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Desperate Housewives: Difference between revisions
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[[File:DesperateHousewives.jpg|
Not a porn mag, but a US TV drama.
Bored wives in [[
Notable for its combination [[
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]] specials still proved relatively popular).
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
Think ''[[Sex and the
You get all that?
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A word of warning to those who aren't up-to-date on the latest episodes, the series is basically one string of continuous spoilers, so it is hard to detail just about anything that happens without revealing one twist or another. So be prepared for unmarked spoilers below.
Has a [[Desperate Housewives/Characters|Character
{{tropelist}}
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* [[Affably Evil]]: {{spoiler|Mary Alice, our cheerful sing-song narrator who kidnapped a baby, then later killed said baby's mother and dismembered the corpse}}.
** Dave Williams/{{spoiler|Dash}} is this. Despite what he's trying to do, he does come across as a genuinely nice guy.
* [[Alphabetical Theme
* [[Aluminum Christmas
* [[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
** {{spoiler|Martha Huber}}.
** {{spoiler|Nora Huntington}}.
* [[Badass
* [[Beware the Nice
* [[Big Bad]]: One for every season.
** Season 1: {{spoiler|Mary Alice Young}}, since she was the one who killed Deirdre.
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** Season 6: Patrick Logan, Angie's ex-husband.
** Season 7: {{spoiler|Felicia Tillman}}, as an [[Not So Different|ironic reversal]] to the situation in the first season.
** The Final Season notably averts this, using [[Big Bad Ensemble|several different
* [[Bittersweet
** 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
* [[Bratty Teenage
* [[Butt
** 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
** Lee as well.
** Susan, too, with everything's that happened to her.
* [[Crazy Jealous
* [[Creepy Child]]: Kayla.
* [[The Ditz]]: Susan.
* [[Evil Matriarch]]: Orson's mother.
* [[Fag
* [[Floorboard
* [[Four-Girl
* [[Four-Temperament
** The husbands qualifies as well: Orson is melancholic, Carlos is choleric, Tom is sanguine and Mike is phlegmatic.
* [[Gold
* [[
* [[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/glamor models (and Eva Longoria is no stranger to such spreads in real life).
* [[Impoverished
** In Season 4, Carlos sinks their savings in an embezzlement scam, and then loses the papers for the off-shore account and goes blind for 5 years, in that time having two kids. Then he gets his sight back and almost immediately gets a high-paying job.
* [[Ivy League for
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Karl, on occasion.
* [[Literary Allusion
* [[Little Miss
* [[Mama
** Bree turns a gun on anyone who messes with her children.
* [[Mysterious
* [[Near-Death
* [[Nosy
* [[Pair the
* [[Put on a
* [[Real Life Writes the
* [[Rich Bitch]]: Gabrielle, who also gets her comeuppance.
* [[Scars Are
** Season 8's subplot {{spoiler|on Karen's illness, which would later turn on a major plot point in the finale, was heavily inspired by the Kathryn Joosten's previous two experiences with cancer and her third relapse, which coincided with the filming and would cause her death just weeks after the series finale aired in May 2012}}.
* [[Sensual
* [[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
* [[Suspiciously Similar
* [[Token
* [[Took a Level in
== Episode-Specific Tropes ==
* [[Aesop
* [[All Psychology Is
* [[Alone with the
* [[Amoral
** Subverted with Bob who legitimately cares about his clients.
* [[And I Must
* [[Birth-Death
* [[Brief Accent
** Also in Season Seven, after {{spoiler|Gabby calls the immigration cops then changes her mind and pretends to be Carmen and Carmen pretends to be Gabby}}.
* [[Cat
* [[Comically Small
* [[Courtroom Antic]]: Carlos' trial.
* [[Dead Man's
* [[Death of the
* [[Dropped a Bridge on
* [[Family Relationship
* [[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
* [[Here We Go
* [[Impaled with Extreme
* [[Incest Is
* [[Jerkass Has a
* [[Naked in Mink]] Bree to Orson.
* [[Naughty Nurse
* [[Nice Job Fixing It,
* [[Room Full of
* [[Season
* [[Teen
* [[Treehouse of
* [[Two-Person Pool
* [[Verbal Tic]]: Mary Alice has a fondness of constantly beginning a narration with "Yes..."
* [[Victim Falls For
* [[Visit by Divorced Dad]]
* {{spoiler|[[Where Are They Now?
* [[Whole Costume
* [[Why Did You Make Me Hit You?]]
* [[Worthless Foreign
* [[Wounded Gazelle
* [[
** Katherine seems to be treading a fine line between this and being a [[Stalker with a Crush]]. As of the ninth episode of the sixth season, she has officially gone over into this.
== Show-Wide Tropes ==
* [[Acceptable Feminine
* [[The Adventure
* [[Anyone Can
* [[Arc
* [[Artifact
* [[Between My
* [[Book
** Mixed with a [[Brick
* [[Brother Chuck]]: Mike's dog Bongo was an important character in the early episodes but has not been seen or mentioned since mid-Season 2.
* [[Closet
* [[Darker and
* [[Derailing Love
* [[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
** 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, Season Seven has made him cross the [[Moral Event
* [[
* [[Exactly What It Says on the
* [[Family
* [[Fan
** Check out [http://www.celebdirtylaundry.com/2008/09/24/desperate-housewives-tv-guide-50s-style-shoot/ this promotional piece for TV
* [[Getting Crap Past the
* [[Good Adultery, Bad
* [[Hot
* [[Housewif[[Category:TV Series]]]
* [[Idiosyncratic Episode
* [[Lighter and
* [[Literary Allusion
* [[Love
* [[Love Makes You
* [[Modern
* [[Mood Whiplash]]:
** With almost every episode ending on a dramatic note, the ending music never fails to be perky. Also see [[Book
** The show often juxtaposes scenes of differing moods (serious, comical, dramatic, emotional, contemplative, surreal, etc). Many storylines in a single episode start off as one mood and end up in another. It is not uncommon to see one of the housewives get into some sort of extremely [[Hilarity Ensues|
* [[Mr.
* [[
** Edie narrates the episode following {{spoiler|her own death}}.
** {{spoiler|Rex Van de Kamp did it first after his own death}}.
* [[Necro Non
* [[No
* [[Obnoxious In-
* [[Out-of-Genre
** In the episode "Bang!" in Season 3, {{spoiler|Carolyn Bigsby}} snaps and takes the people in a local supermarket [[Hostage Situation|
** Season 4 has the episode "Something's Coming" has a storm coming to Wisteria Lane. This episode provides an example of [[Necro Non
** Season 5 has "City of Fire", where a tragic fire occurs in a club.
** Season 6 has "Boom Crunch", which details how a series of events [[Necro Non Sequitur|lead up]] to a [[Trainwreck Episode|plane crash]] in Wisteria Lane.
** Season 7 has "Down the Block There's a Riot", where a protest in Wisteria Lane erupts into a riot.
* [[Out of
* [[Pretty in Mink]]: A few furs show up, notably the sable coat Bree wore to try to get Rex back. [[Hilarity
* [[
* [[Stepford
* [[Story Arc]]: Investigation of Mary Alice's past... among other things. The number of ''subplot'' arcs in this show can make your head spin.
* [[Time Skip]]: The fourth season finale.
* [[True Love Is
* [[Twist
** In Season 5, it is explicitly stated from the start that {{spoiler|Dave is planning to kill Mike}}, so the tension of this season comes from [[Dramatic
* [[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 the Mouse?]]: What the heck happened to Karl's son?
* [[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 Season 3 finale. This would mean that they would be 9 at the end of Season 4, then 14 at the beginning of Season 5, due to the five-year jump. However, Lynette says in the Season 5 premiere that they're 16.
* [[Zany
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