"Oh, Mary Alice! What did you do?" - Teri Hatcher as Susan Mayer
Desperate Housewives: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
If you are one of the ten people in America who has not kept up with the exploits of the nation's number one comedic drama, now's your chance to catch up with the passion and peril of Wisteria Lane.
As everyone probably knows, Desperate Housewives premiered on ABC in Fall 2004, and quickly became the most talked-about, highest-rated, and (some would argue) over-exposed series of the season. The series follows a group of women and their families living on an idyllic but calamity-prone suburban street. Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) is a sweet and clumsy divorcee, struggling to raise her teenage daughter and put her failed marriage behind her. Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) gave up a lucrative career to become a stay-at-home mom to four of the world's most unruly children. Bree van de Kamp (Marcia Cross) is a perfectionist homemaker whose life is never quite as perfect as she wants it to be. Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) is a spoiled former model who equally enjoys her husband's hefty bank account and her gardener's sculpted pecs. Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan) is the neighborhood maneater and resident vixen. Their lives are all thrown into turmoil when neighbor Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong) inexplicably blows her brains out five minutes into the pilot episode. Can the desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane piece together the shocking secrets and horrid revelations that led to Mary Alice's untimely demise? Of course they can. . .in about twenty-three episodes.
Combining elements of traditional soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, with British soufflés like At Home with the Braithwaites, the oddball mysteries of Twin Peak s and Tales of the City, and the wacky hijinks of Three's Company, Desperate Housewives is simultaneously derivative and completely original. Viewers can never be quite sure where the series is going. . .at any moment it can turn into touching romance, careen into shocking violence, or dive into goofy physical humor. The characters effortlessly ride a roller coaster of plot developments, and quickly prove to be irresistible. In the pilot episode alone, Lynette descends into a swimming pool in formal mourning regalia, Edie seduces a priest, Gabrielle mows the lawn in a hot-pink evening gown, Susan accidentally burns Edie's house to the ground, and Bree micromanages the distribution of gift baskets at a funeral. Even the secondary characters are well-drawn. Susan's daughter Julie (Andrea Bowen) is practically the most grown-up character in the series, and the scene in which she kicks a soccer ball over a neighbor's roof in order to get her mother a date is a comic masterpiece. Christine Estabrook as meddlesome neighborhood scold Martha Huber steals nearly every scene she's in. And the supporting cast of men-including James Denton, Ricardo Chavira, and Steven Culp-rivals the female cast in both dashing good looks and acting chops.
The series as a whole, however, is far from perfect. Mary Alice, who serves as the narrator, is a know-it-all who knows nothing and speaks in moronic, Hallmark-card platitudes. The central mystery of the season is so stretched and watered down that several episodes go by without any forward plot motion, while simultaneously, other less-interesting plotlines are relentlessly larded on. This flaw is sometimes carefully hidden by the series' good humor and fun, but does lead to a frustrating looseness in the pacing. The season's final episodes contains enough revelations for entire seasons of most shows, leading one to wonder what will be left to explore in season two. And some of the series' humor-Susan's ongoing humiliation, for example-grow repetitive, especially when multiple episodes are watched in single sittings.
Still, it's hard to deny the many charms of the series, most of which are still evident upon a second viewing. Teri Hatcher lights up the screen in every scene she's in, and has great acting partners in both Nicollette Sheridan and Andrea Bowen. Felicity Huffman brings a welcome dose of realism to the proceedings. Eva Longoria may be the shortest supermodel ever, but her comic timing is formidable. Some of the individual scenes ("Did I mention it's mincemeat?") are comically succinct.
The twenty-three episodes that make up The Complete First Season are divided onto six discs. Each disc is decorated with portraits of the series' characters - Susan on disc one, Edie on disc two, Bree on disc three, Lynette and her kids on disc four, Gaby and John on disc five, and Mary Alice on disc six. The discs are housed in a foldout case decorated with publicity photos and production stills. The six discs attach to three panels - each of the panels hold two discs one on top of the other in a figure eight pattern. It is slightly inconvenient to remove one DVD in order to get to another, but on the plus side, the packaging takes up far less shelf space than if each disc was housed on a separate panel. Another panel of the foldout case includes a folder which contains an episode guide. The front panel of the case is white textured plastic which resembles satin. The case slides into a clear plastic sleeve, and this white textured panel makes up the housewives' "dresses."
The full motion DVD menus are a variation on the series' opening credits. Unfortunately, they are too lengthy and cannot be skipped. Viewers can play all episodes or choose an individual one. There are no scene selection menus, but the episodes include chapter stops.
