Desperate Scriptwriters

The Cast of Desperate Housewives: (L-R) Terri Hatcher, Dana Delaney, Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman, Nicolette Sheridan, Eva Longoria

Something happened to my favourite American export. Well, quite a few things happened. First, better series came along in the form of The Wire, The West Wing, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development and Carnivale, along with several others. Second, there has been a resurgence in quality British drama, in the shape of State of Play, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, and one-off dramas on BBC4. Thirdly, since the series began, I have had to deal with more and more challenging academic and extra-curricular activities: new friendships forged at sixth form and specifically university, as well as intensifying my involvement in student drama has left little time to give to television. Finally (and as much as it pains my heart to say it), Desperate Housewives is no longer any good.

Let me explain. The programme is now running into its fifth season, but a lot had happened to the four main protagonists during the four preceding seasons. Susan and Mike finally got together and had a child. Bree lost Rex, but finally found real love in Orson, after the breakdown of her family. Lynette overcame her insecurities about her abilities as a mother, as well as adjusting to a new family member and surviving cancer. After numerous affairs, a miscarriage, divorce and reconciliation, Gabrielle and Carlos' materialism and greed finally got the better of them, resulting in the loss of their money and Carlos' sight. New housewife Katherine Mayfair was introduced and became a staple of the team, replacing the exasperatingly fun Edie Britt, who had pretty much stolen every other woman's husband at least once. Long-standing plot elements were tied up; mysteries were solved; themes both serious and silly were explored; and the regular season thrills were provided again and again. By the final episode of season 4, it seemed there was nowhere left for the show to go. Then this happened...



That's right, a jump-in-time in order to leave the season on a cliffhanger, and create more questions than had been built up over the previous four years.

The problem with this kind of televisual gadget, though, is that it can give a little too much freedom to the writers and exectuives working on a programme. I say too much freedom as though it is a bad thing: in a way, it is, if that freedom is only going to allow said writers and execs to tie themselves up in knots; or, to employ a more apt metaphor, use the rope to form their own nooses. The problem I think I really have with Desperate Housewives is that though the programme is still aesthetically good - production values, costumes, set and techinical elements are all just as high-quality as ever - the standard of story as well as its telling has noticeably dropped. I suppose I should take the opportunity to warn any readers who have yet to watch season 5 that I will be writing quite a bit about the storylines and major plot points which may spoil the experience of watching it.

Let's start with the first "change" highlighted in the clip, above. Gabrielle appears to have fattened up a bit, and has children - an event she'd pretty much supposed impossible after her miscarriage in season 2. It turns out that in the five years which have passed, Carlos' "super sperm" was able to penetrate the walls of his wife's uterus. Twice. Faced with this massive change, she has adjusted, selling her designer dresses and shoes, and resorting to working as a maid. Then, after another "bump on the head", her husband miraculously regains his sight, and is pressured into going back into his high-flying job, earning the family millions of dollars again.

Bree has become a successful businesswoman, having set up a catering business with her best friend Katherine and written a cookbook. However, she has stolen recipes, become harder and colder to Orson, and has pushed her friends away. Once again, she is effectively alone and suffering self-confidence issues, turning briefly back to her alcoholism.

Lynette has to deal with her sons' increased delinquency, and when one is faced with charges of arson and manslaughter, she goes to some shocking lengths in order to secure his safety.

Katherine's daughter has married and moved away to Baltimore (clearly never having seen The Wire), and has a child. Katherine's sense of redundancy has overtaken her, until she takes up with Mike, Susan's ex-husband.

Which leads into the final "shock". Once again, Susan is incapable of holding onto any type of relationship, and is with another man.

So, more mysteries, or pretty much putting characters back to square one in order to secure the continuation of a series which semed to have run its natural course? For me, it's definitely the latter. Firstly, the season mystery this year wasn't much of a mystery. I worked it out at the end of the first episode, and had my suspicions confirmed in the pre-titles sequence of the halfway episode. Next, the scenarios presented at the end of season 4 were not completely followed through in the beginning of the fifth season. In fact, I'd go so far as to say there were lazy inconsistencies. In the above clip, Katherine's daughter has only just been proposed to. We're supposed to expect that a few months later, they've been wed, moved halfway across the country and had a child? Of course, it's possible, but not very likely. And why are Gabby's children different? I'm not just talking about the obvious recasting, I mean the differences in the names.

And as for the characterisation? what the hell has happened? Or, rather, why have all of the characters regressed to the people we met at the beginning of the series? Susan has lost the happiness she seeked; Bree is cold and unfeeling again; Lynette cannot control her children; Gabrielle is selfish and materialistic. The only real differences are in Edie, no longer a slut and mellowed by her husband, and Katherine, who has gone from rival of Bree, to best friend of Bree, to resentful employee of Bree, and now degenerated into ridiculous bit-part. Most unfortunately, with poor characterisation has come a noticeable drop in acting-quality, too. Terri Hatcher and Nicolette Sheridan were never the most talented of artistes, but they seem to have resorted to nothing but a variety of frowns and open-mouthed shock faces to convey the corresponding emotion. Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman, who have always been the best actresses in the show (as proven by their having the most dramatically-potent storylines over the years), have not lost their touch but certainly look a little bored in this series, as there seems to be nowhere left to go but back to their original characters back in 2004. The only real improvement has been in Eva Longoria. Stripped of her make-up and pretty figure-hugging wardrobe, she has been allowed to show that she can indeed act. However, with the reversion to her character's original draft, it seems that Ms Longoria's wings will be clipped after being given the taste of freedom for a brief while.

With all my moaning about "it's the same as in season 1", one might confuse this for misguided complaints about a show which flew slightly out of control by the fourth season. Not so, though: this is not a case of "back to basics". I mentioned earlier that the quality of the writing had slipped. No longer have we any subversion of expectations (Orson's Evil Mother: I should have smothered you in your crib when I had the chance!), but a resort to every character having nothing to say but bitchy epithets (Gabby to Susan: It's not my fault you haven't taught your son to grow a pair and fight back!). The dead narrator Mary Alice's observations at the beginning and end of each episode have gone from being subtle references to each housewife's struggle with broader implications, to blatant summarising of the episode's story, as if we needed a recap of the past forty-five minutes.

One final observation is the lack of minority representation in the programme. We all know suburban America is a haven of WASP ideals, and in one can't really expect too much from a series set in its midst. However, the original parody of the series was its inclusion of the Solis family: the "token Mexicans" who are rich, successful, and just as suceptible to the trappings of their white counterparts. Even the gays have gotten their oar in, with the development of Bree's son, Andrew, and the introduction of Brad and Lee. But not since season 2 has there been a black family in Wisteria Lane. Presumably this is because the impact of the Applewhite family has turned the Lane's residents against anyone remotely brown: after all, Betty Applewhite was imprisoning her mentally-ill six-foot monster of a son in the basement, while her other son was a salacious girlfriend-murderer. After having that kind on your doorstep, who wouldn't invite the KKK round to tea...?

In short, the problem with the decline of this once-sublime satire is that it has too many characters to deal with (extended family members and marginal neighbours making constant recurring appearances) and it has slowly become the very genre it set out to satirise: Desperate Housewives is just another glossy, stupid soap opera. Sex and the City for the suburbs, and that is a real shame...

I see I'm not the only one...