Thursday , March 28 2024
I'm all for lunacy. I'm all for nonsensical nonsense. But this? Really?

Desperate Housewives: What Are They Thinking?

Every once in a while the TV and Film Guy gets to wondering. And the wondering eventually turns to ruminating, and the ruminating to fuming, and the fuming to ranting.  This is one of those times.

What in the name of all that is good and holy is Desperate Housewives thinking? 

Bree gets married, but her daughter doesn’t bother to attend. Where is her daughter?  What is going on there? Did the producers just realize how horrific a storyline the daughter had and decided to completely expunge her and her memory from the show?  Hmm? We don’t even get a tossed off reference to where her daughter is and the reasons her daughter couldn’t attend? 

And, as long as I’m complaining let me throw this little gem out there. Carlos and Gabrielle’s baby mix-up — ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. The clinic messes up, implants the wrong embryo into Xiao-Mei, at some point figures out their mistake, and… says nothing to anyone. They instead wait for the baby to be born, have their lawyer on call for the event (it was during the weekend and at night, but magically he can be at the clinic with the doctor, and the clinic just happens to be open at such an odd hour, sure, whatever), and then calmly explain to the couple that the mistake occurred. 

Even worse, Gaby and Carlos simply accept the switcheroo and give up their baby. They were fine with adopting a child last season, so clearly it was the notion of having a child and not necessarily the fact that it was actually their flesh and blood that was important. But this baby they’re perfectly happy to giveaway without any sort of fight over him (or is it a her?) or anything?

I just do TV and film, I don’t know the law, but I have to imagine that if they wanted to keep the child there’s some sort of legal action that could take place here. The court case might make for good television, and is the exact sort of thing Desperate Housewives could do well (imagine the people that they’d be fighting with in court, their dirty secrets, etc, etc).  Instead, Gaby and Carlos throw in the towel.

What you’re selling, I ain’t buying. 

Add to all of the above the fact that we’re going to have to put up with Julie dating, wanting to date or just fooling around with Edie’s nephew, Austin, and it’s all a little more than I can take.  Must we rehash the 'Edie and Susan hate each other' storyline?  Are we really going to go all Romeo and Juliet here? 

I will close by stressing the following:  I don’t believe the show has permanently lost its way.  I firmly do believe that it has strayed, and is continuing to stray.  It can get better. It should get better. Frankly, it must get better.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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