Desperate Housewives turns 20 - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 10-03-2024, 08:08 PM

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...ate-housewives

Marc Cherry's hit ABC mystery dramedy series kicked off its eight-season, 180-episode 2004-2012 run on Oct. 3, 2004. "To the start and watch it again for the first time since it ended is to catapult oneself back to an entirely different era," says Rebecca Nicholson, adding: “Desperate Housewives’ sense of humour fixes it firmly to the pinboard of the early 00s. It is jauntily satirical, and unselfconsciously outrageous, in a way that simply would not exist in the current age of discourse. I had somehow forgotten that the whole thing opens with Mary Alice (Brenda Strong) repainting a lawn chair then shooting herself in the head, for reasons so fantastically absurd that it is worth marvelling at how they thought they would get away with it. But it sustained its devotion to excess for 180 episodes, and excess was, mostly, the point. The episodes boomerang between farce and high drama, between tragedy, pratfalls and comic nudity. ‘It’s like my grandmother always said: an erect penis doesn’t have a conscience,’ says Gabrielle, early on, to give a taste of its many bon mots. It is easy to see the problems with it retrospectively, just as Friends, for example, is regularly pulled up for jokes that wouldn’t pass muster today." But, adds Nicholson, "for all of its 'I can’t believe they went there' moments (and there are many of those), it has a lightness of touch. It meanders, it backs itself into narrative cul de sacs and at times it flails around as if the lights have been switched off, but it has the feel of a frothy pleasure."

10-03-2024, 08:08 PM	#1
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 125,136	Desperate Housewives turns 20 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...ate-housewives Marc Cherry's hit ABC mystery dramedy series kicked off its eight-season, 180-episode 2004-2012 run on Oct. 3, 2004. "To the start and watch it again for the first time since it ended is to catapult oneself back to an entirely different era," says Rebecca Nicholson, adding: “Desperate Housewives’ sense of humour fixes it firmly to the pinboard of the early 00s. It is jauntily satirical, and unselfconsciously outrageous, in a way that simply would not exist in the current age of discourse. I had somehow forgotten that the whole thing opens with Mary Alice (Brenda Strong) repainting a lawn chair then shooting herself in the head, for reasons so fantastically absurd that it is worth marvelling at how they thought they would get away with it. But it sustained its devotion to excess for 180 episodes, and excess was, mostly, the point. The episodes boomerang between farce and high drama, between tragedy, pratfalls and comic nudity. ‘It’s like my grandmother always said: an erect penis doesn’t have a conscience,’ says Gabrielle, early on, to give a taste of its many bon mots. It is easy to see the problems with it retrospectively, just as Friends, for example, is regularly pulled up for jokes that wouldn’t pass muster today." But, adds Nicholson, "for all of its 'I can’t believe they went there' moments (and there are many of those), it has a lightness of touch. It meanders, it backs itself into narrative cul de sacs and at times it flails around as if the lights have been switched off, but it has the feel of a frothy pleasure."