Sunday fare

It's a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon, good times all around--J.Lo watching football with the (non-crying!) baby, a potato chips and ranch dip snack, pajama pants--and I thought to myself, what better a day than to discuss my current thoughts on Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives, when it first aired in 2004 , was one of those shows I really, really wanted to like, but was just *eh* about. After a few episodes I stopped watching regularly, even though friends and coworkers really seemed to get into it. After the first season ended, I did catch up, watching most of the episodes on tapes borrowed from a friend. The second season, I felt compelled to watch because I was by then sucked in enough to the characters' stories, but I have to admit it was one of the least popular shows on my DVRroll. For a show that aired on Sunday, I always took until at least Friday to watch it, and that was after I had watched everything else. Like, oh, I guess I better watch this ep before the next one airs and I get too behind. There was just no hurry.

The most interesting thing to me about Desperate Housewives is, for as funny and smart as the writing is, I never feel particularly invested in any of the characters' lives. I mean, every once in a great while, like when Gabby fell down the stairs and miscarried, I'll feel a flicker of emotion, like mmm, that's sad. But mostly, I just don't care who is in a relationship with whom, which character is backstabbing another, etc. I watch, and I'm entertained when I watch, enough so that I'll continue to watch. I was thinking that maybe because it's a comedy rather than a drama, that sort of edge-of-your seat tension in all the romantic plotlines just isn't there? But I think about other comedies on TV right now, and I definitely care that Carla and Turk are still married, that Lily and Marshall are currently on the outs, that Jim moved away from Pam even though she broke her engagement with Roy. But which guy Susan on DH is currently involved with? Nope, don't care. Whether Carlos and Gabby really belong together and will work it out in the end? Nope, not really. And I don't know why that is.

I have to say, there is a definite hierachy with the Desperate Housewives ladies--the characters, not the actors--for who is more appealing than whom. Currently, in the third season, it is:
1. Lynette. I more enjoy Lynette not because she's the harried working mom, but more because out of the four ladies, she sees the most likely to exist in the real world. She's levelheaded, sarcastic, more understated than the other four. She also seems to show a soft spot every now and then that's a nice match with her harder edges.
2. Gabby. Gabrielle is a total diva, a super-thin ex-model into luxury, and I totally can't relate to her at all. However, she always fights for what she wants and throws an entertaining fit.
3. Bree. She's so Stepford Wife, and yet, especially lately, she's coming to know her own flaws, particularly with the way she's raised her kids, which makes her super-interesting. Also, there's something so creepily appealing about the hair and the pearls and that knife-wielding smile. This season, too, she's married to Orson, whom I will forever think of as Charlotte's Trey, and they do have that same perfect veneer with a dark undercurrent thing going, although on DH, the darkness is obviously much more disturbing. Orson killed his first wife, and also, for reasons unknown, hit-and-ran Mike. Hmmm.
4. Edie. Edie is bitchy, doesn't quite fit in with the other four, and is underused on the show overall. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother to include her in all the promotional shots, other than that she adds some more blonde to the page. I like her though, and definitely more than-
5. Susan. Eeesh, I really do not enjoy Susan. And I want to. I like Teri Hatcher, she will forever be They're real and they're fabulous from Seinfeld. Or Lois on the Superman with Dean Cain. I can ignore the Radio Shack days, I can. And I don't totally despise her character on DH, but damn, she's such a...dimwit? It's like her character takes the dash of wackiness that should define Desperate Housewives' flavor and instead dumps in the whole jar. Too stupid, too much. I mostly want to kick her in shins. I agree that part of DH's appeal is that the characters are all flawed, and that their actions are many times over-the-top, often what we wish wish we could do rather than what we'd actually do. But the way Susan bounces from Mike to her ex-husband, back to Mike, and then over to this other guy who's waiting for his wife to wake from a coma--and then is just so damn flaky about it all. She's wicked retahded, is all I'm saying.

This season, I have actually been watching my DVR'd ep of DH on Mondays, and I even look forward to it. Maybe I'm interested to see what will happen with Trey, or maybe a lot of weight was lifted off the show now that they've ended that nowhere plot with the mentally ill stalker guy whose mom locked him up in the basement in order to save him from jail. And we haven't really heard too much about Zack and all that crap, which will probably change now that Mike is awake from his coma. I'm definitely enjoying how Edie is choosing to recreate Mike's memories and mess with Susan for the hell of it. Anyway, whatever they're doing this season, it seems to be making up for last year's Emmy slump.