Real "Desperate Housewives" Gossip! How Outdated Is It? My First Watch Seasons 1-3! Read On....

Feels really weird in 2025

What happens when you combine Sex and the City with Lifetime? Remove the high fashion and NYC setting? Add a Danny Elfman theme? Have some of the same cast, ohhhh, Trey off SATC (Kyle MacLachlan)? Desperate Housewives! My spoiler free review.

Gossip!!!!!

You people all come here for dirt.

I met someone on this show when I was really young. The person, I will not tell you if a man or a woman, or the age, did that thing very common when many people float in that awkward space between unknown and Brad Pitt fame. Refuse to talk to me or my gay BFF, as her/his romantic special someone was openly friendly for quite a while. Get inches from my face like he/she were my dentist, staring. When people don’t think they know your face from a hit show/movie/reality show, you get the brush over. I wish it weren’t so common. This woman/man pointed at things to a person nearby working at this place and went mute as the partner had a human talk with me/my pal. Really rude experience. Sadly, quite common for anyone feeling too “famous.” You know the joke where, in Bridget Jones #1, the friend thinks those people are asking about his one hit wonder track, and the couple only wants to know if he will move the table? That’s life for lots of people getting their first touches of success, and you or me on the receiving end.

While he probably does not remember me without my Elvis jet black hair dye from then, I have met Brad Pitt. He regularly has met people I know outside of my meeting him. He was warm and friendly with a normal human tone to me and plenty of other people. People at larger scale eternal fame like him I have met or in some way interacted with? They got there from being normal and respectful of others. Professionalism is real.

I had to set this all aside for a proper reviewing of a series because I was forced to confront this woman/man/human on screen in character. “Never meet your heroes” is the best advice on the planet. Follow it. Half of these people are, the B to Z listers, only “nice” when they pose next to charity work on camera, and not meeting you as an All About Eve competitor in their minds.

Season 1 was absolutely delicious viewing

What they said about this show was true. Everything. Great writing.

I didn’t care that it was very much trying to replace Sex and the City. Everything is a copy of, or a response to, something else. Great songwriting has all been people blasting each other in rap or rock ‘n’ roll. I love a good beef like anyone. Imagine Marc Cherry busting out a rap, “SATC, watch me do it better and embracing the LGBT community better than you did.” I’d live for that moment of TV series rap offs. 😂

A sick young friend of mine in the hospital for many months, later in home care with a nurse, loved Desperate Housewives. This show helped him heal with laughter and seeing his life was better than people on the program. He had chronic illness. Not four kids and chaos like Lynette. No murderous love interests. I get it.

I started speed binging this to see what it was all about around October 2025. Disney+, please introduce a Netflix 1.5x watch option. Make my life easier.

Susan (Teri Hatcher) is the Carrie Bradshaw. Everything Carrie did that’s good and bad on the show, Susan does that. The SATC influence is at work here. Marc Cherry turned that around with making Susan a kinder, less materialistic Carrie. She means well. Carrie was a petulant child. Susan was a woman you might meet somewhere.

Bree is the Charlotte.

Lynette, I guess, some corporate mashup of SATC characters.

Everyone else fits around the stereotypes of women’s TV. For better or worse.

In Season 2-3, everyone is a murderer or revealed to be gay

In 2004-2005 when this show was probably filming these seasons, Desperate Housewives was the only place to see LGBTQ characters on TV. Same sex couples couldn’t get married. A Susan scene in this pack has a gay couple angry because one person doesn’t go abroad to get married. You see what Marc Cherry does here: forcing people to make every character major or barely mentioned LGBTQ because he was trying to improve life for people. Showing them that real equality is LGBTQ people being heroes and villains.

It’s not coming from the same place of 2025 where we think about it from a view of diversity and inclusion. Nobody LGBTQ, or for that matter, Hispanic and not in a maid role, was on TV. Eva Longoria’s character on this show with her husband, both successful people with money and not portrayed as any tropes, would’ve been groundbreaking. The guest stars on Desperate Housewives who, gasp! Had foreign Spanish language accents like Maria Conchita Alonso and weren’t cast as butlers or cooks! Well, there you go.

Black people move into Wisteria Lane. People treat them equally. In 2004, few black actors and actresses had prominent juicy roles.

You take all of this for granted in 2025. Watching this now feels sad. You had to overdo these bits in 2005 for presence.

And yes, everyone is a killer, it seems. Like, come on. Everyone.

The realism is so off. In season 2, Susan calls authorities because on a whim, she feels someone is a killer. Later on, a different man’s house is ransacked because a person, on a whim, phones the police she feels he is a killer. Um, really?

Things get really zany. Season 1 was a fantastic mystery with some comedy. Seasons 2-3 are just throwing everything at the wall seeing what sticks, outrageousness for the sake of it. It’s like, make up your mind. Do you want to be campy? Night soap? Romantic? Rebellious? You can genre bend without being weird.

I don’t know if I’m continuing past season 3

When they got into the daytime soap trope about slipping into comas for romance, it felt….

This show got lost.

There was a passage where Bree’s son was making fun of a person for a suicide attempt, and its delivery was like you don’t know if the show wanted you to laugh or find it disrespectful. That a man soon said it was a poor choice of words in that scene didn’t clean it up well.

Everything repeats itself.

By the millionth time of someone being stranded by the side of the road as a scene development, I’m a bit bored of people being left by the highway. That concept was interesting maybe the first time around.

The show scraped over LGBTQ youth homelessness and adult work to rough it like it was nothing.

You’re going in a big vicious cycle. At 24 episodes every season, 12-15 might have been OK. Or 8. Leave me wanting more.

I did enjoy seeing the switch when Gabrielle got a Sidekick. The flip phone nostalgia, as a flip phone connoisseur in 2025. Juicy Couture tracksuits on every female character.

My nighttime viewing for sleepyville might make it happen. Or not. I’ll see how Desperate I get.