Desperate Housewives

Okay, I can admit it. I'm a fan of the show. It's not my usual "type", but to my suprise, I do enjoy it.

I gotta wonder about the title, though. While the characters routinely perform acts of desperation, ranging from suicide to breaking & entering to murder (and that's just for starters), almost none of them are actually housewives. Of the five principle females, only three are even married. Well, two now since the the redhead's husband croaked. Terri Hatcher's and Nichollette Sheridan's characters have been divorced and single, respectively, since the show began, so they've never fit the bill. Of the two who are wives, only one is an actual HOUSEwife. The funny looking one with the bratty kids used to be one, but now she's got a career. That leaves the ex-model as the only housewife on the whole show, and even she is iffy since she has worked off and on. Even the mysterious new neighbor with the Pulp Fiction gimp tied up in her basement isn't a housewife.

So why the title? The best theory I've come up with so far is that it's a typo, and it's supposed to read, "Desperate For Housewives", since they clearly don't have enough to go around. Any thoughts?

I'm gonna say (1) from a marketing perspective, you are grabbing the attention of one of the main target audiences and (2) it is just supposed to evoke a certain image of the suburban housewife that the show then smashes by "peeling away the onion" into the "real" seedy side of suburbia.

I only ever watched the first episode, which I did enjoy somewhat, but it somehow just didn't stick.

Well, they were married. But things change . . .

I like the show, too -- I think of it as Twin Peaks Lite. It'd be a hoot to bring Kyle MacLachlan in for one episode as a special guest star and have all the music done by Angelo Badalamenti. Hey, David Kelly got away with far stranger stuff in Ally McBeal.

Jess