Not-New New Trailers: What’s Up with TV Show Promos with No New Content?

Last week I got all aflutter when I read on Twitter that there was a new trailer out promoting the fifth season of Mad Men, a show I crave deep in my bones and about which I’m still peeved is not airing new episodes yet due to the prolonged contract negotiations. Greedy for fresh Don Draper action, I clicked on over to watch the Mad Men promo only to be vastly disappointed that it contained no new footage, nary a hint of what’s to come, just rehashes of previous scenes. No Megan. No Peggy. No Joan with a baby bump. Just scenes we've already seen.




Feeling burned by the Mad Men non-new trailer, I cautiously followed a tantalizing Tweet about a season three promo for The Good Wife which is slated to commence in the afterglow of Alicia and Will finally getting together after Alicia learned that Peter and Kalinda slept together some time back.

At least in this trailer, interspersed with scenes from previous seasons, we also got a glimpse of some new footage – like Alicia Florrick rockin’ bangs -- and a sense that this season will have less of a “poor betrayed wife” vibe and more of a “reclaiming her sexuality & power” one where the chief question is: Team Will or Team Peter?



The Desperate Housewives’ promo for its final season, on the other hand, is nothing more than a highlights reel from the past seven years, reminding me of the early days when this suburban satire was actually scathingly good and insightful. While watching the past seven seasons in this trailer, viewers get nothing more than confirmation of the fact that Wisteria Lane is the most dangerous street in America, that and the fact that the Housewives have become scary-skinny over the years.



At least the Modern Family trailer -- which was entitled, “Looking Back” -- didn’t pretend as though it was going to be giving us anything new. It was clear that this was just going to be a recap of some of the funnier, previously aired moments from the best comedy on television.



As for The Middle trailer, we actually do learn something . . . that Ray Romano is joining his former Everybody Loves Raymond co-star, Patrician Heaton, on the sitcom’s season premiere. At least there's that.

Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: Season Finales, No-Win Pols' Wives & NY Mag on TV

Season Finales: The Good, The Bad

I always say that there’s too much pressure for TV shows' season finales to be homeruns all of the time. But part of that pressure is the result of the networks amping up viewers' expectations for some major razzle and dazzle. We set ourselves up to be wowed. And when that doesn't happen and our high expectations are dashed, we wind up disappointed.

The season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, which I reviewed on CliqueClack TV is a good example of this.


Image credit: ABC


The ABC drama has had a wonderful seventh season. Seriously. I've enjoyed it. However I wasn’t a big fan of the finale, because it seemed kind of flat (except for the Cristina and Owen storyline) and because I felt as though Derek’s character slipped back into old habits that I thought he'd put behind him, namely acting like a pompous jerk who’s above everyone, specifically Meredith. (The fact that he couldn’t just appreciate or acknowledge the fact that what Meredith did was rooted in love and her fiercely protective nature, peeved me to no end. Be angry, sure, but don’t take your ball and go home to sanctimoniously sulk.)

The Desperate Housewives finale was just blah, as was, frankly, most of the season which took camp to a subterranean level. So there was another murder and another cover-up on America's most dangerous street. There was another highly strung romantic relationship for Bree. Lynette and Tom were fighting again, albeit more seriously this time. (*yawn*) As much as I used to love this show, I think it's more than past time for it to take a bow.
One season finale that stood out and thoroughly entertained me from start to finish was The Good Wife's where Alicia not only triumphed in the court but, in the end, gave herself a little present in the form of one Will Gardner in a $7,800 a night presidential suite. (Technically, it was Will's credit card that gave them the gift of time alone together, but Alicia finally allowed herself to revel in this pleasure instead of being a stoic martyr.) The Good Wife's sophomore season was strong and the episodes leading up to the finale were fantastic and eagerly anticipated. As for the finale, it was well executed, stylistic and fun, the way I wish more finales would be.

Do you have a favorite season finale? A least favorite?

Politicians’ Wives: They Can’t Be ‘Winning’

Speaking of The Good Wife . . . people can’t seem to get enough of using that term not only in reference to Maria Shriver and the ongoing horrors that are being revealed about her husband’s outrageous infidelities, but are also applying the phrase to the wives of the presidential candidates. (Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman’s husbands aren’t getting as much coverage as the wives of potential presidential candidates are.)

In a Newsweek cover story, which seemed to pity and ridicule the wives of high powered pols, a campaign strategist observed, “We have achieved this odd place in American politics where the wife is no longer there just to support her husband. She has to be a full-fledged part of the campaign.”

What does being a “full-fledged part of the campaign” look like? Cindy McCain, wife of 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain explained in an accompanying essay: “Everything you do is criticized – your clothes are ugly; you’re not doing enough; your politics are questioned. It gets mean. I could not wait to get out of the job. The demands are significant and they are endless.”

I delved into what this unfortunate, hostile media climate means for women in my weekly pop culture column.

New York Magazine Takes on TV

It’s worth taking the time to go through New York Magazine’s big television-themed issue. From interviews with showrunners – including Shonda Rhimes of Grey’s Anatomy and Robert and Michelle King of The Good Wife -- who make some intriguing proposals for network TV (like 13-episode blocks with breaks in between instead of 22 episodes), to a quirky interview with Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler on her favorite TV characters and shows, the package is a good read.

Image credits: Randy Holmes/ABC, Newsweek, New York Magazine.

Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: 'Big C' Going it Alone, 'Desperate' Season 7 and Status of Women Now Vs Then

The Big C Going It Alone

After watching the third episode of Showtime’s The Big C, I’m having a tough time figuring out Laura Linney’s character Cathy Jamison. She won’t tell her husband or her teenage son that she has stage four melanoma. She kicked her husband out of the house without explaining to him, or their son, why, other than the fact that she seems to have grown tired of being the responsible, do-gooder, vanilla wife and mother who martyrs herself, taking care of their every need while they take her for granted.

As Cathy continues to act in ways that are uncharacteristic for her, I wonder if she’s secretly waiting for her husband and son to figure out what’s wrong or whether she just wants to act in whatever manner suits her and not be questioned about it. My episode review is over on CliqueClack TV.

Desperate Season 7

ABC has released a promo video for the seventh season of Desperate Housewives and my question is this: Do people care anymore? Adding Vanessa Williams is certainly a good move, but is there any magic left in this once sharp show that deftly satirized the faux perfect life in the ‘burbs? I'm not so sure.



Status of Women Now Vs Then

My Pop Culture and Politics column this week took the occasion of the 90th anniversary of U.S. women’s suffrage to compare what my newly-minted 12-year-old daughter sees when she looks at the world – four female U.S. Supreme Court justices, women as a vast minority of elected office holders and CEOs, women’s sports still treated like the forgotten step-sister to men’s sports, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” rocking the iTunes singles list – with what I saw when I was 12, way back in the Stone Ages of 1981, when the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice was nominated to the court, when everyone was obsessed with Diana marrying Charles, Olivia Newton-John topped the pop charts with “Physical” and there had been no female candidates on a major national ticket.

Despite some dismal numbers with regard to the number of women in politics, running major businesses and the paucity of media coverage of women's sports, things, as a whole, have markedly improved.

'Desperate' Mondays: If . . .

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

After a Christmas hiatus, the ladies of Wisteria Lane were back as Mary Alice, the deceased narrator, reminded us viewers that, since the last time we’d seen the desperate housewives, there’d been a plane crash on this “quiet suburban street.” (Not so quiet really, as you might recall from my extensive review of the string of arsons, murders and attacks that have occurred there over the years, but let's not let the facts get in the way of an overhyped episode.)

And what befell the wives in this new installment? Lynette lost one of her unborn twins after she fell sharply to the ground as she pushed Celia Solis out of the way of an out-of-control crashing airplane, saving the 4-year-old’s life. While she saved the girl and regained the favor of her estranged friend Gabby, a surgical attempt to save one of Lynette’s twins – who doctors feared would be born disabled -- failed.

Meanwhile Gabby tried to convince herself that Celia’s life was spared because she is special and has talent, then allowed herself to imagine what would happen if she tried to force an unwilling Celia into acting. Susan lost her ex-husband Karl (daydreamed about what would've happened had she never divorced the philanderer) and Bree lost the man she hoped she’d marry once she divorced Orson, who we learned may or may not be permanently paralyzed.

While watching the back-with-a-bang episode, I felt like I was being strung along for a ride (like I felt with the shooting in the grocery store or the aftermath of the hurricane episode), as if it was merely filler, an excuse to put Teri Hatcher in a fat suit, have Eva Longoria go all Grey Gardens and allow Felicity Huffman to be a martyred mom who unwittingly served as an inspiration to the disabled son she’d never have. It was so contrived, particularly the Teri Hatcher fat suit scenes, all flash and no flesh to it, other than of the plastic variety.

And the whole mystery with Angie – that she’s on the run following a violent protest, decades ago, of which she was a participant and in which a police officer accidentally died, a kind of Weather Underground/anarchist/revolutionary plot twist – seemed, oh, what’s the word, lame? To be honest, I’ve never connected with her character, don’t, frankly, care what happens to her or any of the Bolens and that wretched character Nick.

All in all, the whole episode left me feeling distinctly unenthused about where the rest of the season is headed. You?

Image credit: ABC via the Los Angeles Times.

Thirty- & Fortysomething Men Having Angst on 'Men of Certain Age' & 'The League'

We've had plenty of TV shows as of late spotlighting modern mid-life challenges faced by women -- on Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, The Cougar, Desperate Housewives, etc. And now, two brand, spankin' new freshmen shows have waded into the terrain of men's middle aged issues.

In my Mommy Tracked pop culture column this week I spotlighted the guys of TNT's Men of a Certain Age and FX's The League. One's a dramedy about fortysomething men which provides a kind of serious look at the death of one's life's dreams starring a melancholy Ray Romano, while the other's a crude comedy about thirtysomething men obsessed with their fantasy football league, as well as swilling beer and aiming sexually lewd commentary at one another:

"The guys in this fantasy football league see their hobby as a way to avoid facing the oftentimes difficult responsibilties of adulthood because they know that it's just a matter of time before these guys morph into the guys from Men of a Certain Age."

While The League's very raunchy, it does have funny stuff about parenting, including a storyline about a dad who wants to make his 5-year-old daughter hate a beloved character, Mr. McGibblets (he reminded me of Elmo) which she has in the form of a doll that sings and dances. You can catch the half-hour episodes, including the McGibblets one, on Hulu.

Image credit: FX.

'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 Housewives' Wisteria Lane May Be the Most Dangerous Street in America

*Warning, spoiler from the most recent episode of Desperate Housewives*

I’m dispensing with my normal Desperate Housewives episode review this week in order to state the obvious: Wisteria Lane sure is a dangerous street. It may well be the most dangerous street in America . . . fictional America, that is.

After a small plane crashed onto the Lane in the recent episode and brought with it a wave of destruction and possibly death -- at the very least, it caused bloody injuries – I started thinking about how very unsafe this particular street in Fairview has been over the years. So I decided to go back through the six seasons of the Housewives and damn, there’s been a lot of violence, man-made and natural on Wisteria Lane including (in no particular order):

-- One suicide. (Mary Alice Young)

-- Three “attempted” suicides. (Danny Bolen, Katherine Mayfair, Edie Britt)

-- One fatal car wreck after the driver tried to avoid hitting a burglar running across the street. (Edie Britt trying to avoid Orson Hodge)

-- Two stranglings, one fatal (Martha Huber strangled by Paul Young) and one non-fatal. (Julie Mayer strangled, likely by her ex-lover/married man/neighbor)

-- Two housefires which devastated the homes. (Edie Britt’s and Susan Mayer’s homes, each at the hands of one another)

-- One mentally challenged teen was held hostage in his family’s basement, in chains, though his brother is the one who killed a teenaged girl, though his brother had been blamed. (The Applewhites, Caleb and Matthew, whose mother, at one point, considered euthanizing her challenged son.)

-- Accidental shooting in the shoulder of someone who was lurking outside of a living room window at night. (Katherine Mayfair shot by Susan Mayer outside Susan’s house.)

-- A massive tornado killed three people (Karen McCluskey’s friend Ida Greenberg, Adam Mayfair’s former lover and Gabby Solis’ second husband Victor Lang who, while fighting with Carlos Solis, was impaled in the chest by a flying fence post. Carlos was also blinded during the storm.)

-- A resident was arrested for keeping the body of her deceased husband in a giant freezer in her basement, although it was determined that he died of natural causes. (Karen McCluskey)

-- A pedophile (Art) moved into the neighborhood but was harassed by the neighbors into moving out of it after his wheelchair-bound sister died.

-- One person died from falling off a roof (Alma Hodge fell from a great height)

-- One person had a heart attack while on top of a roof (Handyman Eli Scruggs had a heart attack while fixing Susan Mayer’s roof.)

-- A man's ex-wife and his mother drugged him so his ex-wife could rape him in an attempt to get pregnant with his baby. (Orson Hodges at the hand of Alma Hodge and his mother Gloria.)

-- A woman had her soup drugged by her mother-in-law who planned to place the woman into a tub and slit her wrists to make it look like a suicide. (Gloria Hodge to Bree Van de Kamp Hodge)


-- A man had a heart attack after his local pharmacist tampered with his prescription medication. (Rex Van de Kamp)

-- A senior citizen was beaten up in her home by a mentally unstable teen living on the street. (Felicia Tilman was beaten up by Zach Young)

-- Woman accidentally murdered. (Mary Alice Young accidentally murdered the drug addict mother of the child whom Mary Alice had adopted and started to raise as her own.) Mary Alice’s husband Paul buried the body of the woman – Deirdre Taylor – in a toy chest in their backyard.

-- A man had a fatal tumble down a set of stairs leading to the basement. (A private investigator fell down a set of crumbling stairs in the Applewhite’s house leading to the basement where Caleb Applewhite was being held captive by his mother Betty.)

-- The street was home to teenagers who got into a hit-and-run accident (Andrew Van de Kamp) and who set fire to a restaurant (the Scavo twins)

-- A pedestrian was run down as she was trying to get into a cab. The accident sent her to the hospital where she was in a coma for five months. (Juanita Solis was struck by Andrew Van de Kamp)

-- An abusive ex-husband was shot and killed by his fearful ex-wife. (Katherine Mayfair killed her ex-husband Wayne who was threatening her)

Anything I left out? Would YOU want to live on this street?

Image credit: 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.

'Desperate' Monday: Careful the Things You Say

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

I’ll say this for the latest episode of Desperate Housewives, at least there was no Karl in it. That’s a plus.

I found this episode much more entertaining than other recent ones, with the exception of the whole who-strangled-Julie mystery, which I really could care less about.

Gabby’s homeschooling struggles with her ill-tempered child were well done, particularly when Gabby, who’d warned Juanita that if she didn’t study she’d wind up being a cleaning lady, willingly scrubbed floors so that her math PhD possessing housekeeper could tutor Juanita in fractions.

What I don’t understand is why Gabby’s had to go all I Love Lucy, doing stuff behind Carlos’ back and inevitably getting caught in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. Gabby can be very persuasive -- when she’s not whining -- so I don't understand why she’s agreeing to let Carlos control the purse strings. I thought that, especially in the wake of Carlos’ blindness and the time she spent caring for the family, that Gabby and Carlos decided to be partners and no longer have one spouse in a more senior position over the other. Apparently that’s all gone by the wayside.

The forced Bree-Angie catering partnership is like oil and water. Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly.Wall Street versus Main Street. What other polar opposites could I invoke here? But I do like the combo, very much so. Great potential. I like this pairing more than the Katherine-Bree duo. That was two upscale, Stepford Wife, Type-A perfectionists put together. They were too similar and not sufficiently interesting.

It was satisfying, in a very juvenile kind of way, to see Susan, a high school mean girl get her just desserts, by way of a Fairview police detective whom Susan used to tease (Susan accidentally gave her the nickname “Moose” in high school) who was investigating whether Katherine strangled Julie (at Susan’s behest). After learning that Katherine had a solid alibi, the detective arrested Susan for accidentally shooting Katherine and not reporting the incident to the police.

The big surprise of the night was that Angie knew that Nick had had an affair with Julie. After saying that neither of them can go anywhere because of some big, as yet unnamed mystery, Angie slugged him in the face. “I’ve put you through a lot, so you get this one,” Angie said to Nick. “But that’s it.”

Best line of the episode occurred when Carlos offered to pay for a housekeeper so that Gabby could fully concentrate on homeschooling Juanita. Gabby wanted a tutor instead. “You’d rather scrub toilets than teach your daughter?” Carlos asked.

“Well at least the toilet won’t talk back,” Gabby said.

Do you think Bree and Angie make an interesting pair? Why do you think Gabby’s allowing Carlos to call all the shots?

Image credit: Ron Tom/ABC.

'Desperate' Monday: Don't Walk on the Grass

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

Gabby Solis – who didn’t realize the Soviet Union had broken up – as a homeschooling “bad mom?” That unbelievable situation was matched only by Tom Scavo answering to the moniker of “T-Scav,” Bree Van de Kamp Hodge contemplating marrying a lying philanderer, one Carl Mayer, and Katherine Mayfair is continuing to act like a psychopathic stalker who’s apparently trying to wrestle every woman on Wisteria Lane.

Gabby the Homeschooler

Why is everyone always saying that Gabby’s a bad mother? Why is this a running thread, a joke carried over several episodes? What, seriously, is wrong with Gabby’s parenting? I want some specifics here people.

Sure, she swears sometimes, but so does her husband. (If swearing makes you a bad parent, then I’m in big trouble.) She can be impatient, as can her husband. (Ditto with me and a lack of patience.) She might be a little liberal with letting her kids play on their own around the house and get into mischief – like last week’s sledding down the stairs incident – but that just means she’s got a “Free-Range Kids” point of view on parenting and doesn’t think she should hover over her kids. Last week, when the man who promised to have a monkey perform at Juanita’s birthday party tried to renege on his agreement to play the party, Gabby didn’t want her daughter disappointed so she insisted that the monkey perform even though his owner said the animal was tired. Is that Gabby’s fault that the monkey went nutty on the clown, or is the monkey’s handler’s fault? The world, apparently, is blaming the mom on this one.

Yet the theme “Gabby’s a bad parent” is omnipresent, including in the latest episode where, when 7-year-old Juanita couldn’t pronounce the word “persecuted” during her elementary school’s Thanksgiving play and the girl then dropped the f-bomb while on stage. From the dictator principal’s point of view, the onus for Juanita’s use of blue language fell squarely onto Gabby’s shoulders, not on BOTH Gabby and Carlos. “If you want to assign blame, you might want to look at your dubious parenting skills,” the principal said. In response, Gabby dropped some f-bombs of her own and said she was withdrawing Juanita from the school, hence her unwilling foray into the world of homeschoolers when she and Carlos learned all the area private schools had no openings until the next school year.

Now I’ll give you that Gabby’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer (“The Soviet Union broke up?”) and is ill prepared to homeschool her daughter -- plus she shouldn’t be seeking affirmation of the quality of her parenting skills from her 7-year-old -- but she’s not a BAD mother. Jeez.

T-Scav’s On the Case . . . Or Not

Tom Scavo going by T-Scav, bringing home drunken puking college peeps, buying them kegs of beer and promising to get them pancakes following a “cut-throat game of beer pong?” Were these pieces of evidence pointing to a mid-life crisis? Nope, just a middle-aged man cutting corners in college (bribing the students who obtain the answers to the statistics exams) so he can get his degree and thrive in a new career to help support his growing family of soon-to-be six kids.

I’m kind of ambivalent about the whole Tom-is-cheating-in-statistics storyline, though I did take distinct umbrage to his likening Lynette not revealing her pregnancy to her boss to his cheating on exams. Lynette’s job is crucial to the family’s economic survival in a recession, which I suppose could be argued about Tom’s career. But Lynette’s situation isn’t comparable because pregnancy discrimination is a serious thing that happens to women, penalizes them for being pregnant when being pregnant isn't a bad, unethical thing, unlike knowingly cheating on tests when you've booted your studies.

Bree’s an Idiot

The facts: Carl Mayer cheated on his first wife, broke her heart, stole items he’d given her as meaningful gifts and later blamed her for “losing them,” urges his clients to break the law, openly ogles women’s breasts in front of his girlfriend, parks in handicapped parking spots without concern and re-gifted a supposedly cherished family heirloom with a lame line. So why in the world would Bree risk her friendship with Susan Mayer, risk her own heart with a proven cheater and thief and soil her reputation in Fairview? For good sex?

Please Knock It Off W/the Gal-on-Gal Tousles

Someone at Desperate Housewives must’ve received some kind of network memo that says, “Have more scantily clad chicks fighting. It’s great for ratings. The more cat fights, the better. Be sure to show cleavage.” Only such ugly cynicism could be behind the repeated scuffles between Katherine and other Wisteria Lane women: Fisticuffs which end with lingerie-clad Susan and Katherine wet and thrashing about in a bubble bath, Susan accidentally shooting Katherine in the arm while Katherine was wearing short shorts at the time and Katherine wrestling with Bree in a fully decorated wedding reception hall while they’re both wearing attractive dresses (which have been getting more and more revealing as the season has progressed).

Katherine’s become unhinged because the man she loves has returned to his ex-wife. She’s miserable. She’s angry. She’s heartbroken. WE GET IT. I had an inkling of hope that, like Katherine, the writers were going to finally “take the high road” and have Katherine be conniving and manipulative and smart about how she’s going exact her revenge on Susan and get Mike back. The whole you-should-have-me-over-for-brunch-so-I-don’t-sue-you bit was mildly amusing. But when she called Mike late at night, dressed in a nightie and sexed up her boudoir with candles, rose petals and champagne and then fought with Susan in the tub, I felt as though adolescent boys had started writing the scripts, trying to see how much humiliation with a twist of sex appeal they can create.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about “Don’t Walk on the Grass.” Do you think Gabby’s a “bad mom?” Is Bree being foolish? What do you think about Katherine impersonating a WWF wrestler?

Image credit: Ton Tom/ABC.

‘Desperate’ Monday: Everybody Ought to Have a Maid

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

“It is in our nature to judge those around us.”

In the opening scene of Desperate Housewives, we were handed the theme of the episode about our propensity to judge others yet not wanting to be judged ourselves. Gabby didn’t want her parenting judged by an overprotective helicopter mother. Bree didn’t want to be judged for having an affair by the housekeeping staff at a motel. Susan didn’t want to be judged by her neighbors as over-the-top jealous of Mike’s ex-fiancé Katherine's efforts to get him back. And Tom didn’t want to be judged by another guy for seeming to have no . . . walnuts.

I loved, just loved, the Gabby storyline this week about the virtues of good enough parenting versus smothering parenting. As Gabby poured herself a glass of red wine, she heard a thump followed by a yell. When she ran to the source of the sound, she found Juanita and her friend Rachel after they’d “sledded” down the carpeted stairs in an open suitcase. Gabby determined that the girls were fine just as Rachel’s mother entered the house, aghast that Gabby hadn’t been watching the girls’ every move so they’d never sustain so much as a scratch.

“You’re pretty cavalier given that your carelessness almost killed my daughter,” the mom said.

Gabby took the overreacting mother aside and told her she’d been a “wet blanket” since she quit smoking, to which the mother replied, “I think you’re a lousy mother.”

“Did you just say that to my face?” Gabby asked.

“Yes, and I’m afraid I won’t be bringing my daughter here anymore. The safety and well being of my child must come first.”

“Fine. Juanita only had Rachel over because she felt sorry for her,” Gabby said. “It was a pity playdate.”

The rest – the ostracization of Gabby by other mothers who were told their children aren’t safe at Gabby’s house, Gabby’s revenge by planning a killer birthday party that the kids begged their mothers to attend and the monkey-run-amok for which Gabby was blamed – wasn’t as funny as the first scene which opened the show and scored delightful points about hovering over one’s children.

What I irritated me somewhat about how this thread was concluded was, in the wake of the monkey-savaging-the-clown scene, Carlos said Gabby’s “negligence” had turned their daughters into self-sufficient, confident girls. Liked the point he made about raising strong children (as opposed to frightened and insecure ones) but not the part that labeled her as a bad mother for not keeping an unbroken eyelock on her kids.

Bree’s affair with Karl. *sigh* I just cannot get into this story, no matter how much I might want to, even when a wise member of the housekeeping staff offered herself up as a cautionary tale to Bree about the steep costs of infidelity. Karl is a snake. Susan is Bree’s friend and Susan’ll never forgive Bree for having an affair with Karl. And Bree knows this, therefore I’m having a hard time sympathizing or comprehending or caring much about Bree’s rationale for frequenting a cheap motel room -- which she called “our place” -- with the man who broke one of her good friend’s hearts.

Oh, and Susan shot Katherine. I want to take Katherine and shake her by both shoulders to put some sense back into her. This was a professional woman with culinary Bree-like skills and creativity, someone who had the courage to flee an abusive spouse and start a new life, and now she’s become completely unhinged by the fact that her fiancé went back to his first wife, the mother of their son, so much so that Katherin’s acting like a lunatic. One could understand deep disappointment, hurt feelings, humiliation, anger and the desire to get back at Mike and Susan for hurting her. But this has gone to crazy lengths, even by DH standards, watching Katherine unravel.

But to offset crazy Katherine, I was pleased to see the old Lynette and Tom resurface, even though they were only given minor face-time this week. Tom’s explanation to Karen McCluskey’s main squeeze Roy about why he allows Lynette to maintain the illusion that she calls all the shots in their home was that it makes her feel safe after growing up surrounded by insecurity and shouldering too much responsibility at too young an age. Sweet.

Do we care about the creepy Bolen family whose teenaged son gave Julie the gun which got into Susan’s hand and wound up being used to shoot Katherine? Or that Julie Mayer dumped the married Nick Bolen who has a son her age? Eh, not so much.

Your thoughts on “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid?”

Image credit: Danny Feld/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.

Talkin' Fall TV Premieres on Manic Mommies Podcast

I chatted up the Manic Mommies at the end of last week -- we recorded our discussion before I'd seen the Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives premieres -- and the subject was fall TV.

Shows discussed included: Mad Men, The Good Wife, Cougar Town, The New Adventures of Old Christine, House, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks & Recreation, Glee and FlashForward.

You can listen to the podcast by going to iTunes, then looking up the Manic Mommies page. The fall TV interview is their latest one, number 185.

'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.

Fall TV Preview Plus 'Grey's' Releases First 5 Minutes of Premiere

It begins in days. . . the fall TV season.

Heroes premieres on Monday, Sept. 21 if there are folks who still care about the once sterling sci-fi drama. I'm still on board, despite the distinctly rocky roads it has traversed as of late.

Greg House will be in an asylum when House starts, also on Monday, Sept. 21.

ABC will try to hook us on a new Lost-like drama called FlashForward, with the fascinating premise: Everyone in the world blacks out and experiences a two-plus minute flash of themselves several months into the future. (Premieres Thursday, Sept. 23.)



Desperate Housewives will start its new season on Sunday, Sept. 27 with Lynette Scavo, who already has four kids, pregnant with twins, apparently trying to give Kate Gosselin a run for her money.

The Office returns to make us laugh with its uncomfortable awkwardness and news of Pam's pregnancy, as the health care debate makes us cry, on Thursday, Sept. 17. (I STILL miss the Michael Scott Paper Company.)



And then there's the Grey's Anatomy premiere on Sunday, September 24. We all know the behind-the-scenes casting stories. There are many of us -- including yours truly -- who felt manipulated by the season finale last spring when both Izzie and George coded and then met one another in that ethereal elevator scene. But, if you're like me, you're still willing to tune in for more abuse. In a surprising move, ABC has posted a sneak peek of the first five minutes of the season premiere on its web site and I've posted it below. It provocative to say the least, and I did tear up.



A couple of other new shows to which I'm looking forward to seeing include CBS's The Good Wife, the one about the betrayed political wife starring Julianna Margulies (premiering Tuesday, Sept. 22) and ABC's new comedy Modern Family, whose online clips have made me laugh (premiering Wednesday, Sept. 23).



My review of fall TV premieres which feature moms and families is up on Mommy Track'd this week.

What shows are you looking forward to seeing return this fall? Any new ones you're eagerly anticipating?

'Desperate' Mondays: Season Finale

* Warning, spoilers from the Desperate Housewives season finale ahead. *

Three plot twists stood out among the pack in the DH finale:

1. Susan, Mike, MJ & the murderous Dave . . . plus Delfino nuptials.

If Mike Delfino married anyone OTHER than Susan Mayer -- two months after attempting to heroically save her and their son from the homicidal nutcase Dave Williams/Dash -- then I would be surprised, shocked even, which would be nice, but not in a Grey's Anatomy shocked kind of way. (I'll rant about GA's manipulative finale in a separate post.)

But let's face it, if Mike married someone else -- two months after planning to hop a plane to Vegas to marry Katherine Mayfair -- then the writers will have a lotta 'splainin' to do. I'd be hard pressed to come up with a plausible scenario for Mike marrying anyone who isn't Susan. They've already jerked this couple around enough since season one. Last year's season finale took the new mom Susan, who was happily married to Mike, and flashed forward five years to show Susan kissing another man. During the summer before this fifth season began, everyone speculated about what that scene meant, only to learn that Susan and Mike had divorced in the wake of a traumatic car accident which left a mom and her young child dead.

To have Mike not marry Susan this time around, after all the nonsense with Edie in season three then putting them together and breaking them apart for the second time, would be absurd, particularly because the writers have made it clear that they still love one another and, had it not been for that accident, they'd still be together. Dave remarked that bringing Mike, Susan and MJ to the location where his wife and child died would be poetic. And it truly was if the writers used it -- the location of the incident that ultimately separated Mike and Susan -- to bring the couple back together and make the family whole again.

As for Katherine, well, she's just poor, pathetic Katherine sitting alone in the airport clutching two coffees and looking bewildered, someone who I wished had been more confident in her own value, intellect, success and attractiveness. If she was so afraid that the man who moved in with her and proposed marriage didn't really love her, that she needed to keep him away from his ex-wife lest he flee into his ex's arms, then she already knew, deep down inside, that he was not the right man for her. Hopefully Katherine will be given something more useful to do in season six other than moping around and making moony eyes.

2. Lynette is pregnant with babies five and six just as Tom's getting ready to go back to school to learn Mandarin Chinese.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Tom Scavo found something about which to be excited, other than his bad garage band or his mid-life crisis mobile that he had to sell. Going back to college was a great idea, and it was completely in character how Lynette responded to his initially ambiguous plan. "Okay," I thought, "they're onto something with the Scavos here. 'Bout time."

Then came news of Lynette's twins pregnancy. Are the writers seeking to reboot the Scavos' story, to move the family back to square one from the first season, and if so, will they have learned anything about balancing work and family? I could be on board with an "oops" pregnancy as long as it's not simply a rehash of previously trod territory.

3. The Solises take in Carlos' teenaged niece, in a story that feels like we've previously seen on DH.

Of the big developments in the finale, this one seemed odd. Haven't we already seen this storyline before, albeit with slightly different twists? This reminded me of the fall-out after Tom's eldest daughter Kayla (conceived pre-Lynette with a former gal pal of Tom's) needed to be taken in after her loony mother Nora was killed. The scheming daughter came between Lynette and Tom, manipulated Lynette to get what she wanted, goaded her and pouted in front of Tom until Lynette became so wild with frustration that she convinced Tom that, for the sake of their family, Kayla had to be sent away. After Kayla called child care workers on Lynette, Tom agreed.

Is that what they have in mind for the Solises? Having Carlos' niece Anna goad Gabby and manipulate people into getting her way until Gabby says that, for the sake of the Solis family, Carlos has to send Anna to live with another relative? Anna seems like simply an older version of Kayla, only she's learned how to use her sex appeal to get boys to do her bidding and give her designer duds. She also knows how to make Gabby crazy.

This can go nowhere good. And I must say, I'm not a fan of the girl-as-manipulator storyline being repeated. It also will do nothing positive for Gabby's character, who's at her most unlikeable when she locks horns with another female regarding control over a man, in this case, Carlos.

(I've decided against addressing the Bree Van de Kamp Hodge/Orson Hodge story because I think it's silly.)

Overall, I did like this Desperate Housewives finale. I genuinely wondered whether they'd go so far as to have Dave kill MJ (which would've been really brutal) or harm Susan. Flashing forward two months to show Mike marrying a thickly veiled woman without revealing her face was a clever move, even if it simply cannot be anyone other than Susan.

Your thoughts on the finale? Did it meet your expectations?

Image credit: ABC.

Finale Madness: House, Lost, Grey's, The Office, 30 Rock, Housewives, 24

It's a bit too much for one eight day period -- including one in which the home town hoop team is in the playoffs, and there's baseball on -- all these season finales at once. And you know that if you don't watch the finales on time (even in the DVR/TiVo era) you're likely to get something spoiled or you might stumble upon something accidentally on the internet.

If you don't want to miss some of the big finales and/or need to set the DVR, here are a few of note coming up over the next week:

House, Monday, Fox. Huddy. The combo of House and Cuddy. Doesn't exactly seem like the beginning of a beautiful relationship. One with power plays, resentment, lack of communication and co-dependency: Yes. Loving commitment: No. Huddy aside, I'm wondering if House has been suffering from Izzie Stevens syndrome, only the deceased person he's been hallucinating wasn't his one-time fiance, but his buddy's gal. Hmmm.

Lost, Wednesday, ABC. The big kahuna of all finales. Two-hour extravaganza. Jack. With an H-bomb. Threatening to blow up what in the future will become the Hatch. Kate not supporting Jack (again). Sawyer/LaFleur in another love triangle. Locke setting out to murder a mysterious character (who may or may not be among the living). I know that my expectations are way out of proportion with what the writers can possibly deliver, but, seeing that it's Lost, I simply don't care. Hope I'm not bitterly disappointed on Wednesday night.

Grey's Anatomy, Thursday, ABC. Yes, I was tearing up at the Izzie-Alex wedding switcheroo, particularly Alex's beautiful vows. ("Today I become a man. Today I become a husband . . . Today I become accountable to you, to our future.") After five seasons of this wildly uneven though always entertaining show, I'm planning on having a big tissue box next to me when I watch the finale. I'll also be crossing my fingers that there will be no more sick/dying/dead children. I've had plenty this season, thank you very much. If you believe the rumors, George O'Malley may or may not be leaving Seattle Grace. Izzie may or may not be dying/losing her memory post-surgery. We shall see. They've reserved two hours.

The Office, Thursday, NBC. Other than me continuing to miss the oddball nature of the Michael Scott Company. I have no earthly idea what'll happen. Maybe an explosion at Dwight's beet farm?

30 Rock, Thursday, NBC. Liz. Jack. Jenna. Tracy. Kenneth. It'll be a long, laughless, special guest star-less summer without them. The finale promises Donaghy daddy issues with guest star Alan Alda. Kidney anyone?

Desperate Housewives, Sunday, ABC. Let's hope Dave Williams goes bye-bye, Susan Mayer and Mike Delfino stop teasing us (and leading on clueless Katherine Mayfair) and that the Scavos get some decent material. Maybe Bree will decide to go into the burglary biz, as long as she stops renting storage units under her own name in which to house her ill-gotten-gains.

24, NEXT Monday, Fox. Jack Bauer's latest bad day comes to a close next Monday in a two-hour extravaganza. Maybe Jack will finish off the bad guys with a fierce headbutt . . . no wait, that's Kiefer Sutherland, the actor who plays Jack, and unsuspecting fashion designers. Maybe Sutherland just got confused and THOUGHT he was Jack and that the designer was really Tony Almeida in disguise.

Image credit: ABC.