DESPERATE no more
After eight years, the Housewives say goodbye
In last week’s 178th episode, the penultimate episode of Desperate Housewives’ eight-year run of desperation and smashed dishes, Marcia Cross’s character, Bree, with her trial looming, began to fall for her attorney, Trip, played by guest star Scott Bakula.
Susan’s (Teri Hatcher) daughter, Julie (Andrea Bowen), was beset by new doubts over her babydaddy’s commitment to be a hands-on father to their unborn child.
Lynette (Felicity Huffman) began to have second thoughts about her soonto-be ex-husband being transferred to India for his job. And Gabby (Eva Longoria) shocked the other housewives with her seeming indifference to Bree’s fate, even though Bree was poised to take the fall for Gaby’s husband’s complicity in murder.
Clearly, when Desperate Housewives ends for good — with a two-hour finale Sunday — the real world will go on. Wisteria Lane will still live on in fans’ minds, though, as Desperate Housewives ascends into rerun heaven.
There will be closure of a kind, even if every loose end isn’t tied up in a neat bow-and-ribbon. Smashed dishes can be difficult to put back together, after all.
Despite the behind-thescenes soap opera — that infamous Vanity Fair photo shoot; the alleged racial slur in a fourth-season episode that provoked a crossborder uproar; the real-life court trial involving Desperate creator Marc Cherry and one-time cast member Nicollette Sheridan, etc. — Cherry, Huffman, Longoria, Cross and Hatcher seemed to be in a mellow, philosophical mood when they faced reporters earlier this year, for one last time together.
“What’s amazing to me,” Cherry said, “is that all these years I would come in on Monday mornings and have the weirdest idea, and just pitch it, and sometimes everyone would just go, ‘Yeah!’ I feel so fulfilled because I’ve gotten to work out so many of my family history issues on the show. God bless our dysfunctional souls. It’s been a joy.”
Cherry admitted one of his secret desires from the beginning was to appear in an unbilled cameo in the series finale.
“I’m going to do a Hitchcock, yes,” Cherry said, half in jest. “And the hair and makeup people will go through more hell that day than they’ve ever gone through with this cast — just so you know.”
The finale will have strong echoes of the pilot episode, which originally aired on Oct. 3, 2004.
“People keep asking me if it’s a little bittersweet, and I go, ‘No, it’s completely bittersweet,’ ” Cherry said. “Because I’m smart enough to know, when I started this — this is my 23rd year as a professional writer — there’s no such thing as a job that goes on forever. All good things come to an end.”
Cherry said when it was known this season would be the last, the writers made a point to watch that first episode together again, to make sure they were on the same page from Day 1 of the final season.
“We wanted to view this season as a bookend to that iconic first season and first episode,” Cherry said. “I’ve had the last act in my head for seven-and-a-half years, and that’s absolutely what we’re going to do. What’s cool is that, the day I shared it with the writers — I had been keeping it to myself — they started adding things. It definitely got better. But the last act, absolutely, I’ve had it down for quite a while, now.”
In a moment of feigned weakness, Huffman admitted she and Doug Savant, her onscreen husband, argued about their characters behind-the-scenes.
“So life imitated art, imitated life,” Huffman said. “It’s been interesting because in the eighth year you get to go places you didn’t go before, and the gloves are off for the writers. It’s been true to life, though. I think that’s one of the nice things about the marriage (the writers) created. It’s true. I think 60 per cent of marriages, first marriages, end in divorce, and 80 per cent of second marriages in divorce.”
“Oh, it gets higher?” Longoria interjected. “Nobody told me that.”
Huffman admitted that, the moment the show registered in the zeitgeist, their personal lives were scrutinized more closely. The spotlight didn’t bother her, though, to a point.
“I didn’t get followed out on the street in the way that these other girls did, or anything like that.
Huffman says she’s still coming to terms with the show ending.
“You know what this is like?” she said. “This is like having the funeral before you die. Everyone gets to go, ‘You were great. We’re really going to miss you. I’m sorry you’re dying.’ And you go, ‘Thanks. I really had a great time.’ ”
Don’t expect a Desperate Housewives feature film, though.
“I’ve been asked that question before,” Cherry said. “I saw Michael Patrick King, who did Sex and the City, at the airport recently. I’ve known him a long time. We talked about it briefly. Sex and the City did a total of something like 69, 70 episodes. I always thought the advantage for them was they hadn’t really plumbed the depths of those characters.
“After eight years, boy, I think we’re done.
“And I’m happy about it. That’s not a bad thing. I feel very satisfied with where we are. I want to go out on a high. I’m just never sending these gals to Dubai — that’s all I’m saying.”