Customer Reviews

Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season

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I bought this first season because of all the good feedbacks I was getting from my friends. Never saw it on TV but thought if my friends like it so bad, I have to like it too. Well, I didn't like it, I LOVED IT! It is so addictive! You can't just watch one episode and wait another day to watch the next one, oh no! I just don't know how people had to wait a whole week to watch the next episode. It's so great with series like this one when you can view them on DVD! You just click next, and away you go, you can watch the next episode right away! I recommend this DVD serie to anyone that likes a little drama, love, hate, comedy, etc. It's different and has something for everyone to like. I can see this show going a long way...!

Desperate Housewives was a huge hit and rightly so. It is the story of several housewives living in Wisteria Lane, an expensive American suburban street. The main characters are Susan, Lynette, Gabrielle and Bree.

Susan (Teri Hatcher) is the ditsy divorced mother with one daughter and a fancy for her hunky new neighbour. Lynette was a high flying career woman but is now tied to the home and her unruly brood of 4 children. She could cope with anything at work but has problems coping with domesticity. Gabrielle is the Latin beauty, married to Carlos who is rich enough to provide everything she could want. However it's not enough and she is having an affair with her very young gardener. Bree is perfection personified, immaculately turned out and with a house like something from ideal homes. However her husband and children cannot live up to her ideals or live with this perfection. The narrator of the whole series is Mary Alice, a friend of all the women who, in the first episode, commits suicide. The central thread of the tale is why she was driven to this and what dark secrets are hidden in the lives of the characters.

Although there is a central theme, each episode does have a `stand alone' story for the occasional viewer, but to really enjoy it at its best the series should be watched in its entirety and from the beginning. Twists and turns, murder and mayhem, love and friendship are all to be found in a series that is by turn both wickedly funny and poignant. This is TV at its best; not to be missed.

I got the DVD without watching one show on the TV. I could not stop watching it. This is a very refreshing show, nothing I have ever seen before. And... it is not true that it is only for women. There is a lot going on and the characters are well developed. I don't want to say anything about the story, but it moves along nicely and you want to know more after each episode.. I think the price is worth it, get the DVD.

This show surprised me. I didn't have high expectations; I bought it and started watching it based on recommendations by my friends. And I don't regret it! It is highly entertaining!!

This amazing mixture of malicious joy, touching slapstick, mocking eroticism or pitiful criminal involvement, established someplace between "Friends" or "Golden Girls", indeed has the strength to be a replacement for the famous "Sex and the City".
Though some Americans are indignant at it (not unmarried ladies, much worse, married women are practicing an immoral life-style; this way would undermine the "respect for men") - nevertheless (I think they judge wrongly) - this series have absolutely earned their cult status.
Eva Longoria (as Gabrielle Solis) absolutely surpasses that Denver clan witch Joan Collins in the art of men manipulating. She nonchalantly has a good time with her 18-year-old gardener John Rowland (played by the 26-year-old Jesse Metcalfe). However, she is cheated by her husband (mixing up anti baby pills) Carlos Solis (played by Ricardo Chavira), therefore she expects a baby, and nastily does not know of whom.
The story is always laid out in a manner, that the mishaps of the protagonists hardly sink the spectator into great mourning.
So Martha Huber (represented by Christine Estabrook convincingly nastily), who is disgustingly carrying out an investigation and blackmailing, but oldish but nevertheless very dangerous, is killed without further fuss by Paul Young (played by Mark Moses) - it is hardly unpardonable.
Of course Paul Young still has some more secrets:
Why his Mrs Mary Alice Young (the voice in the "offstage": Brenda Strong, earlier film: "Everwood") has committed suicide ?
Why does she live under a false name?
Has her son Zach (Cody Kasch) murdered the little daughter ("Dana")?
Do they have sunk the corpse in the lake or really still another person (dismembered)?
The problems of Lynette Scavo are comparatively harmless (played by Felicity Huffman, earlier film: "Sports" Night):
She is troubled with 4 children (2 of them are rather ineducable twins) - for example in front of everyone she (in a precious party evening dress) had to drag her noisy kids out of a swimming pool.
Of course her husband Tom Scavo (played by Doug Savant) does not reward her efforts adequately.
A substantially more complicated show is given by the red-haired conservative, the prudish one "Law-and-order" Bree Van De Kamp (unbelievably well embodied by Marcia Cross, earlier film: "Melrose Place").
At first she thinks to have everything under control by cleaning the house perfectly.
This does not suffice.
She thereupon additionally tries to get satisfied dutifully the perverted sexual habits of her husband Rex Van De Kamp (played by Steven Culp):
Nastily at a visit of a dominatrix establishment days before her husband had suffered a heart attack.
The requirements on Bree's super management talent are screwed always more highly in the course of the series:
Not only, that she must cope with addiction behaviors and homosexuality of her son, she also hushes the fact that this one (with an accompanying hit-and-run driving) has run over an older woman with his car (the mother of Carlos Solis, dying later in the hospital).
But to escape such gloominess and to make it easy for the spectators to stand by, there is the funny, slapstick part of Susan Mayer too, a sort of princess of the "faux pas" (played by Teri Hatcher, she has got the "Golden Globe" for this).
However the plumber Mike Delfino, gazed adoringly by her, is not a plumber (but he became entangled in private investigations (played by James Denton).
But it's funny to see him find Susan either locked out stark-nakedly in her front garden or hanging desperately in the ceiling in a broken hole even in his own house .
"Sex and the City" quite a lot concerned with shoes and other Life style articles.
"Desperate Housewives" (= DH) satisfies our own longing for mockery and malicious joy and the wish of having the strength to overcome awkward situations;
It helps us to compare and to relativize marriage problems humorously.
In short: DH makes our life easier.
Marc Cherry, who has created this enviably witty plot (he was involved in the works to "Golden Girls") has done a good service not only for the spectators but also for himself: Once he had burned down financially so much, that he had to borrow money from his mother; but later on up to 30 millions Americans switched on his TV series running at ABC.
Thirdly, Marc Cherry also has given some actresses an enormous second chance:
Teri Hatcher (one hardly blames "Susan" that she burned down the house of her rival Edie Britt (played by Nicolette Sheridan) -
Teri Hatcher waited for almost ten years for a connection success after her film "Lois and Clark" .
And Eva Longoria before had only a 5-minute, almost speechless listening appearance in the weak little film "Senorita Justice" .
All this lack of success is blown away - and we do not hope, that the judgement (mentioned at first) will gain acceptance, that the "respect for men" has been undermined unpardonable and scornful ...