OK, I'm not feeling enough love for Desperate Housewives up in here. It's like 90210? It's like Sex and the City? I could barely stand to watch either of those shows. I've even heard it described as American Beauty: The Series. Closer, but not quite.
DH (acronym? I'm so cool) is different; different enough that I'm shocked it's been able to pull in the top ratings spot every week. I fully expect this kind of show to get relegated to "cult" status, but its success is highly promising for the future of our society.
I will now expound on why I like it, using the Furdell Standardized Top Five List.
5. It's not really a "drama."
At least, not in the standard TV drama sense. It's more of a dark satire merged with a mystery. Kind of like a Twin Peaks that makes sense.
And the litmus test of whether a show is a "drama" is really whether I can watch it without being bored to tears. Although this could eventually turn into the type of show where the developments in the characters' lives become the focus, right now that's secondary to setting up comedic situations and furthering the various mysteries. Plus, it's satirical of how we try to inject drama into our own lives, no matter where we can find it.
4. The Sunset Blvd. Factor.
Yes, Sex and the City also had third-person narration. But this show is narrated by a dead woman. In fact, it's a woman who has killed herself, for reasons not yet divulged. Eat that, Billy Wilder!
From the first moments of the pilot, you know this is going to be a dark, quirky series.
3. Eva Longoria.
Wow, she's hot.
OK, in the interest of equal time, the girls would like you to know that Jesse Metcalfe, who plays Eva Longoria's gardening shorty, was named sexiest man on TV. And he did five years of hard time on our favorite soap opera, Passions. Bonus!
Mom should be posting a comment claiming that he looks like me in 3, 2, 1...
2. Martha Stewart, Interrupted.
Marcia Cross' performance absolutely destroys the Martha Stewart homemaker ethic. Her character (Bree Van de Kamp... hee!) has managed to expunge any hint of passion or spontanaiety from her life. She keeps an immaculate house and prepares way-fancy dinners every night... but doesn't seem to realize her family is on the verge of mutiny, even after her husband leaves her.
Plus, she's responsible for delivering what must be one of the greatest lines in TV history. Spoken at a dinner party as other characters are revealing humorous embarrassing things about themselves, Bree chimes in with: "Rex cries after he ejaculates." I laughed so hard I almost cried. It's just the perfect representation of a passive-agressive character crossing the line into agressive-agressiveness.
1. It made me like Teri Hatcher again.
Yeah, we had broken up. I had a crush on her during the first couple seasons of Lois and Clark, when she had this fabulous head of hair that seemed to have a life of its own; then she did the unthinkable by cutting it short. Was it a coincidence that the show started to suck right about then, getting stuck in Neverending Wedding Plotland? I think not.
Now, in DH, she's completely redeemed herself as the de facto star of the show. Hatcher is perfectly sympathetic as the klutzy, sad-sack divorc?e who does her best to avoid being stepped on, with only partial success. She's too dippy to keep from getting locked out of the house while naked, but shrewd enough to worm her way out of her neighbor's blackmail scheme; through all of it, she manages to stay eminently likable.
Plus, she's Teri Hatcher.
It's all good.
So, if you've cancelled this one, I recommend giving it another chance. You can even come over and watch it after dinner with me, Kimberly and "Staci". Good times.
And remember, I'M NEVER WRONG about this kind of thing. I'm talking to you, Andrew.
Teri Hatcher, indisputably once hot, now looks old and hangs out with Howie Long. Uh uh.
Your #4 is where the American Beauty accusation stems from. I think the "dead narrator" gimmick was much more integral to AB than to Sunset Boulevard, and it feels the same way with DH. Also, that it's a narration of a person who died living a regular life in suburbia (and not a person who was in a weird illicit relationship with an elderly psycho), well, you get the idea.
As for Teri, I thought she got a bad rap in Tomorrow Never Dies. She was much better than the other chick, and killing her off quick to appease test audiences was one of that movie's biggest faults.
As to your insistance that, just because I happened to resist watching a show based on a completely awful movie with a hard-to-sell premise, you somehow now have superior television taste now, well, I've already seen an episode of DH (the one with the dinner party) and I was not amused. Pfah! Pfah I say.
I was glad they killed of Terri Hatcher early in the Bond flick, because it must have taken a lot of work to make her look so SO unattractive... those Bond special effects are amazing.