‘Housewives’ desperately needs a makeover

Despite the hype, “Desperate Housewives” has never approached that level of televised drama, nor has it tried. The series created its own niche, a sort of dramatic fairy tale.

But the series took itself too seriously and got swept up in the mystery of Mary Alice’s unexpected suicide. All that did, it now seems, was distract from the fact that not much was going on.

Viewers caught up in the mystery never became aware of the absence of depth, because the mystery was fun to watch.

This season, without the cover of Mary Alice’s story, the show’s Botox is starting to wear off, and what’s really there are just characters running on treadmills in front of moving backgrounds, trying to convince us that they’re covering significant distances.

“Desperate Housewives” creator and writer Marc Cherry worked as a writer on the NBC sitcom “The Golden Girls,” which debuted 20 years ago. Despite its age, the sitcom has flourished on Lifetime, watched in college dorm rooms perhaps more than in nursing homes. The series has survived because its plotlines were superficial, serving as excuses to set up hysterical but forgettable jokes. The only other thing that mattered was the interaction between Dorothy, Blanche, Rose, and Sophia, as it provided the foundation for the series’ acerbic humor and wit.

Especially since ABC let “Desperate Housewives” compete as a comedy series in the Emmys, Cherry needs to look to his sitcom past. Standalone episodes that allow his main characters to interact around quick, resolvable, throwaway stories will draw on the series’ two major strengths: its main characters and the actors who portray them. “Desperate Housewives” is desperately seeking a rescue from its purgatory, and for that happy ending, it needs a new beginning.

Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who publishes reality blurred, a daily summary of reality TV news.

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