A close-knit group of housewives reside in Wisteria Lane. It may appear to be a seemingly perfect neighborhood but it hides many secrets, crimes, forbidden romances and domestic struggles.A close-knit group of housewives reside in Wisteria Lane. It may appear to be a seemingly perfect neighborhood but it hides many secrets, crimes, forbidden romances and domestic struggles.A close-knit group of housewives reside in Wisteria Lane. It may appear to be a seemingly perfect neighborhood but it hides many secrets, crimes, forbidden romances and domestic struggles.
- Won 7 Primetime Emmys
- 67 wins & 190 nominations total
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Summary
Reviewers say 'Desperate Housewives' is celebrated for its drama, comedy, and mystery, offering sharp dialogue and engaging storylines. The show is praised for its strong character development and performances by Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman, and Eva Longoria. It tackles everyday issues and deep emotions with a darkly comedic touch, noted for memorable one-liners and cliffhangers. However, some criticize it for over-the-top storylines and inconsistent character development. Despite this, it remains a beloved classic.
Featured reviews
First a brief synopsis..
The story from this show, starts with the suicide of Mary Alice a woman who lives in a nice and quiet place called Wisteria Lane. This woman was married and had a teenage boy, from this point on starts the mistery of why she killed herself. Her four best friends; Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman), Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) and Bree (Marcia Cross) start to put things together about her suicide while a new resident moved into the neighborhood named Mike Delfino with a mysterious past. Is he a bad guy or a good guy? Or a bad guy doing a good thing?
First what I really want to say for a non-spoiler review is that this series came out in 2004 and I decided to binge it in 2018 of June. It held up incredibly via Hulu. I was hooked after just 1 episode!! That's all it took. Also I should mention I'm a straight guy. This series is NOT JUST FOR WOMEN! There is much to love about this series that men will cherish. The comedy is incredible but the relatable situations are outstanding as well. The mysteries and intrigue are brilliant too.
What's impressive about this series is that despite a big mystery hanging above, so much entertainment goes on that you forget about it and are captivated by each individual episode. I cant believe it took me so long to watch this show but I honestly dont think I would have appreciated it as much in 2004 as a kid. I think all I would have thought about was the gardner and gabrielle having an affair but now I found I cared more about how she mainted to cover the secret as it happened and I started watching.
Dont think for a second because this series is from 2004 it may not be good because the best TV has come from the 90s and 2000s! That was the age in which TV was shaped to inspire the shows on TV today. I've learned many things this week and one thing is that all incredible art pieces, they dont age they hold up with time. For e.g. I just started ER and I'm addicted and it holds up too and that was 1994!
When desperate housewives came out, TV was different then. It wasnt as censored as it is today and you can feel the difference or I can at least. (Watch a drama from then90s on network TV and then imagine it on that same channel take NYPD pilot for example) what I'm saying is it doesnt matter if this is old incredible!!!!
This series is a must-see that provides pure entertainment and laughs for you each episode and the first handful of seasons!!!
I cant believe I almost never watched this gem of a series...what a exhilarating experience!!! Bravo 9/10
The story from this show, starts with the suicide of Mary Alice a woman who lives in a nice and quiet place called Wisteria Lane. This woman was married and had a teenage boy, from this point on starts the mistery of why she killed herself. Her four best friends; Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman), Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) and Bree (Marcia Cross) start to put things together about her suicide while a new resident moved into the neighborhood named Mike Delfino with a mysterious past. Is he a bad guy or a good guy? Or a bad guy doing a good thing?
First what I really want to say for a non-spoiler review is that this series came out in 2004 and I decided to binge it in 2018 of June. It held up incredibly via Hulu. I was hooked after just 1 episode!! That's all it took. Also I should mention I'm a straight guy. This series is NOT JUST FOR WOMEN! There is much to love about this series that men will cherish. The comedy is incredible but the relatable situations are outstanding as well. The mysteries and intrigue are brilliant too.
What's impressive about this series is that despite a big mystery hanging above, so much entertainment goes on that you forget about it and are captivated by each individual episode. I cant believe it took me so long to watch this show but I honestly dont think I would have appreciated it as much in 2004 as a kid. I think all I would have thought about was the gardner and gabrielle having an affair but now I found I cared more about how she mainted to cover the secret as it happened and I started watching.
Dont think for a second because this series is from 2004 it may not be good because the best TV has come from the 90s and 2000s! That was the age in which TV was shaped to inspire the shows on TV today. I've learned many things this week and one thing is that all incredible art pieces, they dont age they hold up with time. For e.g. I just started ER and I'm addicted and it holds up too and that was 1994!
When desperate housewives came out, TV was different then. It wasnt as censored as it is today and you can feel the difference or I can at least. (Watch a drama from then90s on network TV and then imagine it on that same channel take NYPD pilot for example) what I'm saying is it doesnt matter if this is old incredible!!!!
This series is a must-see that provides pure entertainment and laughs for you each episode and the first handful of seasons!!!
I cant believe I almost never watched this gem of a series...what a exhilarating experience!!! Bravo 9/10
I watched Desperate Housewives for the first time ever out of sheer boredom and I ended up binging the entire series. It got me hooked from the first episode. Something crazy is always happening but at the core, this is a story about friendship and growth. There are some seriously funny moments mixed into all the chaos and many heartfelt ones too. I actually got emotionally during the last episode. It felt like the last episode of Friends. I had grown attached to all of these women and their families and didn't want it to end.
10cjonesas
Sometimes, a series or a movie hooks you so much that when it ends, it's like a part of yourself is gone with it. You cry, you shed tears, you cannot stop thinking about it. Like a lost lover who's decided to go and leave you all alone.
That is what Desperate Housewives is for me. 8 seasons of sheer joy and emotions. A rollercoaster of pleasure, bliss, sadness and thrill throughout.
It has quality written all over it. It has one the best script, story, cast and acting in the whole TV industry. Brenda Strong's voice and narrative alone are enough to make you shiver, have goosebumps and dream. She was extraordinary and breathtaking.
I loved Marcia Cross. She was my favourite, ever since I got to know her from Melrose Place. She is one of the most beautiful, talented and wonderful actresses out there. She just shines. She has depth and class painted all over her. Would like to see more of her in series. Marcia please!
7 years have passed since I finished the show, but I still feel it like it was the first day. I'm enthusiastic and excited about it like my first glance on it.
It's my guilty pleasure and one of the most cherished series of my life.
That is what Desperate Housewives is for me. 8 seasons of sheer joy and emotions. A rollercoaster of pleasure, bliss, sadness and thrill throughout.
It has quality written all over it. It has one the best script, story, cast and acting in the whole TV industry. Brenda Strong's voice and narrative alone are enough to make you shiver, have goosebumps and dream. She was extraordinary and breathtaking.
I loved Marcia Cross. She was my favourite, ever since I got to know her from Melrose Place. She is one of the most beautiful, talented and wonderful actresses out there. She just shines. She has depth and class painted all over her. Would like to see more of her in series. Marcia please!
7 years have passed since I finished the show, but I still feel it like it was the first day. I'm enthusiastic and excited about it like my first glance on it.
It's my guilty pleasure and one of the most cherished series of my life.
I like every single episode and the way of the whole story was that you can see how much I love it.
Some thirty years ago now, a fledgling writer and self-admitted 'desperate housewife' herself, one Susan Harris was sitting watching the gawd-awful writing and acting being perpetrated on some daytime sudser and said, "Well, hell! I can do this, and I can do it better!" And so she sat down and started work on what became one of the most ground-breaking series of its time, SOAP.
Fast-forward to 2004. Miraculously, and not a moment too soon, the can-do spirit and twisted, blackly comic sensibility that Susan Harris blended into her frothy concoction has seeped into the consciousness and the pen of one Mr. Marc Cherry, and television right now is all the better for it.
It was high time, in a slate of shows that range from the ones that take themselves all too seriously (THE WEST WING, ER and about any other medical or cop drama you can name), to the ones that have no shame at all (AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS, FEAR FACTOR and every 'reality show' going), that somebody took the complete, over-the-top ridiculousness of both day-and-night-time soaps and gave them a good, hard shake.
DESPERATE is not a sitcom, but nothing on television right now makes me laugh harder. It isn't a straight drama, but I find myself just as involved as if I were watching LOST or THE SHIELD. It's not some stiff, stodgy or saccharine, treacly morality play, but when it comes to having a sense of those "family values" that certain politicians are so fond of emphasizing, it carries in one episode more commentary about love, compassion and caring for one's fellow man than all the seasons of JOAN OF ARCADIA and "that show with Della Reese" combined.
Not that it's going to receive the Nobel Prize anytime soon. I would just as soon settle for seeing every member of the terrific cast win an Emmy every year this show runs, and sooner or later, I have no doubt that it will happen.
But besides bringing us a terrific show to look forward to on Sunday nights, (something that hasn't happened for me personally since the heyday of THE X-FILES), let us give thanks for something else that TV has been far too slow in acknowledging...the value of beautiful, brainy and talented actresses over 40.
For realizing that Teri Hatcher DESPERATELY needed a role that would prove she could do a helluva lot more than play yet another version of Lois Lane. That Felicity Huffman, one of our most under-appreciated talents, DESPERATELY needed the sustenance of a role like Lynette Scavo to sink her teeth into. That Marcia Cross DESPERATELY needed the kind of showcase for HER talents that the likes of Frances Conroy, CCH Pounder, Sharon Gless and other top notch actresses only get on cable, and that Bree Van De Kamp will prove once and for all what we always knew from MELROSE PLACE--this woman ROCKS!, and for giving Eva Longoria something that all actors as gorgeous as she have DESPERATELY needed forever...the chance to prove that being a treat for the eyes, does not automatically mean that your acting talent is about as deep as a kiddie wading pool.
Thank you, thank you, thank you...and thank you for making us all DESPERATE for more of the shady doings on the sunny side of the streets of Wisteria Lane.
Fast-forward to 2004. Miraculously, and not a moment too soon, the can-do spirit and twisted, blackly comic sensibility that Susan Harris blended into her frothy concoction has seeped into the consciousness and the pen of one Mr. Marc Cherry, and television right now is all the better for it.
It was high time, in a slate of shows that range from the ones that take themselves all too seriously (THE WEST WING, ER and about any other medical or cop drama you can name), to the ones that have no shame at all (AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS, FEAR FACTOR and every 'reality show' going), that somebody took the complete, over-the-top ridiculousness of both day-and-night-time soaps and gave them a good, hard shake.
DESPERATE is not a sitcom, but nothing on television right now makes me laugh harder. It isn't a straight drama, but I find myself just as involved as if I were watching LOST or THE SHIELD. It's not some stiff, stodgy or saccharine, treacly morality play, but when it comes to having a sense of those "family values" that certain politicians are so fond of emphasizing, it carries in one episode more commentary about love, compassion and caring for one's fellow man than all the seasons of JOAN OF ARCADIA and "that show with Della Reese" combined.
Not that it's going to receive the Nobel Prize anytime soon. I would just as soon settle for seeing every member of the terrific cast win an Emmy every year this show runs, and sooner or later, I have no doubt that it will happen.
But besides bringing us a terrific show to look forward to on Sunday nights, (something that hasn't happened for me personally since the heyday of THE X-FILES), let us give thanks for something else that TV has been far too slow in acknowledging...the value of beautiful, brainy and talented actresses over 40.
For realizing that Teri Hatcher DESPERATELY needed a role that would prove she could do a helluva lot more than play yet another version of Lois Lane. That Felicity Huffman, one of our most under-appreciated talents, DESPERATELY needed the sustenance of a role like Lynette Scavo to sink her teeth into. That Marcia Cross DESPERATELY needed the kind of showcase for HER talents that the likes of Frances Conroy, CCH Pounder, Sharon Gless and other top notch actresses only get on cable, and that Bree Van De Kamp will prove once and for all what we always knew from MELROSE PLACE--this woman ROCKS!, and for giving Eva Longoria something that all actors as gorgeous as she have DESPERATELY needed forever...the chance to prove that being a treat for the eyes, does not automatically mean that your acting talent is about as deep as a kiddie wading pool.
Thank you, thank you, thank you...and thank you for making us all DESPERATE for more of the shady doings on the sunny side of the streets of Wisteria Lane.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaA fan loved the dress Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) wore in the pilot so much, she wrote to the producers asking the name of the designer, and if he could design her a prom dress. The producers instead sent her the actual gown, and she wore it to her prom.
- GoofsXiao-Mei would never be able to be a surrogate without having a child of her own first. All reputable surrogacy agencies in the US require their surrogates to have had at least one full-term, live birth before becoming a surrogate.
- Quotes
Sister Mary Bernard: Money can't buy happiness.
Gabrielle: Sure it can! That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting.
- Crazy creditsThe credits contain references to famous pieces of art, including Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, American Gothic by Grant Wood, and Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup can. Also alluded to are the lesser known Couple Arguing and Romantic Couple by Robert Dale (drawn in a comic book style similar to that of Roy Liechtenstein) and a 1940s "Am I Proud!" poster by Dick Williams (showing a woman holding cans).
- ConnectionsEdited into Desperate Housewives: Oprah Winfrey Is the New Neighbor (2005)
- SoundtracksDesperate Housewives Theme
Written by Danny Elfman
Details
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- Also known as
- Những Bà Nội Trợ Kiểu Mỹ
- Filming locations
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime45 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
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