.jpg)
Much like I did with my Felicity post, I will be sharing some thoughts/bullet points about this show. And there will be SPOILERS! I will be talking about who dies, who gets together, who's cheating on who, all the mysteries, you name it! I will also be talking about the show assuming you're familiar with it. I highly recommend this show if you've never seen it. It's very simple (but oh-so-complicated!): It takes place in the seemingly idyllic neighborhood of Wisteria Lane and follows those who live in the neighborhood, namely Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman), Bree Van de Kamp (Marcia Cross), and Gaby Solis (Eva Longoria). There are other people (and housewives!) who live in this neighborhood too, but those ladies are the core four.
1. The houses - The houses on Wisteria Lane are their own characters in their own right. The four main women live in the same homes for the entire run (save for the season when Susan has to rent her house out and move to an apartment because of financial issues). You have Lynette's green painted house with the floating cabinets in the kitchen and the living room with the blue painted walls. It actually reminds me of a house you would be able to select in the Sims 3 Generations pack, you know one of those family houses.
 |
Susan's yellow "barn style cottage home" (I'm quoting the wiki, fyi) has a very cozy vibe and it feels like an artist lives there (which Susan is) and I associate the interior with those molded columns.
 |
The colonial brick house that is immaculate inside with the beautiful furniture (and that kitchen!) fits Bree very well.
 |
I'm jealous of Gabby's huge walk-in closet and the beautiful tub in her bathroom that's attached to her bedroom in her yellow Victorian house. I also like the peach-y color of the living room wall. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the painting of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus in that HUGE ornate frame that hung above the wallpaper. It was just a bit much. Also, did it annoy anyone else that their dining table and chairs were like RIGHT THERE next to the front door?
Even the houses that were owned by multiple people over the seasons had their own personality. Every time I saw the house with the staircase directly in front of the front door and the dark wood paneling interior, I thought of Katherine Mayfair (even though she only lived in it for three seasons).
 |
| A not-so-glamorous Gaby |
When she's a stay-at-home mom, Lynette wears a lot of t-shirts or button up shirts, but when she goes back to work, she has a more professional look. Bree has a preppy look with her argyle and solid colored cashmere sweaters and slacks. In the first season, she wears pearls and has her hair flipped up, but as the series goes on, her hair isn't so rigid all the time and she does lose the pearls at some point (or only wears them for special occasions). When she becomes super successful with the launch of her cookbook, she starts wearing these amazing tweed jacket and skirts (I'm guessing they're Chanel). Susan has a very relaxed, casual look and wears a lot of henley shirts and jeans.
4. There are storylines from the first two seasons that they bring back for the penultimate and final seasons - There are two storylines in particular I'm thinking of. In the seventh episode of the first season, Andrew (Bree's teenage son) accidentally runs over Carlo's mother, resulting with her ending up in a coma. Carlos is distraught, but this couldn't have been better timing for Gaby because just before Mama Solis (as everyone calls her) got ran over, she had caught Gaby in a compromising position with John Rowland, the young gardener, and was on her way to tell her son. Mama Solis does eventually wake up, but only to quickly die when she falls down the stairs. She takes Gaby's secret to the grave with her (though, as we all know, Carlos does find out about his wife's affair). No one is none the wiser who hit her as Bree and Rex have disposed of any evidence.
Fast forward to season 7 where some circumstances have happened and Bree confides in Gaby what happened all those years ago (taking the time jump into account, nine years would have passed if I'm doing my math right). When Carlos finds out, he is more angry at Bree since she was the adult who covered this up and accepts Andrew's apology, knowing he was just a kid.
Another storyline from season 1 that will come back later in the series is after Paul Young has strangled nosy neighbor Martha Huber, and her sister, Felicia Tilman, KNOWS he did it but can't get any proof. In the second season, this crazy b**ch frames him for her own murder by cutting off two of her fingers and planting them in the trunk of his car, not to mention dripping blood all over his kitchen. (She used to be a nurse so she knew how to pump her blood and save it.) This is one unhinged woman, I tell you! I know it doesn't look good for Paul that they find two human fingers in his car, but does that really prove that he killed someone? But he's carted off to jail and stays there for ten years (or about that) until Felicia (who has been living off the grid under another name) gets a ticket for speeding (or something stupid like that) and they find out who she really is and she is sent to prison and Paul is released. Then we get our season 7 storyline from that and things will get resolved in that season (with Felicia still trying to get justice for her sister AND still trying to get revenge on Paul Young: i.e. killing him).
5. Trying to solve the mysteries - When I rewatched the first four seasons, I had pretty much remembered the gist of the mystery for each season since this was my third time watching those seasons. I may have forgotten small details, but for the most part I recalled who was behind them (like I remembered Katherine's daughter had been replaced in season 4). Since it had been several years since watching the last four seasons and it felt like I was watching them for the first time again, I decided to see if I could guess the mystery. And for the most part, I did. Now I don't know if this is because I had remembered them deep down or if they were just obvious. Personally, I think it's the latter! GET READY FOR SOME MAJOR SPOILERS! (Like I already haven't spoiled things already!)
Season 6 - There's two mysteries going on simultaneously. One is that there's a mysterious new family that just moved onto the lane (pretty much what Wisteria Lane is known for!) and the other is the Fairview Strangler. Young women are being found strangled to death. One of these is Julie Mayer, though she doesn't die. (They're not going to kill off Susan's daughter!) At first, we're supposed to think it's the husband or the teenage son of the Bolens, the new family on the lane, especially after a waitress at a cafe was found dead and Nick (the husband) was the last person to be seen at the cafe, but I knew it wasn't either of them because that was too obvious. We see a few scenes with some of the young cast hanging out: Julie, the Scavo twins, Danny (the teen son of the Bolens), Ana (Gaby's niece who's living with her and Carlos for the time being), and some random kid named Eddie. Even though Danny and Ana are new characters, we know why they're characters this season. Eddie just seems to show up from nowhere. He's friends with the Scavo twins, but we've never seen him before or heard him mentioned before. After seeing him in a couple of scenes, I knew he was the Fairview Strangler...and I was right!
Season 7 - This one I think I remembered it vaguely from watching it the first time, though some people might think it was obvious. I didn't think it was as obvious as the other two. Paul Young is back on Wisteria Lane after getting released from jail when it's revealed
he didn't murder Felicia Tilman who had him framed for her murder (though he did murder her sister, but was never convicted for it). He has a new wife, Beth. Around the second or third time she mentioned her mother, it's like a memory unlocked for me and I vaguely remembered her being Felicia's daughter - and I was right!
Season 8 - Like I mentioned earlier, there were only two things I remembered from this season (one of them being that Bree ends up with the guy played by Scott Bakula - but I probably only remember this because I loved Quantum Leap). I'll talk about the other thing later.
So the four ladies and Carlos are covering up the murder of Gaby's stepfather, but Bree receives a couple letters in her mailbox indicating that someone else knows about it. I have to be honest: I had no clue who was sending the letters. There's some speculation it might be from Bree's cop boyfriend, but that's not the case. As soon as Orson shows up in an episode, I figured it was him...and I was right. It was either that episode or the next one when we find that out, but I can't take any credit for solving that mystery!
MAJOR SPOILER UPCOMING!! (I know I already warned about spoilers, but you can never be too sure and this is a MAJOR SPOILER!!)
One evening while Renee is out, Mike is talking to her on the phone and he sees the light turn on in her house. He goes to inspect it because he knows Renee isn't home. Well, what do you know, it's Donny just breaking shit. Instead of calling the police, Mike gets into an altercation with him. Now he and Susan do go to the police to ask for protection, but they can only send a car to watch their house every now and then.
Now as culpable as I think Ben and Renee are, I have to place some blame on Mike here too. I don't know why he just didn't call the police when he saw someone breaking into Renee's house. He clearly wasn't thinking about his own family which just seemed so out of character for him. This results in him getting shot, right in front of Susan and we see his life flash before his eyes (well, since the time he moved onto the lane) and we see him meeting Susan for the first time when she tells him not to eat the mac 'n cheese she brought to Mary Alice's wake. It's so sad! Susan and Mike were the OTP of this series and they were supposed to get the 360 camera angle kiss that they gave to Lynette and Tom in the penultimate episode after they were separated for the season, then got back together.
We're introduced to Kayla and Nora in season 3. Now that all the Scavos are aware of them, they have moved to Fairview so Kayla can be closer to her dad and visit him often. After Nora is shot by by Carolyn Bigsby who is holding people in a supermarket hostage (season 3, episode 7, called "Bang"; check it out, great episode), as she lays dying in Lynette's arms, she asks her to take care of Kayla and Lynette agrees. Hoo, boy, Lynette is sure going to regret that! But how can she turn down a dying woman's wishes?
Kayla acts like a brat at first, demanding that she be able to eat ice cream for dinner AND in front of the TV and Lynette gives in, since her mother recently died. Of course, this doesn't make her other children happy. Lynette gives her a doll that used to belong to her as something to comfort to her, but will later find it in the garbage with spaghetti sauce all over it. I felt really bad for Lynette. She was trying to do something nice for Kayla and the little brat totally disrespects that. If she didn't want the doll, fine, then just put it your closet.
When Lynette takes the kids out to dinner, Kayla is eating really slowly and when it's time to go, she tries to hurry her along and Kayla starts screaming so everyone is looking at them.
She tries to get Lynette fired when Lynette is supposed to return to work (she was shot in the arm during the supermarket hostage situation and was out of commission for awhile), but Tom needs help with the pizzeria so she lies to her boss and tells him she's not ready to come back yet. For some reason, her boss visits the house and Kayla tells him where Lynette is.
But, wait! It gets even worse! She had convinced the twins to burn down a competitive restaurant (that's a whole other story behind that) and she also convinced them that if they jumped off the roof with an umbrella, they would be able to fly. This results in one of the twins breaking his arm. Kayla tells Lynette that if she could get the twins to do those things, then she could probably get little Penny (who's 3 or 4 at this point) to do anything. It's very ominous and Lynette's first reaction is to slap her. Even though she shouldn't have done that, I don't really blame her because this wretched pre-teen is threatening Lynette's toddler daughter. Unfortunately for Lynette, this happened while they were shopping at a mall and the slap was caught on CCTV which will come back later.
The Scavos had hired a family counselor and Kayla calls him, telling him that Lynette had hit her and that it wasn't the first time (which was a lie). Of course the authorities find proof of this in the video footage and Lynette is arrested. Not only that, but Kayla burned herself with a curling iron, saying that Lynette did that to her. This girl is a true psychopath! Tom manipulates Kayla into telling him the truth of why she's lying about Lynette and she tells him she doesn't want Lynette living with them and we find out that Tom (who had been talking on the phone before entering Kayla's room and left the phone on her bedside table) had left the phone on and the counselor was the one listening to this entire thing. Lynette is released and Kayla is taken away, never to be seen again. Good riddance. She goes to live with her maternal grandparents. She can be their problem now! She is never mentioned again and I don't think it's ever mentioned if Tom ever visits her (I have no idea how far away she lives now). It would have been interesting if they brought her back after the time jump, but they never do.
8. Moments that made me cry - Like I mentioned earlier, this show could make me laugh as well as make me cry and here are a few of them:
-Another episode concerning Lynette in season 1 that made me cry was when she was so overcome by taking care of her four children that she started taking one of her kids' medication used for ADD to help her, then got addicted to it. She breaks down and tells Susan and Bree how she's a failure as a mother, but they reassure she's not and that they even have times they had difficulties with their own kids.
In season three, Lynette had been battling cancer and in an episode in early season four she will find out if the cancer is gone.Her storyline this particular episode is trying to get rid of a opossum that has been rummaging around in her garden. At first, she puts a fence around her garden, but the animal just burrows under it, so she decides to go to more extreme measures. At first, this storyline is played for laughs. Parker informs her that he and his brothers have named the opossum "Scruffles" and when Lynette tells him not to give it a name "because it won't be around much longer", he is not happy that she wants to kill him. When Lynette says, "Sweetie, let me ask you something: if you had to choose between Mommy's beautiful garden or a gross, mean dirty opossum, what would you pick?" This is funny because of course we know what the kid is gonna say. He says "Scruffles" so matter-of-factly. Lynette tells him "We're done talking here."
A couple nights later, Tom finds her in the backyard with an air rifle that Bree suggested (nothing else is working and Bree told her while the air gun won't kill it, it will sting it enough for it to want to stay away for good). Lynette seems almost obsessed with getting rid of the opossum and it soon becomes clear that the opossum is a metaphor for cancer. She tells Tom, "Something has attacked our home, and when that happens, you don't just stand by, you fight it. Screw this creature that is come into our lives uninvited and is trying to destroy us. It will not defeat me." Tom clearly knows she's referring to the cancer and tells her, "You do what you need to do."
That same night, her oncologist stops by her home because he wants to deliver this news in person because it's good news: she's cancer free. I don't know how common it is for doctors to make house calls to deliver news (even if it's good news), but it's a TV show, so I get it. Lynette walks outside, relieved. She sees the opposum, dead, and starts to break down and cry. I'm guessing the animal died from eating the poison. She said earlier that it was eating around the poison, but she must have been wrong. I don't think she ever shot it with the air rifle and she was told that even if she did, it would just scare the animal away.
It seems like a lot of Lynette storylines make me cry! Here's one that isn't Lynette centered:
9. West Wing fans will get a kick out of Kathryn Joosten and Lily Tomlin playing sisters - Joosten played the President's secretary for the first two season in The West Wing. When her character was, uh, no longer around, the role went to Lily Tomlin. In season five of DH, when Karen McCluskey is becoming wary of the new neighbor Dave and doesn't trust him, she asks her sister, Roberta (played by Tomlin), to help her. So if you watched The West Wing, this was a fun little Easter egg.
10. There are many "ghosts" missing in the very last scene - I like what they went for in the very last scene of the last episode, but I don't think it was as executed as well as it could be. All the ladies have moved on to bigger and better things and Susan is the last to move. As she's leaving the neighborhood, she sees many ghosts of Wisteria Lane standing in yards. Some of these are obvious. She sees Mike, Mary Alice Young, Mrs. McCluskey, Karl. (Susan is far too young to have two dead husbands!) Then we see some ghosts that were characters that were only in one or two seasons, but made big impressions. These include George, Bree's pharmacist who had a creep obsession with her and killed her husband by giving him the wrong medication; Rex is there too (though not mingling with the ghost of George!); Nora, the woman Tom had a one night stand with and the mother of Kayla; Mama Solis, Carlo's mother who was ran over by Andrew in one of the first episodes of the show; Beth Young, the woman Paul Young was married to in season six and the daughter of Felica Tilman; Felica's sister, Martha Huber, the nosy neighbor of Wisteria Lane and who was murdered by Paul Young in the first season is there; as well as Orson's first wife who everyone thought he murdered, but he hadn't, she just died in another manner.
Now that's a pretty good array of people who have died in or around Wisteria Lane, but there are many important people who are missing. Where is Edie? (I know Nicolette Sheridan and Marc Cherry weren't exactly on the best of terms, so that may have had something to do with it.) Where is Felicia? We have her sister and daughter, but no Felicia? Where is Ida? She may not have been as big a character as Edie or Felicia, but she was always around, a close friend of Karen McClusky's, who was a victim of the tornado, so her death was very memorable. Speaking of those who perished in the tornado, where was Victor Lang? (Probably scheduling issues since John Slattery was probably busy with Mad Men.) The point I'm trying to make is that scene could have had a lot more impact.
