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* [[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]] -: Reserved for plot twist moments. While most of the time they only kill off villains and B-characters no one really cares about, every once in a while they'll surprise you by killing off someone important.
* [[Arc Words]]: As of seasonSeason 8, the note saying {{spoiler|I know what you did, it makes me sick, I'm going to tell}}.
* [[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 {{spoiler|Separatedseparated}}.
* [[Between My Legs]]: Seen in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60VTZE5nNP0 seasonSeason 7 promo].
* [[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]] : {{spoiler|The first episode of the final season ends with a note that is word-for-word identical to the one that [[Driven to Suicide|drove Mary Alice to suicide]].}}.
* [[Brother Chuck]]: Mike's dog Bongo was an important character in the early episodes but has not been seen or mentioned since mid-seasonSeason 2.
* [[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 seasonSeason 5, though he got back on the rails in seasonSeason 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, seasonSeason sevenSeven has made him cross the [[Moral Event Horizon]] ''much'' deeper than Mary Alice ever had.
* [[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.
* [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]
* [[Family Business]]: The Scavo pizzeria which {{spoiler|may finally be dead}}.
* [[Fan Service]]: There is a very large amount of male-oriented fanservicefan service 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.). 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|humorous]] [[Zany Scheme|antic]] (sometimes while playing [[Mystery Fiction|detective]]), only to reveal [[Beneath the Mask|deep trauma]] or a [[Nightmare Fuel|disturbing fact]] with another character. It is also not uncommon for a sequence of dramatic scenes serving as a set-up for a disastrous...
* [[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.
* [[Narrator]]: Mary Alice.
** Edie narrates the episode following {{spoiler|her own death.}}.
** {{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]] -: Every single mother-in-law on the show, without exception.
* [[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 ''"Bang!''" in Season 3, {{spoiler|Carolyn Bigsby}} snaps and takes the people in a local supermarket [[Hostage Situation|hostage]]. The episode is also peppered with Lynette having [[Recurring Dreams]] of Mary Alice.
** Season 4 has the episode ''"Something's Coming''" has a storm coming to Wisteria Lane. This episode provides an example of [[Necro Non Sequitur]].
** 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 Focus]]: Bree spends virtually half of season3Season 3 on a freakishly long honeymoon.
* [[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.
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* [[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 seasonSeason 5, when everyone had the whole mystery figured after the first episode. Season 6 finally was able to pull off a surprise when it came to {{spoiler|Patrick's demise}} thanks to red herrings and misleading spoilers.
** In Season 5, it is explicitly stated from the start that {{spoiler|Dave is planning to kill Mike}}, so the tension of this Seasonseason comes from [[Dramatic Irony]], we watch as he gets close to the main characters, always knowing his motive.
* [[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 seasonSeason 3 finale. This would mean that they would be 9 at the end of seasonSeason 4, then 14 at the beginning of seasonSeason 5, due to the five-year jump. However, Lynette says in the seasonSeason 5 premiere that they're 16.
* [[Zany Scheme]]: All the housewives like to cook up one quite often - with varying degrees of success...
 
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