'Desperate' Monday: You Gotta Get a Gimmick

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Desperate Housewives.*

I’m still angry with Carlos and Gabby. Sorry. Can’t help it. A 60-inch plasma TV, paying Lynette a salary during the remainder of her pregnancy and for her six-week maternity leave, offering Lynette her job back and then allowing Tom to temporarily assume the post in her absence, none of it, in my opinion, takes the raging narcissists off the hook for their wretched, discriminatory behavior. You don’t treat a friend like that and push her growing family into possible financial ruin. It shouldn’t take that friend having to save your child’s life to suddenly make you see the light of how wrong you were and expect all the viewers to just forget about it with a shoulder shrug.

I know, I know, it's Desperate Housewives, what do I expect? But I guess I made the mistake of expecting a bit more . . . I can’t just switch off my irritation and just be okay with the Solises and sympathize with Gabby’s impoverished childhood and her estrangement from her Mexican heritage. I can’t make myself care about where Juanita goes to school and how many Latinas live (or don’t live) in her neighborhood.

This is one of the things that irritates me about Desperate Housewives. The writers’ll ratchet up all this tension and angst and then *poof* all of it is forgotten and we’re supposed to just move on. At least with the Bree-Orson situation they’re not just having the estranged couple simply get past Bree’s affair and Orson’s extortion in mere days, instead, they’re reverting back to their behavior from last season when Orson was punishing Bree for paying more attention to her flourishing career than to him by forcing her to stay up late and make him a pot roast.

Even the Lynette and Tom argument over what Lynette would/should do after she has the baby was retracing old terrain. The whole should-she-stay-home-or-shouldn’t-she debate has been done to death already. Seeing Tom come home, beaming, after a successful day of work while Lynette’s been at home doing something as exciting as peeing “twice in every bathroom in the house,” brought us smack dab back to the days when Lynette was miserable being an at-home mom who felt backed into a corner by her maternity and her husband.

The only moment of freshness was the Susan Mayer Delfino-strip club storyline where Susan pole danced to make a point, which I found amusing given that it was only last week that Susan was in a fat suit. The scene where Mike acknowledged Susan had a point about his frequenting strip clubs and he so adamantly didn’t want her to take her top off that he covered her with his jacket and swept her up in his arms a la An Officer and a Gentleman, was the most entertaining moment of the entire episode.

What do you think Housewives fans, can you forgive Carlos and Gabby? What did you think of the new episode, “You Gotta Get a Gimmick?”

Image credit: Ron Tom/ABC.

'Desperate Housewives' Playing Pregnancy Discrimination for Laughs

As I've been reviewing episodes of Desperate Housewives this season, I've become increasingly appalled by the Lynette Scavo/Carlos Solis plotline.

In a nutshell: Lynette, a mom of four, accidentally got pregnant and was planning to tell her boss Carlos -- her longtime friend and neighbor -- about her pregnancy. But before she could inform him, he told her he'd just passed over a talented woman for a promotion because she was pregnant and instead offered the post to Lynette, a job which would double her salary, as she's the sole breadwinner of her family of six, about to become a family of eight (she's having twins and her husband has gone back to college). She opted not to tell Carlos right away, but to make arrangements for her departure by training a (temporary) replacement and by landing a big account. However Carlos found out before Lynette was ready to tell him and pushed her out of the job, treating her as a betrayer of trust whose pregnancy had hurt his business. Then Lynette sued.

The story seems super-serious for the dramedy Desperate Housewives but has been played for laughs. For example, when Lynette's breasts swelled at the beginning of her pregnancy, Carlos thought she had gotten implants and urged her to show off her cleavage with a sexy, revealing dress (which he paid for) in an attempt to lure a male client. And now that Lynette is suing Carlos, his wife Gabby isn't speaking to Lynette and is, in fact treating her wretchedly, calling Lynette an "awful person" who let Carlos down by getting pregnant.



My column on Mommy Track this week centers on this storyline and, once you put aside the typical Wisteria Lane melodrama, asks what a woman in Lynette's situation is supposed to do.

What would you do in this situation?

'Desperate' Monday: Would I Think of Suicide?

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Desperate Housewives.*

In short order, the Desperate Housewives’ writers have transformed the Solises into a remarkably unlikeable and wildly self-centered couple who’ve progressed not a bit since season one. Why on earth did they do this? Why did they take Gabby and Carlos -- whom they spent much of last year building into a warm, down-to-earth couple – go down this road?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday week, I had the chance to see a bit of last season’s Desperate Housewives episodes on TV in the days when Gabby and Carlos were actually human beings with blood running through their veins: Carlos was resisting going back to a high-pressured job. When he started working crazy hours and came home from work grumpy and tired all the time, Gabby had pleaded with him not to go back “there,” to the time when she was the bored housewife who was ignored by her calloused and uncaring husband who cared more about his business’ bottom line than his wife.

Given what happened last season, it's been painful to watch the jack ass they’ve made of Carlos this season, telling Lynette to take a Florida transfer or face termination, moving Lynette’s office to a teeny supply closet and giving her 48 hours of work to complete an assignment in less than 24 hours (insisting that Lynette miss her daughter’s Christmas play) knowing there was no way she could finish it within the timeframe, giving him the perfect excuse to fire her.

Then there was Gabby, who accused Lynette of “lying” about her pregnancy when, in fact, she simply didn’t inform her of the pregnancy . She believed Lynette should’ve put Carlos’ business and the Solises’ bottom line ahead of Lynette’s own family, her family’s bottom line and the lives of the twins she’s carrying. Though she made a soft pitch to Carlos to let up on Lynette a little, once she learned that Lynette was suing Carlos for discrimination, Gabby acted as though LYNETTE was the one who wounded the friendship.

Why did the writers make the Solises such bad guys? Who out there is actually going to be rooting for them now, as they've tortured Lynette, knowing full well she’s her growing family’s only breadwinner, and then fired her? I don’t see a way for the writers to make them empathetic parents again. I just want to see them pay. And suffer.

Then there’s the transformation of Katherine Mayfair into Glenn Close’s character from Fatal Attraction. All that’s been missing is a boiling bunny on the stove. After harassing Susan Mayer and making her life hell, Katherine has set her sights on Susan and Mike Delfino’s son MJ, filling his head with criticisms of his mother (whom Katherine told him was “a bad person” and “stole” Mike from Katherine). After being told in no uncertain terms by Mike to stay away from MJ, she took the Glenn Close step of picking MJ up from a birthday party. When Mike confronted Katherine, as she knew he would, she took a knife which Mike’d handled, and stabbed herself with it.

I keep waiting for her to say that she’s pregnant with Mike’s baby. If only MJ had a pet rabbit. Seriously, we've entered Sillyville now.

What do you think about the conversion of Carlos and Gabby into evil cardboard characters? About Katherine pulling a Fatal Attraction?

Image credit: Ron Tom/ABC.

'Desperate' Monday: The Coffee Cup

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Desperate Housewives.*

I was really, really ticked off after watching the latest Desperate Housewives episode, “The Coffee Cup.” Why? I couldn’t stop thinking about the treatment of Lynette Scavo by her so-called friends and neighbors Carlos and Gabby Solis because they learned that a working mother had the temerity to get pregnant and not terminate the pregnancy for their convenience. How selfish of Lynette, getting pregnant and not putting Carlos’ business deals first.

Lynette got pregnant – with twins no less – by accident, which, last time I checked, was not illegal and does not make you a horrendous employee, particularly when Lynette fully intended to go back to work after giving birth because she’s the only adult drawing a paycheck in her house, with her husband Tom re-living his college days.

Several weeks ago, Lynette was going to tell Carlos that she was pregnant, soon after she herself figured it out. But before she could tell him, Carlos started openly bragging to Lynette that he’d passed over another female employee for a promotion because she was pregnant. He – a man with two daughters cared for his at-home wife -- decided to give the promotion to Lynette. The new promotion would include a big pay bump, which Lynette, with her growing baby bump, desperately needed. Sure, Lynette could’ve come clean with Carlos anyway, given that he’d just admitted to discriminating against another employee because she’s pregnant and he’d have been put in a tenuous situation. But she didn’t. She needed the money.

During last night’s episode, Gabby found out that Lynette is four months pregnant. Did Gabby talk to her friend about the pregnancy and how Lynette and Tom feel about it? Even bother to learn that Lynette was unhappy at first with the news and contemplated ending the pregnancy?

Nope.

Instead, Gabby – the professional housewife who has no qualms about screwing with other people’s lives so she can spend her days shopping instead of home schooling -- stormed out of Lynette’s house, angry that Lynette “let Carlos down,” that Lynette wasn’t acting like a dedicated employee.

Carlos, in turn, morphed into the calloused piece of granite he was in season one: Telling Lynette she can either take the transfer he's offering her and move to Florida or quit, knowing full well she can’t take the transfer and that she's the only Scavo adult with a full-time job. This is how you treat a neighbor, as if Lynette planned the whole thing to screw Carlos over when, in reality, she was making arrangements to make sure Carlos would have adequate coverage for her three-month maternity leave, for which Carlos is required to give her by law?

Since last season, Desperate Housewives writers seemed interested in softening up Gabby and Carlos, bringing them down to earth, giving them feet of clay, turning Gabby into a “regular” mom and Carlos into a man who put his family ahead of other things, like opulent consumerism and cut-throat deal-making. (Remember when he wanted to work for a non-profit to help the blind? When he was an at-home dad? I liked that guy.)

Now the writers have entered a time-warp. The Solises are being portrayed as a heartless, selfish, craven jerks who care nothing for a family with whom they’ve been friends for years, acting as though Lynette’s pregnancy is something that was “done” to them, as if they have any say in the Scavos’ reproductive decisions.

I don’t know if there’s any turning back from this development, if indeed the writers have the Solis’ go forward with firing Lynette because she’s pregnant. It’s definitely ticked me off . . . more so than the incredibly lame story about Nick Bolen choking some nameless girl in a coffee shop and that he likely choked Julie Mayer. So don’t care about that.

Image credit: Ron Tom/ABC.

The Ambivalent Mother . . . on Your TV This Fall

Noticed a mini-trend in TV shows this fall featuring an ambivalent mother?


Desperate Housewives has Lynette Scavo, the married, full-time ad exec, mother of four, who is distinctly unenthusiastic about the fact that, in her mid-40s, she’s pregnant with twins. In fact, during her first ultrasound, she didn’t even want to look at the screen and later said that there was a voice in her head telling her not to do this.

On Private Practice, single psychiatrist Violet Turner -- a recent victim of a violent crime where a maniac former patient cut Violet’s unborn baby out of her belly and left Violet for dead – said she feels so emotionally dead inside that she doesn’t feel as though she can care for her baby Lucas. So she brought the baby to his father’s home, Violet’s co-worker Pete, and left him there. When Pete has brought Lucas to work in the hope of getting Violet to engage and bond with her infant, she simply couldn't because she sees the baby as a living, breathing reminder of the attack that has traumatized her.

On Mad Men, set in the 1960s, Betty Draper just gave birth to her third child and hates her life. Parenting is the last thing she wants to be doing, particularly when it comes to dealing with her young daughter who’s acting out in anger because she misses her grandfather who recently died and everyone seems to think she should be “over” it by now. Betty doesn't realize she's still mourning too, even though she named her baby after her father and has seemed like she's favoring her infant over her two other kids.

On ABC’s new comedy The Middle, Patricia Heaton’s Frankie Heck does her best to work and parent, but winds up, out of sheer exhaustion, tuning out a lot of what her kids say, including when her awkward teenaged daughter talks to her and she only half-listens. She also forgets things all the time and her kids face the consequences.


Maybe it’s not a trend, but I’m finding these characters to be a breath of fresh air, mothers who aren’t all phony rainbows and unicorns when it comes to parenthood. They provide a nice balance.

Image credit: Karen Neal/ABC.

'Desperate' Monday: The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Desperate Housewives.*

Okay, what have they done with the Carlos Solis character which the show carefully cultivated over the past few seasons, the one who was caring andloving, a full-fledged human, not a stock character from Mad Men’s Sterling Cooper? The one who became worthy of the love and devotion of his wife and two daughters, the one who wanted to work for the blind and didn’t care about money until Gabby forced him into taking a six-figure job? He’s now an unrecognizable sexist meathead who’s not only willing to pass over a talented woman for a promotion because she’s pregnant (Remember the days when children and family were important to Carlos? When he was actively trying to knock Gabby up?), openly tell Lynette about how he didn’t want to promote a pregnant woman, then use what he perceives as Lynette’s surgically enhanced breasts to seal a business deal.

The guy who last season wanted to devote his life to the basics of love and family, is now uttering such lines as, “Why did you get those things if you don’t want people looking at them?”

He even told Lynette to buy a dress that would reveal her cleavage to two men with whom he’d arranged dinner, and then encouraged her to take off her coat. When Lynette said it was too chilly in the room to remove her jacket, Carlos then, unbelievably told HIS EMPLOYEE that it’d be even better for their chances of securing the deal if it was cold when Lynette revealed her boobs.

I now HATE Carlos (as I’m supposed to, I guess). And that pains me because I didn’t hate him last season. Now he’s a Neanderthal again and the inconsistency of all of this is driving me crazy.


Of course the storyline is building up for the big reveal, when Carlos finds out Lynette’s pregnant with twins. What will happen? Will he fire Lynette? Demote her? Will she then sue for gender discrimination? How low will they have Carlos go?

That’s what made the scenes with Gabby and John, then later with Gabby and Carlos (when she told him that while she’d never imagine this would be her life, she loves it, unlike Betty Draper) lose their power. The writers can’t have it both ways, that Carlos is a sweet, doting family man on the one hand, and on the other, he’s a sexist pig who’s wildly discriminating against women and making them use their breasts to land business deals . . . not after turning him into a kind, down-to-earth character last year. I, frankly, was unmoved by Gabby’s declaration of love for Carlos knowing that Carlos had just pimped out Lynette’s breasts. Carlos is not Don Draper, with whom viewers can have a love/hate relationship.

The big twist of the episode, of course, was that Julie Mayer woke up from her coma (She was only in a coma for five days? Boy did that seem longer!) only to discover that her mother Susan knows that she dropped out of med school six months ago, now works as a waitress and is/was dating a married man whose first name started with the initial “D” whose baby Julie had been worried she was carrying, though she’s not pregnant. Then, at the end, we learned that Nick Bolen’s real name is Dominic and that he was/is Julie’s lover. Even though I really hate the Bolen family, especially the Danny subplot (I could care less about him), mixing it up with an apparently loon like Angie could be provocative to say the least. Maybe Angie and Katherine could team up to rumble with the Mayer women. Sounds like something Desperate Housewives writers might consider for sweeps week.

Speaking of provocative . . . I found Susan’s line to Julie when she expressed her shock that Julie, of all people, would have an affair with a married man who has a family, poignant, “You know what an affair like this can do. You saw it firsthand.”


What did you think of this episode? What do you think of the Carlos-Lynette work situation?

Image credit: Ron Tom/ABC.

'Desperate' Tuesday: Never Judge a Lady by Her Lover

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Desperate Housewives.*


This episode began with a voice-over saying, “There’s a certain kind of woman you see in the suburbs.” Then a series of unflattering portrait of suburban women was unleashed: The mom who waits with her kid for the school bus while still wearing her bathrobe and clutching a mug of coffee. The mom who’s clutching the baby carrier while running to the post office with curlers still in her hair. Another one unloading groceries from the grocery store – as her kids were dashing into the house -- while wearing sweats and a T-shirt. “This woman is a housewife. . . She will try to look beautiful if she has someone to look beautiful for.”

Then they went to a shot of Gabby with her hair haphazardly pinned on the back of her head while she was eating out a restaurant with her family, including her two young kids, one of whom had just hurled food at her. Only Gabby hasn’t resembled said description of a “housewife” -- who looks like the rest of us mere moral suburban moms -- since early last season before Carlos regained his sight, back when Carlos was a humanitarian who wanted to work for little to no money, only Gabby pressured him into accepting a cut-throat, overtime working, six-figure job.

Since the middle of last season, Gabby has been back to her svelteness and her couture, regardless of the shot of her messy up-do, and Carlos has been back to being the ruthless businessman he was when Desperate Housewives started years ago. Gabby’s going to be jealous of her former gardener lover’s interest in her hot niece and Carlos is discriminating against a pregnant woman by offering Lynette a major promotion while openly telling her that he didn’t pick the other candidate because she’s pregnant, of course laying the groundwork for a discrimination suit should he try to take away that promotion from Lynette once he learns she’s pregnant, with twins no less.


The shift backwards in Carlos’ and Gabby’s characters have annoyed me since last season just when I was actually starting to cotton to Gabby and was loathing what had happened to Lynette’s character, who was a mere shadow of the greatness she’d been during that same freshman season. Now it’s as if they’ve swapped places. Lynette’s back to season one goodness and Gabby and Carlos are back to being shallow, heartless folk. What a shame, just as I was starting to like Gabby too.

As for the Susan-as-the-outraged-mother story -- where she spread erronenous rumors that her new neighbors’ son Danny choked Julie and then attacked Danny by nearly crushing him with a car as she tried to get him to admit his guilt -- I’m at least glad that the writers didn’t tie up the who-strangled-Julie mystery in a neat, little bow. So Danny didn’t do it, but obviously someone in the creepy Bolen family did . . . something. Now there are two mysteries: Who hurt Julie and what the Bolen family is hiding. And you know what, I don’t care about either one of them. Give me actual character development with sharp suburban satire instead of hollow plot advancers and I’ll be happy.

A genuinely amusing moment from the episode, was the Scavo kids’ reaction to Lynette’s announcement that she’s pregnant:


“Aren’t you going to be like the world’s oldest moms?”

“It’s so gross that you’re still doing it.”

What’d you think of “Never Judge a Lady by Her Lover?”

Image credit: ABC.

'Desperate' Mondays: Being Alive

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Desperate Housewives.*

Choking Julie

Okay, so the mystery surrounding Julie Mayer is somewhat interesting. We’re all made to think that the creepy new kid Danny strangled her because we saw the two of them arguing a few scenes before Julie was strangled and because he lied regarding his whereabouts. The mysterious new family from New York has a bad boy son who chokes you if you tick him off? This is Desperate Housewives. It can’t be THAT easy to figure it out, can it? If it is that easy and Danny's the one who strangled Julie, then the writers have definitely lost their touch.

To check for clues about who the assailant might be, I watched the scene where Julie was strangled in super-slow motion, to see if, perhaps, it was the spurned Katherine who might’ve done it to get back at Susan for marrying Mike. But going by the body type, clothing, shoes, etc. the perpetrator looks like a male, someone who’s able to lift her off the ground while strangling her.

The out-of-the-blue curve ball news that Julie was worried that she might be pregnant with the baby of someone Susan had never heard, well that stirred the pot. Obviously it's meant to have us viewers speculate about what else Susan doesn't know about her daughter's life. As to whether Julie saw Bree and Carl kissing during the few seconds of consciousness Julie had in this episode, I could really give a hoot about that. That so-called “hot” storyline about Bree stepping out with Carl is now leaving me cold. After last week when Bree bought new sheets to put on the hotel bed so she could be assured of committing infidelity while on fine, clean linens was funny, but the affair stuff has quickly gone downhill from there.

Power Grab


I can’t decide whether I like or hate the Gabby/Ana power struggle, with Ana lying and sneaking around, pushing all of Gabby’s buttons so Gabby will respond by laying down the law and imposing house arrest. But I do know that I’m no fan of this new character, who seems as though she accidentally set foot on ABC’s Wisteria Lane set instead of a CW set someplace. She looks like she belongs on another teen drama, not one about fortysomething suburban women.

Plus, the Gabby/Ana storyline is sucking all the oxygen out of the Solis household. With Ana in the picture, suddenly Gabby and Carlos’ daughters are, for all intents and purposes, AWOL. It’s very likely that they’d be acting out if there was another child in the house hogging all their mom’s attention.

Quietly Pondering Abortion?

Lynette has continued to be unhappy that she’s pregnant with twins, so much so, that she was toying with aborting the babies, despite the fact that Tom is over the moon that they’re going to have six kids. (Ever notice we never heard about Kayla anymore, Tom’s kid with the now-dead lover? What’s with all these missing kids? Shoved aside when they no longer advance plot points, apparently.) Lynette didn't actually use the words "abortion" or "termination," but she did tell Susan that she had a little voice inside her saying, “Maybe I shouldn’t” have the babies.

Susan, in the end, persuaded Lynette to keep the babies by saying: “Everybody talks about a kid being a gift . . .  but they are a gift Lynette. I know that because I spent the last few hours thinking I was gonna lose mine. I realized that I would trade everything I own, I would give everything I will have for just one more day as Julie’s mom. But I’m not telling you what you should do.”


“Actually, you are,” Lynette said. “And I’m glad you did.”

What did you think of “Being Alive?” Any thoughts on the identity of Julie’s assailant?

Image credit: ABC.

'Desperate' Mondays: Nice is Different Than Good

* Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Desperate Housewives.*

Welcome back Lynette Scavo. I really missed ya. After several lackluster seasons which took a once, razor-sharp send-up of suburban motherhood in the person of Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) and made her a silly, grating joke, the Lynette from Desperate Housewives’ first, award-winning season is back . . . or at least she made an appearance in the sixth season premiere.


Pregnant with twins with four kids already at home, fortysomething ad exec Lynette is distinctly ambivalent about the pregnancy. When she was getting her ultrasound – for which her husband Tom took the day off from his university classes to attend (he's going back to school) – she could’ve cared less about seeing the grainy gray and white images of her unborn babies on the screen. “When are you going to start getting excited about our kids?” Tom asked, incredulous about her disinterest.

“I don’t love them,” she said, looking ashen as she confessed that she didn’t feel this way when she got pregnant with her other children, all by accident. “None of them were planned, but I loved each of our kids the moment I knew they were coming. It’s different this time. I don’t love these babies.”

“Stop saying that!” Tom said. “When you hold them in your arms, you will care about these kids just as much as the others.”

Having a lead character be so blasé and indifferent about her pregnancy, to admit that she’s concerned that she isn’t feeling the love, is brave and risky. “Do you realize that when these twins finish high school, I’ll be in my 60s?” she said, lamenting the fact that they’d already gotten past all the sleepless nights and diapers and she didn’t want to go back “. . . At their graduation I’ll be a crazy old lady with oatmeal on her chin.”


In addition to Lynette tapping into something that’s usually not discussed without fearing being tarred and feathered for being an unfit, undeserving mother, the season premiere gave us the return of the quick-witted Lynette, particularly when she let the happy, shiny first-time mom-to-be in the ob-gyn's office hear some ugly truths about motherhood that she said mothers are reluctant to share with one another: “Your children will hate you and steal from your purse. Your husband will begin to buy your birthday presents at the car wash, and the kicker, for the rest of your life there will be so many moments when you’ll feel lonely but you’ll never be alone.”

She held up the cover of a magazine with a woman in a bathing suit. “You see this? You’ll never wear a bikini again,” Lynette said, adding that while she might look good with her clothes on, “you haven’t seen me naked. My stomach looks like Spanish stucco. And my breasts resemble two balloons you’d find behind the couch a week after the party.” As if on cue, the young mom-to-be wept.