10 Grudges I’m Holding Against ‘Desperate Housewives’

Desperate Housewives is one of the best TV shows from the ‘00s. It has everything you need on a rainy day in: romance, mystery, women covering up murder.

While the 2004 series has a fair bit of ‘product of its time’ storylines and dialogue, I still rewatch it when I need a healthy dose of drama — which ends up being several times a year.

On my latest rewatch, I found myself getting angry about plot points I’ve been familiar with for years, even crossing my fingers that this time the girls will make a smarter decision, Mike will stay away from loan sharks, and Bree will see George the pharmacist for the pervert he truly is.

So, I decided to compile a list of the top ten times Desperate Housewives made me want to pull my hair out and set it on fire (much like Susan and Edie’s houses).

10 grudges I’m holding against Desperate Housewives:

1. Zach’s downfall was preventable.

I’m not the first one to say this, but Zach is frightening. He was unhealthily obsessed with Julie, he stalked Gaby, and he was angry all the time. He reminds me of every creepy ‘Nice Guy’ I’ve had to deal with.

Nevertheless, part of the reason he became that way was because of how the housewives completely abandoned him and his father, Paul, after Mary Alice shot herself. Lynette said it herself: they watched him grow up, his mother was their best friend. So, how could they do this?

Zach needed some comfort and guidance in his grief, and any good friend of Mary Alice’s should’ve been happy to help him out a little bit. It hurt to see him completely shunned by everyone he grew up around.

2. The show pretended like Lynette was a terrible partner when Tom was just as bad.

In the Season 8 finale, the audience is supposed to jump with joy after Tom and Lynette get back together. And I was truly happy, until I saw Tom’s reaction to Katherine offering Lynette a job in New York.

“I would do anything, I would go anywhere in the world if I believed it would finally make you happy,” Tom told Lynette. “But for as long as I have known you, you’ve always thought you needed something else to make you complete. And I’m starting to realise nothing ever will.”

I don’t know how Tom said that with a straight face after he made Lynette deal with going back to work, quitting her job, opening a pizza parlour, and driving around America in a van… all because he wanted to be happy.

3. Felicia’s preoccupation with Paul made no sense.

I just never understood why Felicia was so obsessed with Paul. He killed her sister, sure, but she never even claimed to like Martha!

Felicia drove her daughter to suicide and committed several criminal offences, chopped her own fingers off, and faked her death all to punish Paul… for a motive that never made much sense to begin with.

4. Mike and Karl’s untimely deaths were baffling.

Mike getting involved with and eventually shot and killed by loan shark, Donny, is probably what makes me the angriest about this show! It. Was. So. Stupid! Mike and Susan had been through so much, he had so much to live for, and MJ was still just a child.

And what about Karl? Bree and Karl were one of my favourite couples, however I have fallen victim to the ‘she can save him’ narrative too often. But she really could’ve saved him! It was awful of the writers to kill him off because he was hit by a plane that crashed into Santa’s house during a Christmas block party. And then they followed that up with a ridiculous ‘what if’ episode that showed him cheating on Bree and going back to his womaniser ways after spending so much time on his growth with Bree.

5. Carlos and Gaby’s birth control debacle/Susan meddling with Julie’s pregnancy were both cooked storylines.

Desperate Housewives was too casual about abusing a woman’s bodily autonomy. In the first season, Carlos replaces Gaby’s birth control with sugar pills in order to trick her into getting pregnant so she wouldn’t leave him.

And in Season 8, Susan manipulates Julie into keeping a baby she did not want because Susan wanted to be a grandmother. Julie didn’t want to be a single mother, she had no support from the baby’s father (which is a whole other issue about her sleeping with someone she used to babysit), and she was in the middle of completing her PhD. It was awful!

We already know the show wasn’t allowed to even mention abortions, but these storylines took it too far.

6. Orson’s character was needlessly assassinated.

Orson and Bree were perfect for each other. He went to prison for her, he would’ve done anything to make Bree happy… and you’re telling me he suddenly starts stealing and whining about a pot roast to hurt Bree? I don’t think so!

Nevertheless, I thought it was iconic of Orson to come back to the series years after him and Bree got divorced only to reveal he had been stalking her the whole time — and he was now blackmailing the housewives because he had proof they covered up the murder of Gaby’s stepfather.

7. Katherine’s dead daughter storyline was bonkers.

I have so many questions about the Season 4 mystery. Does Dylan know she’s adopted? Did Katherine ever tell anyone other than Bree that the real Dylan died and was replaced with a Romanian orphan? Why was Katherine just touring orphanages in Romania?

Why is it so hard for this show to just tie up loose ends?

8. Justin was somehow forgiven for assaulting and blackmailing Gaby because he came out as gay.

John’s teenage roommate, Justin, preyed on Gaby and tried to coerce her into sex just because she had slept with John previously. He got Carlos to hire him to mow their lawn for free just so that he could be closer to Gaby and repeatedly made her uncomfortable on purpose — but his ‘excuse’ for doing all of that was because he was confused about his sexuality.

The show did not depict queer people and relationships in a positive light in its earlier seasons, but this particular plot was one of the worst things to happen.

9. Yao Lin, Xiao Mei, and Betty Applewhite’s storylines were often racist.

Granted, it is a white person show full of ridiculous storylines only white people could get away with — but the treatment of people of colour in the series was abhorrent.

Xiao Mei being sold into slavery is treated as casually as a Black mother keeping her son in chains in her basement.

Gaby was awful to every East Asian woman she came into contact with, especially her housekeeper Yao Lin. Then she practically forced Xiao-Mei to be her surrogate and punished her for experiencing pregnancy symptoms.

10. There was so many filler episodes.

I always skip them. They’re just… well filler, to address a random storyline and pretend like a character was relevant all along. The worst offender is the episode about the Fairview Strangler’s background – which, might I add, was never addressed again.

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Every episode of Desperate Housewives can be streamed on Disney+.