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{{
[[File:DesperateHousewives.jpg|frame]]
Not a porn mag, but a US TV drama.
Bored wives in [[Suburbia]] experience unrealistic drama in their lives after the suicide of their friend.
Notable for its combination [[Narrator]]/
Basically a comedic [[Soap Opera|soap]], which means that unlike a regular soap, this program is funny and has interesting plotlines. However, the situations are often just as ridiculous and the relationships and plots just as hopelessly tangled-up and interwoven as any old-fashioned soap (though ''unlike'' daytime soaps, the fast pace tends to leave many confused if they miss a couple of episodes - probably why the [[Clip Show
Owing to creator Marc Cherry's penchant for comedy, the series pokes fun at itself and its characters about as often as it takes them seriously, probably the number one thing that attracted most of its initial viewership, aside from the fact that it throws vicious, subversive holes in the ideas of suburban paradise and maternal bliss. In fact, ratings dropped after [[Executive Meddling]] caused the second season to be more "dramatic" (read: melodramatic) leading to the panicked execs basically saying "OK, OK we'll go back to doing more comedy again, Marc. You win." Ratings apparently improved again after that point.
Think ''[[Sex and
You get all that?
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Has a [[Desperate Housewives/Characters|Character Sheet]]. Feel free to contribute.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Affably Evil]]:
** Dave Williams/
* [[Alphabetical Theme Naming]] / [[Letter Motif]]: Lynette's kids; Porter, Parker, Preston,Penny, and Paige. Paige's twin, a baby Tom and Lynette lost, was to be named Patrick.
* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: Gabrielle once tries to convince Carlos that she has "sexsomnia". Probably fewer than ten percent watching the show know [[wikipedia:Sleep sex|it's a real condition]].
* [[Amicably Divorced]]: Susan and Karl during the third season. And after the first season their relationship went from toxic to a snarky competitiveness than anything.
* [[Asshole Victim]]: {{spoiler|Irina, Preston's Russian fiancee}}.
** {{spoiler|Martha Huber}}.
**
* [[Badass Bystander]]: No one seemed to expect that the psychopathic gun toting hostage holder in
* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: {{spoiler|Dave Williams from
* [[Big Bad]]: One for every season.
** Season 1:
** Season 2:
** Season 3:
** Season 4: Wayne Davis, Katherine's bitter [[Corrupt Cop]] ex-husband.
** Season 5: Dave Williams.
** Season 6: Patrick Logan, Angie's ex-husband.
** Season 7:
** The Final Season notably averts this, using [[Big Bad Ensemble|several different characters]] during different arcs of the last season.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The finale has Mary Alice funnily explain the peaceful destinies of the housewives,
** Get's worse when Jennifer, the new owner of Susan's house, is revealed to have a terrible secret of her own.
* [[Blond Guys Are Evil]]: {{spoiler|Dave Williams again}}.
* [[Blood Spattered Innocents]]: In
* [[Bratty Teenage Daughter]]: Played straight with Danielle, averted with Julie.
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Everyone gets this treatment at one point or another during the show, but Bree and Tom Scavo appear to be the go-to characters for when the writers need something horrible to happen to a character.
** Susan gets her fair share of this also, to the point where the other housewives don't bat an eyelid when they find out she's in trouble yet again.
* [[The Chew Toy]]: Lynette. Lynette has, among other things, had a plethora of uncontrollable children who constantly make her life even harder, was shot in a hostage situation after finding out her husband has a love-child, is diagnosed with cancer and once cured from cancer there is a tornado which buries her family in rubble, then framed for abuse by her stepdaughter, then a whole load of personal hell... then she gets into a divorce with her husband of 20 or so years..
** Lee as well.
** Susan, too, with everything's that happened to her.
* [[Crazy Jealous Guy]]: Carlos over Gabrielle in Season 1. She ''was'' cheating on him, but he ended up physically assaulting the wrong man twice (both of them turning out to be gay) and getting a prison sentence for it.
* [[Creepy Child]]: Kayla.
* [[The Ditz]]: Susan.
* [[Evil Matriarch]]: Orson's mother.
* [[Fag Hag]]: When Bob and Lee move in, Susan is excited to become this. Though this only irritates them and cause them to seriously dislike her. By
* [[Floorboard Failure]]: Susan managed to suspend herself between two floors when it happened to her in her house.
* [[Four-Girl Ensemble]]: The original housewives, Bree, Susan, Lynette and Gabby.
* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]: Susan is sanguine, Bree is melancholic, Lynette is phlegmatic and Gabrielle is choleric.
** The husbands qualifies as well: Orson is melancholic, Carlos is choleric, Tom is sanguine and Mike is phlegmatic.
* [[Gold Digger]]: Preston Scavo's fiancée, Irina.
* [[Housewife]]: It's in the title.
* [[Huge Guy, Tiny Girl]]: Carlos is a big hot blooded bruiser, and Gabrielle is so small that ''anyone'' can pick her up over their shoulder, and in one episode was able to quickly hide herself inside a small travel bag and carried around discretely.
** Makes you wonder how she became a model at all, considering models are usually super-tall; runway models are 5'10" at a minimum. It can be assumed that Gabrielle was some other type of model, perhaps a petite model or catalogue model.
*** Indeed, being tall isn't a prerequisite for many men's magazines/
* [[Impoverished Patrician]]: Carlos and Gabrielle spend the majority of
** In
* [[Ivy League for Everyone]]: Every one of the families seem to be able to sneak their kids into the same incredibly exclusive and expensive private school. Though Lynette every now and then mentions the financial troubles with it, and Susan manages to get MJ in by getting employed as a teacher's assistant.
* [[Jerk
* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: Most episodes have a title taken from a line of, or the title of, a song from a [[Stephen Sondheim]] musical.
* [[Little Miss Snarker]]: Julie in the earlier seasons.
* [[Mama Bear]]: Susan goes ballistic whenever a member of her family is harmed.
** Bree turns a gun on anyone who messes with her children.
* [[Mysterious Past]]: Almost everyone.
* [[Near-Death Clairvoyance]]: Mary Alice.
* [[Nosy Neighbor]]: Martha Huber. And to a lesser extent, virtually everyone else on the block. Don't worry, she gets her comeuppance.
* [[Pair the Spares]]: Carlos and Edie, Mike and Katherine and since the
* [[Put
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: Eddie's sudden death in Season 5 was
* [[Rich Bitch]]: Gabrielle, who also gets her comeuppance.
* [[Scars Are Forever]]: Angie has a horrific looking burn scar on her back, which she got
** Season 8's subplot
* [[Sensual Slavs]]: Again, Irina.
* [[Shock Value Relationship]]: Andrew and Justin.
* [[Spotlight-Stealing Squad]]: The cover[http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51IfLnIErtL._SL500_AA300_.jpg of Season Seven's DVD] blatantly has Renee standing center stage while all of the main characters are off in the background. Despite the fact that she was only introduced that very season, and was in no way had an important role or was even involved in that season's story arc.
** Susan was this for the first season, to the point where she could have been the main character.
* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Bree, an apparently OCD woman who probably carries at least half of the "domestic bliss" satire.
* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: Renee, who has an identical personality to Edie, wears similar clothes to her, and lives in the same house.
* [[Token Minority]]: The Applewhite family, eliminated after the audience failed to take to them. To a lesser extent, Gabby and Carlos, though they were there from the start.
* [[Took a Level
== Episode-Specific Tropes ==
* [[Aesop Amnesia]]: In
▲* [[Aesop Amnesia]]: In season five, Tom and Lynette kept going through the same loop--Tom wants to do something wild, Lynette disapproves, Tom whines about how he never gets a chance to do anything, Lynette tries to put a stop to what he is doing, the two reach a compromise, and resolve to be more understanding of each other's wishes...only to go through the ''exact same situation'' yet ''again'' a few episodes later.
* [[All Psychology Is Freudian]]
* [[Alone
* [[Amoral Attorney]]: What Karl is revealed to be.
** Subverted with Bob who legitimately cares about his clients.
* [[And I Must Scream]]: Orson's mother, who suffered a stroke and no longer is able to move or speak, but still has a fully functioning mind.
* [[Birth-Death Juxtaposition]]: The series finale spliced scenes of Julie's baby being born with Mrs. McKlusky succumbing to cancer.
* [[Brief Accent Imitation]]: Gabrielle's hilarious imitation of Angie in the hospital
** Also in Season Seven, after {{spoiler|Gabby calls the
* [[Cat Fight]]: Gabrielle vs. a nun, Susan vs. Edie, Gabrielle vs. Edie etc.
* [[Comically Small Bribe]]: Gabrielle tries to bribe a nurse into letting her into a patient's room... with twelve dollars. But then remembers she needs to pay for parking and brings the bribe down to two dollars.
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* [[Dead Man's Chest]]
* [[Death of the Hypotenuse]] / [[Murder the Hypotenuse]]: Often.
* [[Dropped a Bridge
* [[Family Relationship Switcheroo]]: Bree sent her pregnant daughter to a convent and pretended to be pregnant herself. She actually managed to get away with it... for a while. Eventually everyone who mattered found out by the end of the season and {{spoiler|Danielle took the baby back between seasons}}. Note that the use of this trope was a deliberate anachronism; the show is a comedy, after all.
* [[Finger-Twitching Revival]]: Subverted. {{spoiler|Edie}} is accidentally electrocuted, falls down, then we get a close up of the Twitching Hand right before the credits. The following episode starts with the character already cremated.
** Of course, "already cremated" means that there was no body. But it never went anywhere.
* [[The Fun in Funeral]]: Rex's funeral, indescribably wrong and weirdly funny.
* [[Gosh Hornet]]: In Season 2, when Edie winds up disturbing a yellow jackets' nest and is stung pretty badly. Its left up to the audience whether this is dramatic or hilarious.
* [[Here We Go Again]]:
* [[Impaled
* [[Incest Is Relative]]: In
* [[Jerkass Has a Point]]: Mrs. Huber's sister spent season two trying to turn the neighbors against Paul and have him arrested for murder, and repeatedly attempted to kill him. We seem to be intended to feel sorry for him, but it's sort of hard considering he actually ''is'' a murderer who had been getting away with everything he did in the past.
* [[Naked in Mink]] Bree to Orson.
* [[Naughty Nurse Outfit]] and [[Sexual Roleplay]] in general.
* [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]]: Nora, when trying to seduce Tom by supporting his idea of enterprise, from Lynette, who was critical about it.
* [[Room Full of Crazy]]: The episode "If..." features Gabby having a nightmare where she becomes [[My Beloved Smother]] to Celia, causing Carlos to leave her, slowly loose her [[Sanity Slippage|grip on reality]] and living off ''food-stamps'' in her house with the walls covered in newspaper clippings.
* [[Season Finale]] / [[Wham! Episode]]: Usually involving a death and/or disaster.
* [[Teen Pregnancy]]: Danielle in Season 3/4.
* [[Treehouse of Fun]]: Lynette's kids briefly have a tree house in their yard for them to hang out in, though its destroyed in a tornado a few episodes later.
* [[Two-Person Pool Party]]:
* [[Verbal Tic]]: Mary Alice has a fondness of constantly beginning a narration with "Yes..."
* [[Victim Falls For Rapist]]/[[Black Comedy Rape]]: If you want to have a baby with your ex-husband (and thereby force him back into marriage with you), just drug him and rape him! And make sure you do the reveal with the wife realizing what was done to her husband by his ex by having her use the "R" word in an over the top fashion.
* [[Visit
*
* [[Whole Costume Reference]]: One episode opens with Gabrielle wearing [[The Sims|Bella Goth's dress]].
* [[Why Did You Make Me Hit You?]]
* [[Worthless Foreign Degree]]: A house cleaner teaches Juanita while she's being home schooled. She had a doctorate in engineering from the University of Bucharest.
* [[Wounded Gazelle Gambit]]: Kayla attempted this in the last few episodes of
* [[Yandere]]:
** Katherine seems to be treading a fine line between this and being a [[Stalker
* [[Acceptable Feminine Roles]]: Underlying the whole show is this.
* [[The Adventure Continues]]: The last scene and ending narration indicate that although the main characters will all eventually leave Wisteria Lane and never really meet again, life there will go on its merry way without them.
* [[Anyone Can Die]]
* [[Arc Words]]: As of
* [[Artifact Title]]: All four leads have been non-housewives at some point on the show (Lynette by virtue of having a paying job, the other three by virtue of not being married). Currently, Bree is unmarried and Lynette is
* [[Between My Legs]]: Seen in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60VTZE5nNP0
* [[Book Ends]]: Mary Alice always voices a remark after the title and before the episode ends, though with the events that occur during the episode, the meaning changes drastically, inadvertently becoming [[Darker and Edgier]].
** Mixed with a [[Brick Joke]]
* [[Brother Chuck]]: Mike's dog Bongo was an important character in the early episodes but has not been seen or mentioned since mid-
* [[Closet Shuffle]]: Several times every season. But special points go to Gabby from escaping her lover's room by hiding in a very small suitcase.
* [[Darker and Edgier]]: Season 2, which gradually became more melodramatic.
* [[Derailing Love Interests]]: Orson in
▲* [[Derailing Love Interests]]: Orson in season 5, though he got back on the rails in season 6.
* [[Double Standard]]: The very different treatment of Paul Young and {{spoiler|Mary Alice}} who are eventually revealed to have committed the exact same crimes. {{spoiler|Murderer and kidnapper Mary Alice is remembered with nothing but fondness by the four main female cast}} while Paul was shunned from very early on.
** Paul had difficulty with acting as if he didn't have something to hide - he {{spoiler|tore out his pool to remove the body of the woman his wife killed}} in the middle of the night and was dubbed CreePaul by [[Television Without Pity]]. Compare that to Mary Alice, who was extremely adept at playing like nothing was wrong.
** While perfectly true this would suggest that the Housewives should be even ''more'' creeped by Mary Alice than by Paul in retrospect, if she could so easily have created a facade. Whenever she is mentioned it is as Mary Alice 'our dear friend who took her life' rather than Mary Alice '{{spoiler|the murderer and kidnapper}} who had us all fooled'.
*** The suicide may have played a role in this : Mary Alice regretted her acts, while Paul never did, as far as we know. Also,
* [[Ephebophile]]: Gabrielle had an on-again-off-again tryst with her gardener since he was about 17 years old. Thanks to being played by a visibly grown man, it's easy to forget he's supposed to be a teenager.
* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Most of the guys, but [[Handsome Lech|Karl]], [[Hot Dad|Carlos]], [[Badass|Mike]] and Danny (for the younger girls) stand out the most.▼
▲* [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin]]
* [[Fan Service]]: There is a very large amount of male-oriented
▲* [[Family Business]]: The Scavo pizzeria which {{spoiler|may finally be dead}}.
** Check out [http://www.celebdirtylaundry.com/2008/09/24/desperate-housewives-tv-guide-50s-style-shoot/ this promotional piece for TV guide] which has the Housewives dress in sexy [[The Fifties|Fifties]] pin-up style fashions: a literal housewife (Katherine), [[The Vamp|Vamp]] (Susan), sexy teacher (Lynette), [[Hot Mom]] (Bree), [[Brainless Beauty|airhead]] (Gabrielle) and another housewife
▲* [[Fan Service]]: There is a very large amount of male-oriented fanservice for a show aimed at women. Eva Longoria Parker, anyone?
▲** Check out [http://www.celebdirtylaundry.com/2008/09/24/desperate-housewives-tv-guide-50s-style-shoot/ this promotional piece for TV guide] which has the Housewives dress in sexy [[The Fifties|Fifties]] pin-up style fashions: a literal housewife (Katherine), [[The Vamp|Vamp]] (Susan), sexy teacher (Lynette), [[Hot Mom]] (Bree), [[Brainless Beauty|airhead]] (Gabrielle) and another housewife [Edie).
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: The series is downright ''infamous'' for the amount of innuendo it has managed to slip right past the ABC censors, to the point where it could very well have its own page.
* [[Good Adultery, Bad Adultery]]: To list all examples of both the good ''and'' bad adultery on this show would be madness, but Bree enters grey territory.
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* [[Love Dodecahedron]]: Oh, where do we start? Bree had an affair with Karl, who's divorced from Susan, who's married to Mike, who once dated Edie, who almost got pregnant by Carlos, who's been twice married to Gaby, who had a blind date with Zach, who had a crush on Julie, who got pregnant by Porter...
* [[Love Makes You Crazy]]: Edie attempting ''suicide'' over a man.
* [[Modern Stasis]]: Post [[Time Skip]] the show is set roughly five years in the future (confirmed in Season 7 dialogue with Bree referencing the events of a 2006 episode as taking place "9 years ago
* [[Mood Whiplash]]:
** With almost every episode ending on a dramatic note, the ending music never fails to be perky. Also see [[Book Ends]].
** The show often juxtaposes scenes of differing moods (serious, comical, dramatic, emotional, contemplative, surreal, etc
▲* [[Mr. Fanservice]]: Most of the guys, but [[Handsome Lech|Karl]], [[Hot Dad|Carlos]], [[Badass|Mike]] and Danny (for the younger girls) stand out the most.
* [[Necro Non Sequitur]]: Many characters' deaths or injuries are like this, where previous scenes set-up the death of the characters. These tend to occur in the middle and the end of a season, and oftentimes storylines intersect with each other to provide the proper circumstances. ▼
* [[Narrator]]: Mary Alice.
** Edie narrates the episode following
** {{spoiler|Rex Van de Kamp did it first after his own death
▲* [[Necro Non Sequitur]]: Many characters' deaths or injuries are like this, where previous scenes set-up the death of the characters. These tend to occur in the middle and the end of a season, and oftentimes storylines intersect with each other to provide the proper circumstances.
* [[No Bisexuals]]: According to the characters on the show, if Katherine admits she's attracted to women, it means she must forsake her attraction to men entirely. It's impossible to like both, apparently.
* [[Obnoxious In-Laws]]
* [[Out of Focus]]: Bree spends virtually half of season3 on a freakishly long honeymoon.▼
* [[Out-of-Genre Experience]]: The [[Disaster Movie|disaster]] episodes are often quite of a different tone from the rest of the show.
** In the episode
** Season 4 has the episode
** Season 5 has
** Season 6 has
** Season 7 has
* [[Pretty in Mink]]: A few furs show up, notably the sable coat Bree wore to try to get Rex back. [[Hilarity Ensues]]
* [[Prison]]: Three of the four main husbands have done time there.
* [[Stepford Suburbia]]
* [[Story Arc]]: Investigation of Mary Alice's past... among other things. The number of ''subplot'' arcs in this show can make your head spin.
▲* [[The Adventure Continues]]: The last scene and ending narration indicate that although the main characters will all eventually leave Wisteria Lane and never really meet again, life there will go on its merry way without them.
* [[Time Skip]]: The fourth season finale.
* [[True Love Is Boring]]: Mike and Susan run afoul of this trope multiple times. Tom and Lynette as well.
* [[Twist Ending]]: The show tries, but over time the twists have became easier and easier to spot, the worst being
** In Season 5, it is explicitly stated from the start that
* [[The Unfair Sex]]: The females get away with crap that would get them put to death if they were males. {{spoiler|Like throwing your spouse out a upstairs window because they caught you trying to con them out of all their money. And no, it never gets mentioned again}}.
* [[What Happened to
* [[Writers Cannot Do Math]]: Trust us, it does not always take very long for the [[Fridge Logic]] to set in when you realize how much time has supposedly passed in between episodes, especially with the children's birthdays and ages. For example, Juanita is a year older than MJ, even though the episode where he was born happened before Gabby knew she was pregnant. Then there's Eddie, who seems to be the same age as the Scavo twins yet went to high school with Danielle, who was a teenager when the twins were little kids.
** The Scavo twins were explicitly stated as being 8 in the
* [[Zany Scheme]]: All the housewives like to cook up one quite often - with varying degrees of success...
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Steve Kramer]]
[[Category:Prime Time Soap]]
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[[Category:Clip Art Animation]]
[[Category:Dramedy]]
[[Category:
[[Category:TV Series]]
|