by Eva Longoria)
The beautiful ex-model in an unfulfilling marriage takes her revenge on her wealthy, emotional bully of a husband, Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira), by sleeping with the 17-year-old boy who cuts their lawn (Jesse Metcalfe). But at least she hasn’t tried to kill Carlos–not yet anyway.
Susan Meyer
(Played by Teri Hatcher)
The divorced single mom is hungry for a little romance and is still bitter that her husband left her for a much younger woman. Susan has her eyes on the new man in the neighborhood, Mike Delfino (James Denton), who claims to be a plumber whose wife recently died. He’s a little too hunky to be true, but that doesn’t stop Susan–or the oft-divorced Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan)–from knocking on his door and battling for his affection.–THE BALTIMORE SUN.
‘Wives’ gone wild
In its first three weeks on the air, “Desperate Housewives” has been one of the five most-watched shows on television, averaging more than 20 million viewers per episode and giving ABC a much-needed boost in the ratings.
Episode 1 (Oct. 3)
21.6 million viewers
No. 1 in weekly ratings.
Episode 2 (Oct. 10)
20 million viewers
No. 4 in weekly ratings.
Episode 3 (Oct. 17)
20.9 million viewers
No. 3 in weekly ratings.