TELEVISION REVIEW

'Desperate Housewives'

By Melinda Hines
Guest Writer

CBN.com - Just the other day while at the salon getting a pedicure, I overheard a conversation between a nail tech and another client about the latest series from ABC, Desperate Housewives. They spent 30 minutes applauding the virtues, or should I say lack there-of in the new hit series. They spoke flippantly regarding the different characters and their misadventures including those of Susan, a divorced mom, who is locked out of her house naked and also accidentally burns down the house of her archrival, Edie, after she snuck in to her house to see if the man she was interested in was there and overheard what can only be inferred to as sexual activity taking place upstairs.

Needless to say, I was intrigued when I saw they were doing an encore presentation, so I sat down with my husband and thought I would take a peek at the ladies of Wisteria Lane for myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t take as much pleasure in the themes of sex, betrayal and secrets woven throughout the storyline, as my peers at the salon. Sure, it’s the stuff of any best-selling novel, but is it really best for us to view everyone’s dirty laundry in full color, even if it is fiction? ABC gives the show a TV PG rating, although I would have to disagree due to its strong sexual content.

As a Christian, I was also put off by the opening theme of the show which involves a parody of the story of Eve, complete with the garden, forbidden fruit and the lurking snake. The sage advice from one character to another that, “You’re a woman, manipulate him, that’s what we do”, was also unsettling. The entire premise of the show is set when one of the neighbors commits suicide in the first show and it is downhill from there as she becomes the narrator for the rest of the plot twists in the lives of her own family and her four girl-friends.

The attempts of Gabrielle, another character, to hide her infidelities by paying off a young neighbor child with a new bike and leaving her mother-in-law, holding the proverbial bag with a security tag still attached to a shirt, to be man-handled by the police while she sneaks off to have a quick tryst with her teenage boyfriend, are ludicrous at best.

Lynette, a former professional is transformed into the not so pretty picture of the crazed stay-at-home mom who can’t control her children. After her hyperactive twins are kicked out of public school for bad behavior and her failed attempts to medicate them, she chooses to self-medicate with several glasses of wine while they tear the house apart. Eventually, she wears the boys out with yard work and other physical endeavors, just in time for their evaluation at a prestigious academy and seals their admittance with a $15,000 bribe, err donation.

There are only a few scenarios in the show that I really can speak favorably of and they involve Bree’s character, when she took the door to her teenage son’s room off, after she tracked him down and brought him home from a strip club and her clever tactic to cut the springs in the sofa bed, so her estranged husband would be forced to return to their bedroom.

All in all, I’m afraid that Desperate Housewives, no matter how real or comical just doesn’t fit the standard prescribed in Philippians 4:8, Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Find something else to watch, better yet, turn the TV off altogether and spend some time with your real family.