Taking a Stroll Down Wisteria Lane

Disclaimer: I apologize for how terrible this looks. Blogger can really aggravating sometimes. Something happened with the format and I have tried to fix it to make it look better, but it's not working, so I apologize again for how terrible this looks! 

If anyone were to ask me what my favorite TV show is, I would tell them it's Breaking Bad. However, there are many other TV series I love and if I had to make a top ten list of my favorite TV shows, I would struggle. (I would have to do different categories like dramas, comedies, reality shows, etc. to fit them all in!) One show that would definitely make that list is Desperate Housewives. I guess it would be in my favorite dramas list, though it technically is a comedy too. I recently did a re-watch and wanted to write down some of my thoughts. 

First, let me talk about my history. I watched this in real time, but I wasn't there from the beginning. I either started watching in the middle of season 1 and caught up with it later or I started watching at season 2 and caught up with season 1. I remember going to Blockbuster (ask your ancestors (lol, I heard this joke on a podcast and have been waiting a long time to steal it)) and renting the season 1 DVDs. I'm not sure why I didn't use Netflix (like the archaic Netflix when they used to mail the physical DVDs to you....lol who remembers that?) because this would have been during the time I was using archaic Netflix to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alias. (Why do I remember such dumb useless stuff? Probably because it's dumb useless stuff I love.)

Anyway, it was actually my dad who got me into the show because he told me about it. (Both he and my mom watched it.) I think he watched it because he liked Teri Hatcher, haha. I remember watching Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman with my parents. (I had to look up the title because I couldn't remember it exactly.) So I started watching it and was hooked. When the series ended in 2012, I decided to do a re-watch, but I only got through season 4 before I decided to take a break since the series just ended and wanted to give it a little more space before I re-watched the last four seasons. Well, I didn't start my re-watch until late last year so I just ended up watching the entire series again, so I've seen seasons 1-4 three times and 5-8 twice. In a way, it was like watching the later seasons for the first time since so much timed had passed. There were literally only two things I remembered from the last season (which I'll tell you later). DH is one of those rare shows that can make me laugh and cry during the same episode. 

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

2. The fashion - There's a YouTube channel I'm subscribed to called ModernGurlz where sometimes the videos will be about the fashion in a particular movie. I don't know if any TV shows have ever been talked about, but I would love a deep dive for the fashion in Desperate Housewives. It is eight seasons and there are A LOT of outfits, so it would be a bit of a commitment, but it would be so interesting. Even I, a person who knows nothing about fashion, could tell that the characters (especially the core four, plus a couple others) have their own fashion style and it evolves as their characters evolve. Gaby, the former model and fashionista is always wearing something sexy, chic, trendy, expensive, or all of the above! She gets her hair done regularly and wears make-up. When she has kids, she starts wearing more practical clothes and keeps her hair cut short because she doesn't have time (or the money because this is during a time when Carlos isn't raking in the big bucks) to keep it up and she wears very minimum make up.

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. 

3. I loved the time jump - At the beginning of the fifth season, the show jumps ahead five years and it was such a smart idea. It gave the show some fresh perspectives and storylines. The audience was teased at the very end of the season 4 finale. We saw that Bree had published a cookbook and had become super successful. The four kids who played Lynette's kids have been swapped out for older actors (although we won't see them until next season) and now twins Porter and Preston are 16-ish, Parker is 12/13-ish, and little Penny is 8 or 9. To be honest, I'm never really sure what the age difference between the Scavo children are or even how old they're ever supposed to be. I swear, in the last season, in one episode they said that Penny was 9; then in another, she was mentioned as being 11. A fun reveal is that we see the usual glamorous Gaby is not wearing make up and wearing more practical clothes as we see she now has two young girls, Juanita and Cecelia. I already alluded this about her change in fashion and her looks. The most shocking reveal is when we see Susan come home (oh, I should mention that during season 4 she was married to Mike and they had their son, MJ) and she's greeting someone who you think is Mike...but it's not!! It's some other guy who is NOT Mike and she greets him with a passionate kiss. Right away, you're thinking, what the HELL is going on? Did Mike die? If so, what happened? Did they get separated or divorced? If so, WHY? Another use of the time jump is that they used the five years to have Orson be in prison for running over Mike, the hit and run that caused Mike to be in a coma from season 3. And they also used it to have Edie move away, then come back in season 5. 

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 5 - So we quickly learn that Susan and Mike are divorced and the reason for this is because something awful happened: they were driving home one night and got into a terrible car accident that left the woman and her very young daughter in the other car dead. Edie has moved back to the lane and is now married to a man named Dave. Dave seemed very insistent about moving to Wisteria Lane and right away I knew that the woman and little girl who died in the horrific car accident were his wife and child...and I was right. 

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. 

Gaby's horrible and terrible excuse for a human being stepfather, Alejandro (he raped her when she was 15), comes to Fairview in the last half of season 6 to torment her. In the season 6 finale Carlos comes home to see him attacking Gaby and he kills him by hitting him with a candlestick (he was just trying to get him to stop, his intention wasn't to kill him). Bree, Susan, and Lynette enter the house right after this happened (the neighborhood was putting on a progressive dinner part and the Solis house was the last stop during this dinner party as Gaby was serving dessert and the three other ladies came early to help her set up) and they all agree they're going to help Gaby and Carlos take care of this and not say a word. 

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!!)

6. I hated that they killed off Mike - So this is the only other thing I remembered about season 8, but for some reason, I remembered it being as the very last moment of the series. Well, no, it's not. It happens about five or six episodes before the finale. I just feel so bad for Susan. And the way Mike died is so brutal and pointless: he's gunned down outside of his own home by a loan shark seeking revenge. (And the guy playing Donny, the loan shark, looks like he walked off the set of The Sopranos or Goodfellas.) If I were Susan, I would never talk to Ben or Renee again because they were indirectly involved in Mike's death. Ben is the hot new Australian guy who's just moved onto the lane (he's pretty much season 1 Mike of season 8) and Renee is the rich divorcee (she's played by Vanessa Williams who joined the series in season 7) who starts dating him. Ben has a real estate development site and turned to Donny for money, but got way deep over his head and couldn't pay the money back. Renee offered to help, but he refused. Stupidly, Renee invites Donny over to write him a check. I'm not even sure how she got his number. Now Renee is a lot smarter than that so it doesn't make sense why she wouldn't meet him in a crowded restaurant in the next town over to give him the check. Or something. Now that Donny knows where she lives, he pretty much threatens that he'll be back to get more money.

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. 

7. The most vile character in the whole series is a 12-year-old girl - okay, maybe she's the second worst since Gaby's stepfather was pure evil...but this girl comes pretty close to being the second coming of the devil! Of course, I'm talking about Kayla, the daughter Tom recently found out he had. Before he was with Lynette he had a one-night stand with a woman named Nora (and he must have been pissed drunk because her personality is very off-putting and I don't know how anyone could stand to be with her), resulting in Kayla. 

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:

-In an episode in the first season, Lynette's three sons are stealing from Mrs. McCluskey who's played by Kathryn Joosten who played Mrs. Landingham, the President's secretary in The West Wing. (Fun fact: this episode is the very first she appears in.) She makes them go over to her house to apologize to her. She's kind of seen as a cranky old lady, probably pretty scary to the three young boys! She invites them in for tea and peanut brittle. In unison, they all say, "We're sorry." There is a funny moment when she asks them their ages (the twins are 6 and Parker is 5) and when one of them asks how old she is, she makes them guess and one of the twins says, "A hundred and fifty!" This is what I'm talking about how the same scene can make me laugh AND cry. The part that made me cry is when one of the twins (I can't tell them apart, sorry!) sees a photo of a young boy on the mantel and asks, "Who's that?" We find out it's her son who died when he was twelvebecause he was sick. She begins to soften toward Lynette's sons, telling them that he was "a terror, like you three" and that they would have liked them. It's a short scene, but it's so effective and had me crying! It shows us that Mrs. McCluskey has a soft side. I actually rewatched this scene to write this and I'm crying AGAIN!

-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. 

-Okay, I totally cried in the episode after the tornado strikes when they're pulling Lynette's family out of the wreckage. (Lynette had been separated from them, so she was anxiously waiting to see if they had survived.) Even though I knew they all survived (because it wasn't my first time watching this!), it was still pretty emotional! It is really sad when we find out that the sweet old neighbor, Ida Greenberg had died. She was good friends with Mrs. McCluskey and she just looks so devastated! 

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:

-In season six, Susan has to be on dialysis because she needs a new kidney. When there, she meets an older gentleman named Dick Barrows (Gregory Itzin), a curmudgeon who doesn't want to talk to her when she tries to be friendly. Of course, he's just scared that he's never going to get a kidney and he's been waiting for one for a long time. I feel so bad for him when a pager goes off (all the people on dialysis are carrying one; it alerts them when a kidney has been found for them) and he frantically looks at his, realizing it was someone else's pager. Just the devastated look on his face gets to me. He does soften around Susan and is happy for her when she finds out she will be getting a kidney. It's not a happy story for him since he dies and I'm just a mess of tears. 

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 I would say that all the people I named were characters that made a big impact on the show even if they were only in one season. However, there are a few people in this scene that if I hadn't binged watched the entire series in a couple of months, I would have no idea who they were. Hell, some of them I had to remind myself who they were because they didn't leave that much of an impression on me. These include Ellie (played by Justine Bateman) who rented a room at the Solis's in season 4 and wasn't exactly who she said she was. Because of watching all the season in close proximity, I did remember her, but that can't be said the same for Mona Clark. She was always kind of in the background, but during season six, she found out about the secret the Bolens were carrying and she blackmails them asking for money or else she'll spill their secret. She ends up being killed by the small plane that crashed into Wisteria Lane. There's also Bree's detective boyfriend who was just a blip in the final season and Katherine's elderly aunt who died of natural causes if season four. (I probably forgot about her because she was only in a few episodes and her death wasn't that crazy.) There was one guy I didn't recognize, then found out it was Carlos's boss who was stabbed by his wife. (I mean the guy's wife shot him, not Carlo's wife, Gaby!) He was cheating on her in case you were wondering. That was a crazy episode, but that story arc wasn't that long and I sort of forgot about it after the episode it happened.

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.

11. The Real Housewives franchise was heavily influenced by this show - The first episode of the reality series debuted in March 2006 while DH was in its second season and very popular. Now I love Desperate Housewives, but have never seen any episode from the Real Housewives series. I have no desire to. But then again, I have no interest in candid reality. I've never seen an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians either and I feel pretty good about that! It's just amusing that a show I absolutely have no desire to watch was inspired by a show I love. 

Yuppie Yuletide

All I Want For Christmas

Director: Robert Lieberman

Cast: Ethan Randall, Thora Birch, Harley Jane Kozak, Jamey Sheridan, Lauren Bacall, Leslie Nielsen, Kevin Nealon

Released: November 8, 1991 

I tried to get this review up by Christmas, but on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I was sick with a sore throat and was miserable. I tried to write a little on Christmas Eve, but, as you can see, wasn't able to get the review out until now. At least it's still December and it's not like I'm posting a Christmas movie review in January.

This is a movie about a brother and sister trying to get their divorced parents back together. Ethan (played by Ethan Embry, though he is billed as Ethan Randall) and Hallie (played by Thora Birch) are the siblings; Ethan is about thirteen and Hallie is around seven or eight. 

 

This is the first Christmas since their dad moved out, so I guess their parents have been divorced for nearly a year. Apparently they divorced because their dad, Michael (played by Jamey Sheridan), quit some high-paying job to open a diner, which has always been a dream of his. Their mother, Catherine (played by Harley Jane Kozak, resented him for it because he was so busy with the diner because there's a lot of hard work involved in running one and she was never consulted about it. Honestly, this seems like something they could easily work through. At first I thought they were just separated, because it's mentioned the dad moved out, but no, they are divorced. 

It seems like this family is mooching off of Catherine's very rich mother, Lillian Brooks (played by Lauren Bacall), because they live in her very nice Manhattan townhouse complete with two housekeepers. One of them is a French woman named Olivia and she's pregnant. Just keep that in mind. Lillian is supposed to be some super famous actress and is referred to as "the second lady of the American theater", whatever that means. She's also a super snob. Later in the movie, the paramedics will arrive when Olivia goes in labor and when one of them asks her if she's Lillian Brooks, she replies, Yes, I am the Lillian Brooks." Like, get over yourself, lady. 

Catherine has started dating a man named Tony (played by Kevin Nealon) who works on Wall Street. I don't know how long they've been dating, but it seems to be moving awfully quick because later on in the movie it is revealed they plan to get married. 

Michael is supposed to take the kids to visit the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs, but Ethan suggests they visit the diner instead. The kids love the diner and they love helping out there. This is one of my favorite scenes: we see a montage set to the '50s song "Yakkity Yak" (you know, that song that goes, "Take out the papers and the trash or you don't get no spending cash...") while Hallie and Ethan are helping their dad, wait staff, and cooks. Now Hallie is doing very easy tasks like adding sprinkles to a sundae or taking two slices of cherry pie to a table. She's wearing a uniform complete with an apron and a paper hat, so it's all very cute, but if I were one of those patrons receiving pie from a seven-year-old, I'd be a little concerned. Ethan is behind the line, grabbing tickets and calling out orders like he's been doing this all his life. It looks like they're having a lot of fun while they're working and singing and dancing along with the other waitstaff and customers to the music. I guess it's a good thing these very well-to-do trust fund children are eager and willing to work at their father's diner, but something tells me OSHA wouldn't be too happy if they walked in and saw two underage children as part of the staff. 

Their dad lives in this HUGE loft on the top floor of the building where his diner is located. It was hinted that he had a good paying job before the diner gig, so I'm guessing that's how he's able to afford it, because no way he could pay for that otherwise. Don't these kids know that if they kept their parents divorced, they'd get twice the presents at Christmas and their birthdays? I kid, I kid. They'd probably get the same amount of presents regardless.

While they're playing pinball (because of course their dad has a pinball machine) while their dad is closing up the diner, Hallie tells Ethan she thinks their parents are getting along better. He asks her what makes her think this and she replies, "Cause I'm going to ask Santa to get them back together again so we can have us back together again." The hell? THAT DID NOT ANSWER HIS QUESTION! By the way, I don't know why she says that because she herself saw her parents arguing when their dad picked them up and he was late because something had come up at the diner. Their mom makes a comment about how the diner always comes first with him.  Ethan tells her she can't ask Santa for that and when she asks why not, he tells her he's "not a marriage counselor." 

When their dad reappears, Hallie asks him if he can take her to see Santa the next day since her mom is     busy. He has to work at the diner all day, so Hallie asks Ethan if he can take her which Michael thinks is a great idea. Ethan is making the biggest f***ing deal about it: "No. Uh-huh, don't even think about it. No." Dude, just take your little sister to see Santa. 

The next day they go to Macy's (in an earlier scene Hallie mentions that the Santa who works at Macy's is the real deal while all the other department store Santas are frauds) to see Santa. While they're waiting in line, Ethan tells her she can ask for toys or hair care products, but shouldn't ask him to get their parents back together and tells her, "You may not ask anything to do with interpersonal relationships, got it?" I think he is being a good older brother here, not telling her the reason why Santa won't be able to grant this particular request. 

Ethan sees some classmates from his private school and freaks out. He quickly gets out of the line, but remind his sister he's watching her before he does. While he's waiting for his sister, he's making a big show of looking at model airplanes when the boys from his school come over to taunt him. One of them tells him they saw him standing in line to see Santa. All he has to do is say the truth: that he's taking his little sister to see Santa. 

When it's Hallie's turn to see Santa (played by Leslie Nielsen) he asks her what her name is and she tells him, 'Hallie O'Fallon." He repeats it and adds, "There's a lot of L's in there" which made me laugh. Hallie gets straight to the point as she sits on Santa's lap: "Now here's the deal, Santa. My brother's watching, so whatever I say, just smile and nod." I should add that at this point, Ethan wasn't watching because he was interacting with his classmates. Hallie starts whispering in Santa's ear presumably telling him about her Christmas wish. He says that her request is "a tall order" and that "I usually specialize in stuff you can wrap." We get this odd moment where Hallie shushes him, then gets up to leave to end the scene.  

A party is being held at their Nana's house. It's pretty much held for her to light Christmas tree in front of everyone. It's a nice tree (though I have some issues with it), but like she even says, it's not the tree in Rockerfeller Center and why is she having a party just to have everyone ooh and aah when she plugs in some lights? If you're wondering, my issue with the tree is that there only seem to be green baubles on it. Maybe some red or gold ones would make it pop a bit more. There's just a lot of green. 

I guess there is a point to the party: it's to introduce us to a very pointless character who we really don't need in the movie. Catherine has invited one of her friends (I think they work together), Susan, and she has invited her daughter, Stephanie, who is visiting from Boston where she lives with her father and stepmom. According to Susan, "[Stephanie's] father and his really delightful fourth wife decided that they could trust me with her for a few days." Now there's a storyline that sounds way more interesting than these two yuppie kids trying to get their parents back together! This guy is on his fourth wife? Why don't they trust his ex with Stephanie? Anyway, Ethan has a crush on Stephanie and she's just there to pad out the movie and add a few extra scenes. She really doesn't add anything to advance the plot forward. 

We know he likes her because he gets embarrassed after making oinking sounds and sees her looking at him (though she's smiling). Why is oinking? Because Hallie had gone over to him with some hors d'oeuvres, but before she gave him any, she requested that he "make the pig sound." This scene is stupid for three reasons:

1. He tells her he will, but only once. He proceeded to oink for quite a while!

2. A better movie would have established he makes a pig sound that delights his sister before this scene.

3. Why is he even indulging her? Just get your own snacks! 

The party-goes are treated to a delightful duet of Baby it's Cold Outside between Hallie and her Nana. Now you think it would be a choice to have a grandmother and granddaughter singing this, and yeah, it is, but the audience loves it and is ahh-ing. Yes, Hallie has quite the voice for someone so young, but I tell you, if I were in that audience, I'd be rolling my eyes. The whole thing is just too cutesy and made me want to gag. 

The next day, Ethan has gone to an art museum (because he overheard that Stephanie would be there). He sees her in one of the rooms and in another room (with patrons roaming around) he starts having a monologue about what he's going to say to her. I guess the other patrons are used to being around weirdos in New York that it doesn't bother them this kid is talking to himself. He and Stephanie spend some time at the museum, then get lunch (at a department store of all places).

While Ethan is having his sort of date with Stephanie, Hallie is at home and overhears her mom tell her Nana (that would be Hallie's Nana, not Catherine's Nana; it would be Catherine's mother) that she's going to marry Tony. What the hell? That came up awfully fast. We never even saw Tony propose or even heard them discussing it. The only reason this is happening is for the sake of the plot. You see, little Hallie thinks this is her fault because when she told Santa she wanted her parents to remarry, she forgot to specify that she wanted them to remarry each other. Silly girl! 

When Ethan returns, Hallie confesses to him that she did ask Santa for "Mom and Dad to get married again", then tells him her little snafu with her wording and tells him about their mom marrying Tony. 

At this point, we had only met Tony when he came to pick up Catherine for a date, but now he's taking Catherine and Hallie to see a performance of The Nutcracker. They drop off Ethan at Michael's and Ethan convinces his mom to come in and see the diner (she's seriously hasn't seen it?), then she goes upstairs to check out his loft. While she's up there she tells him she's getting remarried and you can tell he's sad about it. If I were him, I'd be a little concerned that she's marrying someone who she probably just met. Unless did she just start dating Tony right after her divorce? 

During the intermission, Tony grabs three ginger ales. While he's gone, Catherine asks her daughter, who's been a little dismissive of Tony, if she could try to be friends with him because it's important to her (Catherine). Hallie says something about how Tony always expects her to be cute or do something cute or say something cute, which I didn't think was true at all. If anything, it's the movie that expects her to do those things. We've seen Tony ask her questions about The Nutcracker, asking her if she knows the composer (she does) and asking her if she wants to learn the rest of the words to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" when she keeps repeating the title over and over again (and not even singing the melody right). We even see him correct her when she uses the wrong word (she tells her mom she feels nauseous  and he tells her the word is "nauseated"). I never got the impression that Tony expected Hallie to be "cute" all the time. Hallie asks her, "Mommy, do you really like him, like a whole lot?"

Tony returns with the ginger ales and tells Hallie he put a cherry in hers, "so it an official Shirley Temple." Uh, no it's not. You need the grenadine. Hallie tells her mom she feels sick (this is when we get the nauseous/nauseated moment) and her mom feels her forehead, commenting she does feel warm and takes her to the bathroom. I swear, there's about four of five times in this movie that Hallie is sick of feigns sickness. I did laugh when Tony takes the cherry from her drink and eats it while they're gone. 

The next day Hallie heads out to see Santa in a red coat with black toggles (I swear, this girl wears about four different coats in this movie...I don't even own that many winter coats!) with white tights, white gloves (this outfit needed black or red glove), and I sh*t you not, a muff. Yes, a f*cking muff. Does this girl thinks she's Samantha Parkington circa 1904? Her mom and Nana have already gone out for the day and she tells Stella, one of the maids, that she's "got to go fix a problem." Stella sees she's dressed to go outside so you think she would be concerned who is taking this seven-year-old out to do her errand, but she does't seem to care. 

As she walks down the city streets, she greets passerbys with "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah." She did this in an earlier scene when Ethan was walking her home from ballet class and explained to him, "My teacher says you should always say both things in New York because people are really sensitive." Why not just say "Happy Holidays". That way you're covering everything and it's fewer syllables.

Ethan is looking for Hallie and Stella tells him she went out ten minutes ago to "fix a mistake." He knows what that means and starts running towards Macy's. By the time he gets there, Hallie has already visited with Santa again. Like the first time, we don't hear the actual conversation. Santa reminds her "it's awfully late in the season for such a big order"...which is pretty much what he told her the first time.

Ethan is firm with his young sister and tells her she cannot go off alone in the city. Of course he's right, but Hallie starts turning on the waterworks and whines, "I had to see him! This is special! Not all moms and dads should get back together, but ours should...I just had to see him, I just had to." I just love the entitlement. There's no way Ethan is buying this, but he consoles her with a hug, pretty much telling her what she did was okay because she was doing it for their parents. Ugh, this movie. 

Now we get to the part of the movie where Ethan and Hallie (well, probably mainly Ethan) have devised a plan to get their parents back together. Ethan tells Stephanie his idea and that's how she becomes involved (but she's really not needed). He admits it might not get them back together so he hopes that at the very least he can get them to spend Christmas Eve together. 

The audience will learn the parts of the plan as the movie proceeds. I have to say, this so-called plan seems a bit convoluted at times and needs to have everything timed just right. 

Step 1 involves the O'Fallon siblings buying a bunch of little white mice at a pet shop. When I first watched this, I was confused by what they were going to do with all these mice, but then I realized that they had some pretty dark intentions for these mice. Now these mice are the kind you buy to feeds snakes, but that's all part of the circle of life. No, what these kids had in mind (at least Ethan, maybe little Hallie didn't exactly realize what all this meant) was to release these mice (there was about a dozen of them) in their Nana's home. They needed their mom out of the house and if they needed to exterminate the house, nobody would be able to stay overnight. It's a little messed up these kids bought mice just to have them exterminated! I think even the movie realized that was pretty dark, so when they release the mice and try to shoo them into a room where their mom and Nana are talking to a wedding planner (already?), they end up going outside when Stella opens the door. Not only does Stella not even see any of these mice that are scurrying around her feet, but she is lucky not to accidentally step on one of them. The mice scurry outside and the siblings follow them, but are unable to catch them. Now these mice will probably freeze to death, but at least now they have more of a chance than just being exterminated.  

There was one particular mouse that Hallie took a liking to, claiming he was "the cutest" (they literally all look the same) and named him Snowball. Snowball was the only one to make it to the living room and without anyone noticing him, he gets up on the coffee table and gets on a dessert plate where a piece of the guest's cake is. The guest picks up the plate, not noticing the extra weight of having a mouse on it. Still talking to the other ladies, she takes her fork and presses the back of the tines on the mouse. There is no reaction. I'm sorry, but if you pressed the back of your fork against a mouse, you would KNOW that something isn't right. It's only when she sees the mouse, she starts screaming and this causes Lillian to call the exterminators. She calls the Carlyle Hotel for her and the maids to stay. Because it is Christmas Eve, there are no rooms available, but because she is THE Lillians Brooks, she is able to snag a suite for over night.

Catherine has a date with Tony that night (they're going to a party) and decides she'll get ready for it at Susan's place (remember, she's the mother of Stephanie). After she calls her, we get a stupid scene where Stephanie is in the kitchen, overhearing her mom's conversation. Her mom (who's in a different room), tells her, "Catherine has mice." She says, "Oh, really?", then in an overly exaggerated move, she pumps her arm and hisses "yes!" It's so cringey. 

Step 2 involves Ethan calling a tow truck company to tell them a black BMW (the car Tony drives) has been parked in front of his dad's diner for three days. The guy tells him he can be there in an hour. This is lucky for Ethan because if the guy could be there right away, the plan wouldn't work! 

Step 3 involves Ethan calling his friend Marshall, then asking him to call him back. When he does, Ethan makes this big show of running down the stairs and yelling, "It's for me, it's for me! At least I assume it is." Even if someone else answered the phone, his friend would have just asked for him. When he's done having his fake conversation, he asks his mom if he can spend the night at Marshall's house. What the hell? It's Christmas Eve. He's doing this because he needs a cover for not being at his dad's place. He just plans to hang out at the diner. His mom asks him why he doesn't want to spend Christmas Eve with his dada he makes up some stupid story about how it will be too sad. If I were her, I would tell him he's not interrupting somebody else's Christmas Eve. Tony (who's shown up at the house to pick up Catherine) is the one to convince Catherine to let her kids do what they want after she suggests that they just skip the party and they (her and Tony) can take the kids out. Hallie feigns a cough so they quickly put the kibosh on that. So I had assumed Tony was there to pick up Catherine, but then Ethan suggests that Tony can drop him off at Marshalls and Catherine says if he does that, she can go over to Susan's and change. I'm so confused. Are her clothes at her house? Is she going to be driving her own car to Susan's? We'll soon find out that Tony won't be dropping her off there. Tony also adds that he can take Hallie's to her dad's. I did laugh when Tony says, "This is working out perfectly" and Ethan adds, "So far" because he knows what's in store for Tony. 

Somehow, Hallie was able to retrieve Snowball after the little critter caused a panic at her Nana's. She brings him along in the car and asks Tony if he would like to meet Snowball, "a friend of [hers]." Tony assumes she's talking about an imaginary friend and asks if she's the only one who can see Snowball, but she tells him, "Oh, no, you can see him too. Here." Then she shoves him right in Tony's face. Even though Tony doesn't love having the mouse right up in his face, he does take it pretty well. He doesn't smack the mouse out of Halie's hand or anything. After Hallie is satisfied when he says hello to Snowball and tells the mouse that he loves him, Hallie puts the critter back in her pocket. This scene is only here so Tony knows about Snowball because the kids have a plan.

When they get to their dad's, Ethan tells Tony he can take Hallie up to the loft which takes us to Step 4 which involves Hallie releasing Snowball. She will start shrieking and Tony will get out of the car to see what the commotion is all about. I thought Ethan was being a dick when he makes Hallie release the mouse. She has obviously become attached to Snowball and doesn't want to part with him. He tells her, "Look, Hallie, Snowball is a mouse. I know you love him, but he's a mouse." He adds that if she lets him go, he'll buy her "a million mice." Dude, that's not the point! Also, why does she even need to release it? I know they want to make it look real, but when Tony gets out of the car, he doesn't see Snowball anyway, so what was the point of releasing him? She could have just kept the mouse in her pocket. I don't fault Hallie for this because she's only seven, but seriously, Ethan didn't think of this? When Tony gets out of the car after Hallie is screaming, they tell him Snowball got loose and Ethan says it just went inside the back of a Ben and Jerry's ice cream truck (the door was open). I don't know how a mouse could climb up the back of the truck. The door is about three feet off the ground. Tony gets in the truck and the kids close the door and lock it. That's so f***ed up! To make it even more sadistic, the kids start laughing at him. The driver of the truck is nearly deaf and when he comes out, the kids distract him so he doesn't see (or hear) Tony banging on the back of the window. I find it a tad ridiculous that the driver didn't even hear him yelling or banging on the door later when he's driving. He's singing along loudly to a Christmas song, but you would think he would hear the vibration of Tony knocking. Tony will end up in New Jersey before he's able to make his way back. 

With Tony out of the way, Ethan tells Hallie to go upstairs and tell their dad that Tony dropped her off. After she heads on up, he sees the tow truck arrive to take away Tony's car. What perfect timing! 

Up at the loft, Hallie tells her dad that Ethan is at his friend's. Michael doesn't seem that concerned or hurt that his son doesn't want to spend Christmas Eve with him. Hallie has found a suit in her dad's closet and asks him to put it on. She says she'll put on a party dress and they "can pretend they're at a really nice restaurant on Pluto." (Pluto is her favorite planet; remember, this was 1991.) Michael agrees because he can't say no to her. 

Step 5 involves Hallie feigning sickness (once again). As Catherine is getting ready at Susan's house, she gets a call from Michael who tells her that Hallie "has been in the bathroom for half an hour." We see Hallie, in a dress, sitting on the toilet (lid closed just in case you were wondering!), reading a book. When her dad knocks on the door and asks how she's doing, she tells him, "Terrible." She gets up and takes a glass from the counter that she already filled with water and, while groaning, pours it down the toilet. Was that supposed to sound like she was throwing up? Because that is not the sound one makes when vomiting! You wretch when you throw up, you don't groan (maybe after the fact...okay, I'll stop talking about this). She asks him if "mommy" is coming and he confirms she is. We see a big smile on her face. 

Remember when Hallie asked her dad to wear a suit? Well, it's so he can look handsome when he answers the door to his ex who's wearing a sparkly red dress for the party she's supposed to attend with Tony. Michael is surprised when Catherine tells him that Tony isn't with her. They both comment about how attractive the other look. They both check on Hallie, now in her bedroom, pretending to be asleep. She actually opens her eyes a tiny bit at one point when she knows her parents aren't out of the room yet which is pretty ballsy on her part. And she does it in a way that's so obvious she wasn't sleeping; it's like, girl, you need to act like you're slowly waking up like you've been alseep for while.

Step 6 is Stephanie's turn to shine! I feel like this movie wanted to justify her having in this movie, telling us, See! She's important to the plot! They needed her for this part of the plan! But I would argue, no. Let me tell you what she did and then I'll explain why I still think she's super unnecessary. She calls Michael's number (obviously she got the number from Ethan) and asks for "Mrs. O'Fallon" and tells her she got a call for Mr. Boer. (That would be Tony.) I did laugh when she calls him "Mr. Bore" and Catherine corrects here. (Though they do sound very similar.) She tells her that he "had an emergency come up" and to still go to the Plaza. Is is me or would it have been better for Catherine not to get a message (albeit fake) from Tony. The fact that they're telling her he had an emergency, gives him some leeway. If they had just left it where he never called or anything, then that makes him even worse. Yes, this girl was really not needed. You know, in terms of dynamics, this movie reminds me of Hocus Pocus with the younger sister (played by Thora Birch in both movies), her older brother, and the brother's crush. At least in Hocus Pocus, the crush was established early and her role in the movie makes sense. In this movie, it just seems like they needed more scenes and that's why they added her and the movie would have been fine without her. 

Okay, wait, you guys. I may have spoken too quickly. I forgot that Catherine tells Stephanie that she's going to head back to her mom's place (Stephanie's mom's place, just so we're clear). This is not part of the plan! If it weren't for Stephanie coming over when the cab for Catherine arrives (I have no idea how far she lives away, but she seems to conveniently arrive a minute after the cab arrives) and pretending to be Catherine and telling the driver that something has come up and cancelling the cab, then Catherine wouldn't have a ride! She's totally useful, you guys! 

I should mention that during this whole time, since Hallie went up to their dad's loft, Ethan has just been hanging out outside the diner, which is closed and locked up. It's cold and snowy and he's all bundled up and trying to keep warm and whining about how their plan better work because he's outside freezing his ass off. (Okay, he didn't say that, but he was whining about how cold it was. Like in the museum, this was another instance where he was just talking to himself.) After Stephanie shows up and shoos the cab away, we get this really stupid scene where she asks if they can go inside the diner and he holds up a key. Barely a few minutes ago he was complaining about waiting in the cold and the whole time he had a key to go inside the diner? Are you flipping kidding me? What was with all the "Oh, poor me" brouhaha? 

Catherine has found out her taxi has bailed on her and starts to get a new one, but then Michael, looking out the window at the snow, starts reminiscing about the blizzard the happened when she was pregnant with Hallie. Or maybe it happened when she gave birth to her, I don't remember. Hallie is peering outside the door (if her parents turned around, they would have seen her obviously spying on them) making pitiful noises as her mother says she isn't sure if she'll stay. She starts whimpering, "Please, please, please", then, as if somehow hearing her daughters pleads, Catherine decides she's going to stay...but she'll sleep with Hallie in her room. 

Michael lends her one of his shirts to wear and when she gets into the bed with Hallie, her daughter, pretending to be asleep, slaps her arm across her mom. After she does this a couple more times, Catherine gets up and goes to the couch where her ex is now sleeping. She puts a blanket over him and curls up next to him and shares the blanket. The second she puts her head down, Hallie speaks out of her bedroom and across the room to the door where she closes it with a loud click. There is no way Catherine is already asleep. People don't fall asleep the second their heads hit the pillow. I think that's only happened to me once and it was after a really long day where I woke up early, drove a few hours with a friend to visit an amusement park in another state, then drove back the same day, so yeah, I was exhausted when I got home. Catherine definitely would have heard her daughter sneaking out. 

Hallie goes down to the diner where Ethan and Stephanie have been eating burgers and fries and tells her brother that her parents are sleeping on the same couch. Ethan is ecstatic and exclaims that "they did it", they got their parents back together, WTF? Just because their parents are sleeping on the same couch? I'm not gonna lie; I was rooting for the parents not to get back together because the kids are so damn entitled. I know, I know, I'm a total Grooge. (You like my portmanteau of Grinch and Scrooge? I couldn't decide which one I was being, so why not combine the two? Although Scrinch is good too.)

The kids have fallen asleep in the diner (after going outside and playing and shouting in the snow). They wake up when they hear their parents outside. They are worried because Hallie wasn't in her room and they had called Marshall to talk to Ethan and Marshall confessed everything, telling them Ethan never slept over and he was told to say that he did. Busted! Now you would think the parents would check the diner first because they're literally standing right outside it, but instead they hail a cab to take to the Nana's house.  

The kids realize they're in trouble and they head to Nana's house. Do you remember Olivia, the French pregnant maid that we're introduced to at the beginning of the movie and never hear from her again? We might seer her in the background, but she doesn't have any purpose to the plot. Well, Nana Lillian is back at her house on Christmas morning and while she's on the phone, Olivia goes into labor. Paramedics are called and so when the kids reach their house, they see an ambulance outside the house. Ethan thinks they're there for them (the kids), but why would they think they needed to call am ambulance for them? If the parents thought their kids were missing, they'd call the police. Or does he think something bad happened to one of his parents or Nana because they were freaked out about them missing? Also, we're given one line about Olivia having her baby, then that's it. There was absolutely no reason for this plot line. I think this movie was written in a week. 

When Catherine and Michael come running in the house, asking Lillian if she's seen the kids, I laughed at Lauren Bacall's face when she asks, "Are they missing?" I laughed because the expression on her face says, "That wouldn't be a terrible thing." I read this as being Lauren Bacall's reaction because she probably knows this movie is crap and how entitled those kids are and that it wouldn't be such a bad thing. Or maybe that's just me. 

The kids come home and there's a lot of hugging. Now Tony has arrived and storms into the house. I understand he's a little irked (that's an understatement!), but he goes about it all wrong. Instead of telling Catherine what devious act her kids did to him, he calls them brats and tells her once they're married, the kids will be shipped off to boarding school. THEN he tells her what they did. Of course, Catherine doesn't like what he's saying and basically tells him, No dice, Tony, we're not getting married. I want to know how he got his car back.

After he leaves, Ethan stands in front of the Christmas tree and gives a saccharine speech about how he didn't realize "how much I missed us." I will say the background is beautiful with the
Christmas tree and the snow falling outside the large windows. He explains how they put their plan in action. Catherine and Michael embrace and kiss and tell each other they're in love with the other.  I guess they're back together. Who didn't see that coming.

The movie ends with the Macy's Santa Claus (who we are to presume is the real Santa) arriving at their house. He has Snowball with him and returns him to Hallie. To be honest, I had totally forgotten about the mouse.

Ethan gets a peck on the cheek from Stephanie before she leaves with her mom (who had also arrived at Nana's house that morning). So is she moving to New York to live with her mom or are they gonna have a long distance relationship? Who knows? Who cares. 

Then the movie ends with the truly horrendous original theme song sung by Stephen Bishop (yeah, I don't know him either). We had heard it earlier in the movie when Ethan is at his dad's house, watching a video of his parents' wedding and other home videos. This song could join the song from the end of Teen Wolf and the song from the end of Splash in terms of their awfulness. I just need another awful song and then I'll have my Mount Rushmore of movie theme songs so schmaltzy, saccharine, sappy, and so-cheesy-you-can-practically-see the-Velveeta-dripping-off-of-them.

Let me share the lyrics so you can see what I'm talking about. I should add the melody of the song isn't even that catchy so this song has nothing going for it: 

"All I want is what I had back then

when time was my friend

and love didn't end. 

All I want is what I had with you

Is it too much to ask?

Can dreams still come true?

Don't look down on me

with compromise you can see the world from my point of view

it's all up to you.

All I want is the promise that you'll stay.

All I want is one more yesterday.

I don't mean to oversimplify,

but I cross my heard and hope to die

Seriously, what is this dreck? Truly awful.

Go watch The Parent Trap (Hayley or Lindsay) if you want a movie about kids getting their divorced parents back together. 

Light Fight

Deck the Halls

Director: John Whitesell

Cast: Matthew Broderick, Danny DeVito, Kristin Davis, Kristin Chenoweth, Alia Shawkat

Released: November 22, 2006

More like Dreck the Halls, am I right? 

I had never seen this movie until a few days ago and if you asked me to tell you the plot of this movie before I saw it, I would have told you it's about neighbors who are battling over who has the better Christmas light display. Well, I would have been wrong! Because that's not what the plot of the movie is! Even though it would have made more sense than the actual plot! 

Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) lives in the idyllic town of Cloverdale, Massachusetts with his wife, Kelly (Kristin Davis), fifteen-year-old daughter,  Madison (Alia Shawkat ("Maebe" they'll give her something to do in this movie; no, no they will not)), and ten-year-old son, Carter. Steve is an optometrist and his office is located on Main Street. He loves Christmas and follows an advent calendar which helps them with their Christmas schedule. He has a set schedule for Christmas. For instance, on the third, when he opens the door of the advent calendar, there's a wreath so that's when they put up the wreath. They use this calendar every year so he already knows what's behind each number, but what if something is really late in the Christmas season? For instance, I think stockings were on the 24th, so does that mean they hang up their stockings on Christmas Eve? This is dumb, I'm sorry. 

His wife tells him they shouldn't have everything so rigidly scheduled when it comes to Christmas and to basically just go with the flow, but he tells her that when he was a kid and his dad was in the Air Force, they moved from one base to another and they never had a Christmas tree and "Christmas was not a priority" for his dad. He wants to make sure he has family traditions for his children around the holidays they can look forward to. He's worried about his kids because his daughter doesn't have many friends and their son acts like he's having a midlife crisis. I did laugh when he says, "Let's face it, our kids are a little weird." 

We are introduced to the new neighbors, who, for some reason, are moving in across the street in the late evening. Why are they moving in so late? There's really no reason for them to do that. They could move in the next day. Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) and his wife,Tia (Kristin Chenoweth), come over to introduce themselves the next day. Tia invites Kelly and her kids to come over, which they do. They're still unpacking stuff at the house and Carter sees a provocative painting of Tia and is staring at it, his mouth agape. Tia tells them she used to do some modeling, "mostly for art classes at the community college" and that's where she met Buddy. Kelly asks if he's an artist and Tia replies, "They caught him peeking through the windows." While I did laugh at that, that is dark and messed up! 

We are introduced to the Hall's twin girls who are both blonde and super tall (which is probably part of the joke since their parents are short) and act really ditzy and boy-crazy. Like a dope, Carter is staring at them and basically drooling. I loved how his sister was just looking at him with disgust because he's being so obvious about it. I don't even remember theirs names or if we were ever told their names. 

There's a vase sitting on a stool in the middle of the room and when one of the twins walks by it to ask Madison a question, she almost knocks it off, but Kelly catches it. Tia thanks her and says it's been in her family for years and that "it's worth more than this entire house put together." If it means that much to her and it's that expensive, why would she have it out in the middle of the room on a stool where anyone could walk by and accidentally knock it over. Now this (spoiler alert!) will be Chekhov's vase so I get they need to set it up, but I'm sorry, it still made me mad that she would treat a valuable piece like that. 

Buddy has started a new job at a car dealership. On his first day, three other sales guys point out an older gentleman inspecting a car and tell Buddy he should try to sell him a car. One guys bets him $1,000 he won't be able to sell him the car and the other guys get in on it, so for $3,000 Buddy is eager to show them what he can do. He goes outside and the other guys start snickering because the joke is that the man outside owns the dealership. From their perspective, we see Buddy talking to him, but we don't hear anything. He comes in about ten seconds later and tells them to put the money on his desk by the end of the day, then the owner comes in and dumfoundedly says he can't believe he just bought one of his cars. I guess this scene is here to show us Buddy can sell anything (though we never see him trying to sell anything else), but obviously they (the writers) couldn't think of how he would be able to sell the owner of the car dealership a car (at sticker price!) so they copped out and didn't show us. 

Tia is thrilled when Buddy tells her he sold a car on his first day because they can now pay off their "monumental debt." Obviously, Buddy doesn't care about this because we'll soon see him spending a lot of money on frivolous stuff. 

His daughters show him a website called "My Earth" which is basically Google Earth, but they must not have had the rights to use its name. On it, "you can see every house in the country from space." Every house, that is, except for their house. For some stupid reason, Buddy is really upset about that and when he sees a Christmas light while he's taking out the trash, he gets the idea to put lights on his house to brighten it. 

The first glimpse of a rival between Steve and Buddy happens when Buddy is putting lights on at three in the morning (why?) and Steve comes over to confront him about it and tells him how bright his house is. He must be using some really bright bulbs because at this point, his house is just outlined in white lights. Steve is gonna wish that's where Buddy stopped because it's about to get worse. Buddy checks My Earth, but he still can't see his house. 

The next day he goes to a hardware store and throws all the lights in his cart until it's full with boxes of lights. He empties the shelf and asks an employee if he can order more lights for him. In the backroom, he sees a horse-drawn sleigh which he buys. Now you think his wife would be outraged that he bought such an expensive (and unnecessary, like what are they going to do with that thing?) purchase, but she loves it! (Maybe Buddy got a good deal on it.) 

Meanwhile, across the street, the Finches are getting ready to take their annual Christmas card photo where they all wear the same Christmas sweater and get their picture taken in front of the fireplace. Carter looks outside and exclaims, "The new neighbors have reindeer!" I thought we were gonna see reindeer, but they're just horses with fake antlers duct-taped to their heads. Is this kid a bit dumb? 

Steve tries to herd his family back to the house to take their photo, but Tia suggests they take it on the sleigh and Kelly loves the idea. I have to admit, I think it's a really good idea and would make for a really cool Christmas photo. Carter gets in the sleigh and Buddy tells them, "We should keep our voices down a little because I found these horses on the outskirts of town and they look a little skittish to me." I'm a little confused how he rounded up these horses. You would think he was borrowing them from a stable, but he makes it sound like they're random wild horses. How would you even be able to round up wild horses? This is so dumb. Steve is (rightly) freaked out by what Buddy just said and tells his son to get out. Somehow the kid gets off the sleigh, but Steve is now in it and the horses take off. The horses take Steve into the streets where the sleigh is crashing into parked cars and barely missing people on the sidewalks. The sleigh comes unattached from the horses and goes over a snowbank where it flies across a street and lands on a frozen lake after sliding and spinning around a few moments. When the sleigh was flying overhead, a kid in a car sees it and exclaims, "Santa! He's real! I knew it!" Oh, I should mention that Buddy had put a Santa coat and hat on Steve so he was wearing that. The ice breaks and he and the sleigh go underwater, but luckily his family and the Halls must have followed him there because the next scene has him in the back of a car. He's naked, in a sleeping bag, next to Buddy who tells him they're onto way to the hospital and they had to strip him so he wouldn't freeze. The camera pans out to reveal that Buddy is also naked in the sleeping bag. When Steve questions him about that, his reply is, "I had to get your body temperature up, so I stripped us both and down and zipped us into this sleeping bag." Hmmm, I don't think it works that way. The movie could have gone for many jokes, but instead Steve just starts screaming. Yes, whatever joke they would have come up with would have probably been really stupid, but it's better than just the punchline being a scream. 

When he's back home, he's complaining to his wife who says, "The doctor says he probably saved your life." Steve replies, "Which is only fair since he's the one that almost got me killed in the first place." I mean, he's not lying. Do you think Buddy got his money back for the sleigh? Did he get sleigh insurance? Why isn't his wife angry that he spent so much money on something that they don't have anymore? This movie is so stupid. 

We're now seeing more lights on the Hall home and people are driving by to look at it.

Much to Steve's chagrin, Kelly has invited the neighbors to join them to pick out a Christmas tree. We don't see it, but I'm assuming the advent calendar has a Christmas tree on this particular day. The Finch's have their own private Christmas tree lot with about five or six trees, each one taller than the next. Is this a thing? Do people grow their Christmas tree several years in advance? Steve tells the Halls he has the next five years of trees all lined up. He has brought an axe and promised his son he could chop down a tree. (I dunno, chopping down a tree does NOT look like fun to me! It looks like a lot of hard work!) 

Buddy has brought a chainsaw and before he and his family go out to find a tree, he says, "Last ones to the cars are losers." This stupid comment makes Steve become competitive and he wants to chop down the tree himself so they can get it faster. (Um, I've never used an axe or a chainsaw, but I'm betting the chainsaw gets the job done quicker!) 

We see Buddy turn around and knock over a can of gasoline with the tip of the chainsaw. I was confused why there was a random can of gasoline just sitting in the snow, but I guess you need gasoline for chainsaws...which I had no idea. The thing is, we never see him putting it in the chainsaw or mention it or anything. It's just sitting there. I don't think he knocked it over on purpose because the movie would definitely let us know by showing him being devious and really obvious about him wanting to sabotage Steve's Christmas tree lot. 

The gas pours out in a puddle around the tree Steve has started chopping down. It's a good thing his son isn't chopping it down because a burst of flames goes up and swallows the tree in seconds. And if it isn't bad enough their tree for this year goes up in literal flames, so do all the other trees lined up behind it. Of course Steve is livid (yeah, I would be too, that's gotta be expensive having your own private Christmas tree lot) and why the hell would someone just leave an unopened can of gasoline around flammable trees? 

Even though Buddy offered to cut him down a tree, he refused because their family always gets a silver noble tree. The only one left was probably about three feet tall. It would be a great tree for an apartment or somewhere small, but looks pretty dinky in their living room. There were plenty of high quality trees at this lot, he couldn't just get another type of tree? They're all in the pine family. I'm surprised his kids aren't whining about it, but they probably know it's a loss cause since their dad is so set in his ways for Christmas. 

Buddy wants to work on a sequencer (I think that's the right word) so he can have the lights set to music. The next day, while he's at work, Steve sees Buddy buying more lights. (I would love to know how much all these lights are costing!) He goes over to talk to him and some guy stop them, asking what he thinks of the tree in the town center. Steve thinks he's talking to him and starts to speak, but the guy says he was talking to Buddy because "he is the expert." This doesn't make Steve happy. After Buddy is done talking and praising the tree (and basically offering obvious things about it such as the ornaments are nicely placed), Steve tells him he's the Christmas expert. Apparently this town also has a Fourth of July expert and another holiday with an expert that I can't remember. He tells Buddy he can have Halloween. I'm sorry, but this is the stupidest thing. Why is he an "expert" at Christmas? He just seems to be an expert at wanting to make sure his family Christmas is the same every year with their scheduled events. 

It's now December 15th and the advent calendar shows carolers so that must means it's time to go caroling! Some people have come over to the Finch's to go caroling with Steve, which is obviously a tradition they always do. This was a funny scene because while he's trying to harmonize with his carolers in his yard, across the street, Buddy's lights are on full force and a Christmas rap song starts blaring. Everyone in Steve's caroling group keeps looking behind them and it's clear they have no intention of caroling and want to go over and join the festivities going on at the Halls'. There's even a local news reporter from channel 8 to interview Buddy about the lights. He says he's gonna put out more lights (WHY??) and he's not gonna stop until he has "the biggest and brightest light display in the world" and adds that he wants his house to be "seen from outer space." What is with this weird obsession with wanting his house to be seen from space? Yes, it's been stated that he doesn't like being invisible, but I never get the sense that he's invisible...everyone in town seems to love him and his Christmas lights and his Christmas "expertise". It's just so stupid! Ha, I was listening to the podcast episode that How Did This Get Made? did about this movie and they were arguing (in a joking way) over who was the protagonist of this movie because both of them suck! 

Steve is trying to get out of his driveway, but a trailer and another large vehicle are parked in front of it with very little room for his car to get through. Some guy (who's been drinking) tells him he'll guide him out. Well, he gets distracted by the lights and Steve's car ends up getting scraped by a hook on the back of the trailer. (Even if the guy wasn't drunk and/or distracted, there's no way he would have successfully guided Steve's car between that small space!) The door on the other side gets caught up on something and the guy just tells Steve just to floor it and he does and when he gets out on the street, both front doors of his car are gone. I admit, I did laugh at that. 

Once everyone is gone, Tia tells her husband the thing we're all thinking: "It's the stupidest thing", referring to Buddy wanting their house to be seen from space. I honestly don't know why Tia hasn't set her foot down on all the money Buddy is spending on frivolous things. But she still doesn't say anything. There is now a "live manger scene" in their front yard complete with a cow, donkey, and camel. (And he'll hire actors when he's performing for the neighbors.) How much is all this costing? Do the animals stay there all the time or are they just there when he puts on a show? If they're there all the time, how is he affording to feed and take care of them? (We only see them when they're needed for the plot.) Also, something tells me a camel cannot survive in the Massachusetts winter! 

The camel makes its big appearance (camel cameo?) the night Steve decides he's going to dress all in black and sneak over to cut the power. He uses his son as a lookout. Before he gets to the fuse box, Buddy comes outside and looks around (I guess he heard a noise) and to hide himself, Steve dives into the penned-in area where the animals are being kept. This results in the camel spitting some bright atomic yellow stuff on him. 

He ends up stuffing a snowball in the fuse box and the light go out. This satisfies Steve greatly. Right away, I knew the lights were going to come back on shortly with the help of a generator. And I was right. Buddy knows it was Steve who sabotaged his lights and decides to get back at him.

At first, Steve thinks Buddy is offering an olive branch because he wakes up to find a new (and tall!) Christmas tree in his living room with an apology letter. Um, when did Buddy put that up? Did he comes over to their house in the middle of the night? This movie leaves so many unanswered questions. Not only is there a new tree, but also a new car in the driveway. When Buddy sees Steve and Kelly fawning over it,  he comes over to tell them the car is theirs for what he's put them through. 

The first sign that Buddy is up to no good is when Steve drives to work and sees someone has cut down the tree in the town center, leaving only the stump. Surely Steve, being Mr. Christmas and all, would recognize the ornaments on the tree. I think deep down he knows it's the same tree, but is telling himself it's not. The second sign that Buddy is up to no good is when Steve arrives at work and his assistant hands him some papers from the car dealership and says, "They say you have to pay for the car by lunchtime or you're going to be arrested." Guess he wasn't gifted a car after all! 

Meanwhile, at his job, Buddy is told that while he's a great car salesman, his numbers are down because he's never around (because he's buying all those stupid lights!). Buddy goes into some spiel about how the Christmas lights are more important than his job because he's always quitting things, but he needs "to finish this." (And apparently it won't be finished until aliens can see his house or something stupid like that!) He is told that he won't have a job to come back to when he's done with the lights. 

Steve shows up with the paperwork and confronts Buddy about it who tells him, "I'm guessing that's the bill to the new car you bought." He tells Steve the car is his (Steve's) because he signed a contact. This enrages Steve because of course never signed anything and Buddy admits he was the one who forged Steve's signature. Uh, that seems like a major felony! There's this whole stupid subplot where the chief of police wears women's underwear so this makes Steve wary of calling the police for help, so you know he's not getting the police involved in this. Instead, he tells Buddy he's going to call his attorney. At least that's something, but Buddy talks him out of it and brings up Winterfest and the speed skating race where they can compete against each other. Steve likes this idea and lays down the rules: "You win, I buy the car. I win you take down the lights." This seems a bit one-sided. One guy has to buy a very expensive SUV and the other guy just has to take down some lights? WTF is this? Why is Steve agreeing to this? And he was the one who made the rules! Dumb idiot! 

The Winterfest has arrived. It's Christmas carnival their town hosts every year that has "a show, games, ice sculptures, and [speed skating] races." 

The Christmas show includes a "sexy" one where three young girls in red fur-trimmed dresses and Santa hats are dancing to "Santa Baby". They pretty much ripped off that scene from Mean Girls. You can't see the faces of the girls because they start the dancing by facing away from the audience, but right away I knew it was Madison and the twins. We've seen them become friends throughout the movie. Buddy and Steve start acting gross and start hooting and hollering at the girls. Yes, maybe they don't realize those are their daughters (how would they not know that they're in a show at the Winterfest? Major pothole there), but they're still oogling very young girls with their wives somewhere nearby! Steve even yells out, "Who's your Daddy?" which is very uncharacteristic  for him. There is no way this rigid character who has a schedule for everything would ever yell that (especially in public!). Obviously, they do it for the stupid joke (because he is her daddy, har, har, movie), but it's so OOC for him. Like, maybe I could see Buddy doing that (after all he was a peeping Tom at his future wife's art class!), but not Steve. If I were Madison, I would never speak to my dad again for being a gross dirty old perverted man. 

Steve and Buddy are freaked out by what they've just done and we see them wiping their eyes out with holy water at a church. This church has a P.A. system which alerts them the speed skating race will be held in five minutes. There's really nothing to say about this race except that there's a lot of people falling and tripping and Buddy ends up winning which means Steve will have to pay up. So stupid of him to agree to have this race! Steve goes low by telling Buddy the last time he looked at the My Earth website, he couldn't see Buddy's house (Whoooooooooooo cares?) and asks him, "How's it feel to be invisible?" This hurt Buddy's feelings. So your house can't be seen from freakin' space! As my mom would say, Buck up! 

Buddy has gone completely off his rocker because in the next scene we see him at home talking on the phone, asking how much a bunch of LED lights he wants to order would cost with the shipping. We don't hear the price, but it's obvious exorbitant. I did laugh when he asks if that price is in yen. We see him looking at his wife's priceless vase and puts in the order.

In the next scene, Tia has discovered the stand holding her vase is empty and asks Buddy about it. (Is this the same day? How did he sell it so quickly?) When she asks him if he pawned her grandmother's vase, he asks her, "How am I supposed to afford a camel on a car salesman salary?" Why is this now about the camel? I thought he was buying lights with the money from his wife's vase. He adds he couldn't get a loan because he lost his job and that's how she finds out he doesn't have a job anymore. Those Christmas lights/Christmas display seem to be more important to him than his wife or kids of having a job. 

But Buddy doesn't seem to care about any of this and puts on a big show with his lights and music for a big crowd, including the local news. There are even images of himself on the roof. He must have filmed himself, then projected himself. I would love to know how long it took to coordinate all of this. It's actually pretty impressive what he did, surely there's a profession for him in Christmas light and music sequencing or whatever you would call it. While the show is going on, his wife and daughters get in the car and leave. He half-assedly yells after them not to leave, but what's more important is that after the show is over, he tells the audience, "The show is gonna be repeated every night, on a loop, until 4 a.m." I'm pretty sure this is called disturbing the peace and is illegal to be playing music that loud (because it is blaring). 

Steve has had enough and his solution is to buy some firecrackers. Now we had heard earlier there was a "Fourth of July guy" in this town and you would think that's the guy he buys it from, but it's never mentioned it's the same guy! He gets on his roof and shoots some fireworks off towards Buddy's house. He will later learn this was all for nothing because Buddy was at the motel his family was staying at, throwing pebbles at the window to get their attention. But even worse, a large firework ends up going down Steve's house's chimney and ricochets around his house before hitting the tree, setting it on fire. His wife is up at this point and sees the whole thing (and the firework nearly misses her). You would think she would grab the kids and leave, but no, this doesn't happen until the next morning. They go to stay with Tia and the twins. 

Steve is sad and Buddy is sad. Boo hoo hoo, maybe they shouldn't have acted like total idiots.

At that motel, Carter looks out the window and tells everyone else to come see something. It's a path lit with Christmas lights and lined with plastic candy canes, Santas, stars, snowmen, etc. They follow it to see where it leads and it's right back to the Halls' house. (I'm guessing the motel wasn't too far away from their house.) All the lights and Christmas decorations are Buddy's as we saw him taking all of it down because it wasn't worth having up anymore since it took away from his family. 

Buddy and Steve have a meal waiting for their families and you would think this would be the end of the movie: the wives and kids have forgiven their husband/dads, Buddy has gotten Tia's vase back (and telling her they won't be using their credit cards for a long time), but nooooo, it's not! 

Okay, I have to be honest with you: I had a few more paragraphs of this review which I had written, but for some reason, when I was putting in photos, I somehow erased the end of this review! Usually, I can get it back, but it won't let me get back and I'm so irritated right now! All that typing for nothing! I don't want to write all of it again! So I'll just write a very condensed version because who cares, right? F this movie!!! Ugh, I'm so mad! 

So basically Steve had called everyone in town to bring their own lights and help put lights on Buddy's house (like they don't have their own plans for Christmas because it's either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day). The lights so on for ten seconds before they go out again. Tia starts singing "O Holy Night" and everyone joins in. (Might as well make use of having Kristin Chenoweth in your cast.) In a very Christmas Vacation move, Carter sees the plug isn't all the way in and fixes it and the lights go on. And the most important part is that Buddy's house can be seen from space. I'm so glad we have our priorities straight!