'Housewives' desperately seeking humanity
November 18, 2007
By Doug Elfman
Television Critic
Lynette got the good news that chemo was working to "clear" her cancer. She strolled outside and smiled at a black sky of white stars. Then she looked down at her garden, where she had sprinkled poison to stop a hole-digging possum.
Dead, the possum lay sprawled in a disjointed pose. Lynette (Felicity Huffman) buckled to the ground. How could she have done this?
"I'm sorry," she sobbed to the possum.
It's called quiet desperation, this feeling of Lynette's. And after all these years, "Desperate Housewives" finally, finally humanizes it.
What took so long? I know the answers. It's been overly cutesy and stupidly soapy. Inherently, it still is that, for good portions. But this is the melodrama's best season, following its worst.
It's hard to believe but it's true: In the past, the show's worst enemy has been its music score. This season, though, it's rarer to hear plucky, upbeat pizzicato destroying the hard, humanizing work of actors.
There have been bad exceptions. Early in this very season, Dana Delany (as Katherine) did some heavy-lifting acting in a tearful party scene that could have played sad. But jokey orchestral strings stomped all over her, projecting to the viewer that: "Everything will be just fine, nothing low to see here."
Even so, the show is stronger than before. What else has improved? Most things, especially the scripts (love the new gay neighbors) and the acting (especially Huffman, Ricardo Chavira, Kyle MacLachlan, Eva Longoria and Dana Delany).
Perhaps as a result, "Desperate Housewives" is experiencing a resurgence in ratings and critical praise.
It's hard not to also credit three narrative threads defining the season so far -- a darker tone, a political parable about a homeowners' association and well-thought-out liberal undertones.
Compare "Desperate" to a few other dark shows. As a stranger told me at a party recently, TV is focusing on evil, particularly "Dexter" (a serial killer) and "Reaper" (guys who do good deeds for Satan).
But "Desperate" can be the most morbid series on TV. I've seen nothing more disturbing this year than the decline and death of Katherine's Aunt Lillian.
While Lillian went bed-ridden at Katherine's house, the niece really just wanted her aunt to perish, since Lillian intended to spill a nasty secret to Katherine's daughter.
As Lillian pleaded for help, Katherine shut Lillian's door, and there she gasped gruesomely for breath and for a chance to confess from her deathbed.
The camera focused quietly on Lillian, slipping slowly into a lonely, depressing last descent. It was really nasty.
"It occurred to Lillian, death couldn't come quickly enough," the "Desperate" narrator said beforehand. "This thought came to her niece, as well." (The lack of an uptempo music score helped sell the scene.)
Katherine is evil-ish. But "Desperate Housewives" implies, and I agree, that the real cherry pits of evil are the homeowners' association and the murderous, adulterous members. For three years, housewives made friends and enemies by geography. Upping the ante, Katherine reinstated their defunct association, won its presidency and set out to crack down on Lynette's kids' innocent tree house, plus a waterfall sculpture in another yard. Lynette vowed to take down Katherine, that "jack-booted hausfrau." The association election temporarily split Lynette's friendship with Susan. And for a while, the homeowners' association was, no doubt, a mechanical microcosm of heartless politics.
If this sounds like a liberal premise, you're right. "Desperate Housewives," one of the most-watched shows among suburbanites in homeowners' associations, veers left.
Not only did Lynette get emotional comeuppance for killing the possum, she had to be shown in a crazed state of mind asking icy Republican Bree for gun advice regarding the possum. Bree suggested she buy a little rifle at a store -- next to a Baptist church.
When Lynette's mom snuck marijuana into her brownies, it was for comic effect, not for just-say-no messages.
And the gay couple arrives in an era when the right vilifies homosexual families. One neighbor was chastised for criticizing "the gays."
Meanwhile, gay humor is doubling as a satire of acceptance in suburbia. Susan (Teri Hatcher) tripped over herself trying to welcome the gay men, saying she was familiar with "you folks" because she watches cable TV.
The couple, Lee (Kevin Rahm) and Bob (Tuc Watkins) are portrayed not as outsiders so much, but as equal wits, so they snipe at Susan just like the others do.
"Neighbor," Lee said, rejecting a perhaps allergy-inducing gift from Susan, "why don't you take your store-bought, warmed-up, possibly poisonous cookie bars and give them to someone more likely to survive your generosity."
There are still sections of "Desperate Housewives" -- a live-action cartoon of comic mysteries -- that run a bit too broad and stretched out. But it's tauter than it has ever been. And for the first time in four years, I can see it for what it should be. Human.
delfman@suntimes.com
By Doug Elfman
Television Critic
Lynette got the good news that chemo was working to "clear" her cancer. She strolled outside and smiled at a black sky of white stars. Then she looked down at her garden, where she had sprinkled poison to stop a hole-digging possum.
Dead, the possum lay sprawled in a disjointed pose. Lynette (Felicity Huffman) buckled to the ground. How could she have done this?
"I'm sorry," she sobbed to the possum.
It's called quiet desperation, this feeling of Lynette's. And after all these years, "Desperate Housewives" finally, finally humanizes it.
What took so long? I know the answers. It's been overly cutesy and stupidly soapy. Inherently, it still is that, for good portions. But this is the melodrama's best season, following its worst.
It's hard to believe but it's true: In the past, the show's worst enemy has been its music score. This season, though, it's rarer to hear plucky, upbeat pizzicato destroying the hard, humanizing work of actors.
There have been bad exceptions. Early in this very season, Dana Delany (as Katherine) did some heavy-lifting acting in a tearful party scene that could have played sad. But jokey orchestral strings stomped all over her, projecting to the viewer that: "Everything will be just fine, nothing low to see here."
Even so, the show is stronger than before. What else has improved? Most things, especially the scripts (love the new gay neighbors) and the acting (especially Huffman, Ricardo Chavira, Kyle MacLachlan, Eva Longoria and Dana Delany).
Perhaps as a result, "Desperate Housewives" is experiencing a resurgence in ratings and critical praise.
It's hard not to also credit three narrative threads defining the season so far -- a darker tone, a political parable about a homeowners' association and well-thought-out liberal undertones.
Compare "Desperate" to a few other dark shows. As a stranger told me at a party recently, TV is focusing on evil, particularly "Dexter" (a serial killer) and "Reaper" (guys who do good deeds for Satan).
But "Desperate" can be the most morbid series on TV. I've seen nothing more disturbing this year than the decline and death of Katherine's Aunt Lillian.
While Lillian went bed-ridden at Katherine's house, the niece really just wanted her aunt to perish, since Lillian intended to spill a nasty secret to Katherine's daughter.
As Lillian pleaded for help, Katherine shut Lillian's door, and there she gasped gruesomely for breath and for a chance to confess from her deathbed.
The camera focused quietly on Lillian, slipping slowly into a lonely, depressing last descent. It was really nasty.
"It occurred to Lillian, death couldn't come quickly enough," the "Desperate" narrator said beforehand. "This thought came to her niece, as well." (The lack of an uptempo music score helped sell the scene.)
Katherine is evil-ish. But "Desperate Housewives" implies, and I agree, that the real cherry pits of evil are the homeowners' association and the murderous, adulterous members. For three years, housewives made friends and enemies by geography. Upping the ante, Katherine reinstated their defunct association, won its presidency and set out to crack down on Lynette's kids' innocent tree house, plus a waterfall sculpture in another yard. Lynette vowed to take down Katherine, that "jack-booted hausfrau." The association election temporarily split Lynette's friendship with Susan. And for a while, the homeowners' association was, no doubt, a mechanical microcosm of heartless politics.
If this sounds like a liberal premise, you're right. "Desperate Housewives," one of the most-watched shows among suburbanites in homeowners' associations, veers left.
Not only did Lynette get emotional comeuppance for killing the possum, she had to be shown in a crazed state of mind asking icy Republican Bree for gun advice regarding the possum. Bree suggested she buy a little rifle at a store -- next to a Baptist church.
When Lynette's mom snuck marijuana into her brownies, it was for comic effect, not for just-say-no messages.
And the gay couple arrives in an era when the right vilifies homosexual families. One neighbor was chastised for criticizing "the gays."
Meanwhile, gay humor is doubling as a satire of acceptance in suburbia. Susan (Teri Hatcher) tripped over herself trying to welcome the gay men, saying she was familiar with "you folks" because she watches cable TV.
The couple, Lee (Kevin Rahm) and Bob (Tuc Watkins) are portrayed not as outsiders so much, but as equal wits, so they snipe at Susan just like the others do.
"Neighbor," Lee said, rejecting a perhaps allergy-inducing gift from Susan, "why don't you take your store-bought, warmed-up, possibly poisonous cookie bars and give them to someone more likely to survive your generosity."
There are still sections of "Desperate Housewives" -- a live-action cartoon of comic mysteries -- that run a bit too broad and stretched out. But it's tauter than it has ever been. And for the first time in four years, I can see it for what it should be. Human.
delfman@suntimes.com
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