Desperate Housewives: A Delightful Layer of Suburban Secrets
Desperate Housewives is a TV series which tells the story of a small neighborhood of Wisteria Lane where five housewives hide from others secrets, commit murders and live through shocking domestic scenes. The first episode starts with the death of a longtime friend from hanging, whose life still haunts the hood. With time, every season brings new complications, Love triangles, compelling struggles and shocking twists are all seen while painting the comic side of suburban suffering. Intersected jolly and dramatic scenes, were creating an interesting narrative tone, which is still comedizing. It deals with the cover-up of ideal lifestyle and the rather unglamorous, chaotic reality behind the glamour with charm and words.
Desperate Housewives wins most of its battles when it comes to characters. Desperate Housewives main cast includes Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, and Eva Longoria, who all give impressive acting performance depicting complex housewives each with personal vices. Their chemistry alone brings the interactions on Wisteria Lane to life and adds characters like Ricardo Chavira in the mix making the stories even more layered. Every actor develops his or her character, portraying real human beings with quite many imperfections in their trying struggles.
David Grossman, Larry Shaw, and David Warren did a good job in delivering a continuous flow of Desperate Housewives. They master in the balance between comedy and seriousness which makes their series wonderful with many cliff hangers and sudden twists. Each director adds his or her own style, but still there is consistency of the show, which captures the nature of suburban intrigues and hidden vices.
The music used in Desperate Housewives fits perfectly into overall atmosphere of the show and accentuates the changes in emotions within a story. All its music cheers up the audience and prepares for the exposition of Wisteria Lane, and the music in every episode helps to maintain the viewers’ emotional connection with the criminals’ twists and turns.
The camera work is very functional but it conveys the contrast between the beautiful look of the suburbs and the savage world beneath the surface. And it upgrades the show’s storytelling discreetly, by placing emphasis on close-ups, as well as long shots of the neat confines of Wisteria Lane, which feels both oppressively close-up and permanently expansive.
The look of the show is highly developed, integrating the setting of Wisteria Lane, which at its surface appears perfect, but feels stifling up close. It can be seen that every house on the show has its characters portrayed through detailed set decoration; it contributes to the sets enhancing the look of the series’ general theme of living in suburban homes.
To some extent, special effects in Desperate Housewives are quite profound, these are used more to supplement dramatic scenes rather than dominating them. The writers succeed in building emphasis on the series’ plot turns without overwhelming the strong drama aspect and the interactions of the characters.
The editors do their job well, keeping the pace engaging without a loss of focus on the plot and characters. The transition between dramatic and comedic scenes is professionally arranged and carefully selected, with such things as special cliff-hangers and predictable and stunning twists.
It has an excellent tempo of stories’ telling with interesting twists interplaying with predictable comedic elements and an exciting pace creating suspense for the next episode. Due to the combination of mystery, romance and drama there are never too many intense scenes or a dull moment, the pace of the play is balanced.
The language is intelligent, funny, full of subtext, one feels the representative of suburban boredom is dead on. It is an understandable feature because discussions themselves are charged with tension and irony, which reveals the nature of relations between the characters and their concealed sins. The overall control of the plot and the humorous twist provided by the scriptwriting sharpens the narrative and the depth of the characters
However, similar to its matchless competitor Desperate Housewives, it tries to establish multiple storylines where, at times, melodrama overpowers the show and, at other times, it tests viewers’ credibility. It ultimately needs to be said that some of the plot twists are excessively elaborate and might keep some viewers away from the show if they were expecting more realism in a portrayal of the American suburbia. Nonetheless, it is a guilty pleasure for those who enjoy soap opera drama within the confines of the suburban neighborhood.
For anyone watching Desperate Housewives, it is akin to watching a well spun web of scandals, deceit and comedy. This series is truly about the suburbs and throbs with a charming comedy mystery and romance. It feels relevant because an absorbing look at failures and flaws within the confines of homes, it stays with you even after the end credits.
