What's in store for women of Wisteria Lane?

Warning: This article may contain minor spoilers for the "Desperate Housewives" premiere.

When Mary Alice Young’s familiar voice opens the third season of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” on Sept. 24, one can’t help but thinks her words have a dual meaning. As a storm dumps water onto Wisteria Lane, her words can be applied as easily to what’s happening on the screen as to the tempest the show endured in its second season.

“This is what rainy days are good for,” Young says. “They make everything clean again, which is necessary on a street like Wisteria Lane. Where everything can get so messy.”

After a debut season in which “Housewives” was given credit for redefining broadcast television and being one of the most daring, innovative and funny shows on the small screen, a backlash was inevitable.

But the second season was a near disaster, and the coming year will prove to be the test. The rubber match. The tiebreaker. At the risk of hyperbole, the third season of “Desperate Housewives” could very well determine this drama’s place in TV history.

It’s difficult to pinpoint what went wrong last season. The Housewives spent much less time together, the stories went awry, the show became too soapy and seemed to slip at every turn.

Show creator Marc Cherry has promised to right the wrongs, and some changes were made as the new season approached. Executive producer Tom Spezialy has left the show and Cherry is running the show, leading viewers to believe that it will return to his dark comedic vision.

Ripping off ‘Sex and the City’?
The season opens with a mystery involving new cast member Kyle MacLachlan, who plays dentist Orson Hodge, the man we saw beginning to sweep Bree Van De Kamp off her feet at the end of last season.

Hodge already left an air of mystery about him when he purposely mowed Susan’s boyfriend Mike Delfino down with his car in the second season finale. But the opening moments of the new season will make viewers see Orson in a whole new way.

The season premiere hums along just fine, except for a disturbing conversation in which Bree tells her lady friends she does not want to engage in premarital sex with Orson. The scene is virtually ripped from HBO’s “Sex and the City,” when Charlotte York (played by Kristin Davis) told her friends she wanted to wait until after the big day to do the deed.

Charlotte’s friend Samantha (Kim Catrall) chimed in, “Honey, before you buy the car you take it for a test drive.”

This time, it’s Bree’s friend Gabby (Eva Longoria) who says, “You wouldn’t buy a car without at least taking it for a little test drive.”

Ironically, MacLachlan played both “cars” in question, as he portrayed Charlotte’s fiancé Trey MacDougal on “Sex and the City” and now plays Bree’s beau. It isn’t entirely clear if the writers are giving us a wink with this homage or just lacking creative juices.

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