Returning Series Review: Desperate Housewives (ABC)
09/21/06 11:12 PM
By ED BARK
Drenched by an uncommon but cathartic cloudburst, ABC's Desperate Housewives returns for a third season Sunday in hopes of recapturing what made it hot, hot, hot.
Mary Alice Young's (Brenda Strong) trademark opening narration acknowledges that something went more than a little wrong in the sudser's sophomore year.
"This is what rainy days are good for," she says. "They make everything clean again."
Ergo, DH fast-forwards six months into the future after a flashback that shows Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan) to be an even nastier guy than imagined. He ended last season by running down star-crossed Mike Delfino (James Denton). Now we see that the persnickety S.O.B. also brutalized his previous wife, Alma (Valerie Mahaffey), who grew to love her parrot more than him.
The daringly different MacLachlan has one of the more offbeat resumes in the biz. Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Showgirls and Sex and the City preceded this latest career turn. Whatever the part, his fulsome hair just won't quit. Anchorman-thick and still preternaturally dark, it beckons a woman's fingers to get lost in it. Only this time his character is a veritable, no-muss Martha Stewart of a man, which of course drives duped new fiancee Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross) wild with passion.
Their bedroom consummation finds Orson lowering his mug to where no man has gone before with prim, proper Bree. "Oh, I don't do that. I'm Republican," she protests. You might say that Orson is a bush man, too, even though he's a professed Libertarian. For both of them, all's well that ends well.
OK, here's what else has happened:
Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) has split from husband Carlos (Richard Chavira) and is awaiting the birth of their child by surrogate mother Xiao-Mei (Gwendoline Yeo), who's getting ever more demanding.
Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) is trying to cope with husband Tom's (Doug Savant) deference to nubile Nora Huntington (Kiersten Warren), with whom he had a love child several years back. An amusing if overreaching early segment finds a nightgowned Nora jockeying for position while Lynette strives to take an old-school portrait for the family's latest Christmas card.
Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) is still keeping a faithful bedside vigil beside comatose Mike. But she's starting to fall for an English bloke whose own wife has been in a coma for three years.
And Edie Britt is trying to sell the Youngs' vacated house. So much for her in DH's Sept. 24 return.
Comedic, quirky, better-focused and halfway dangerous again, the reconstituted DH seems worth another go after last year's meandering semi-disaster. Creator Marc Cherry has seen the light, and also the diminished ratings.
Still, poor James Denton had better get some relief soon. His Mike Delfino has to play the entire first episode motionless and on his back. This includes a lengthy scene in which Susan snuggles into his hospital bed and says she "sure could use someone to talk to who also talks back."
Denton never moves or blinks an eye and Hatcher actually pulls this scene off. But imagine how many takes it must have taken, and what a great blooper reel it'll make.
Anyway, they'll save that for next year's DVD set. In the pivotal here and now, DH at least is making a concerted effort to save itself.
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