Desperate Housewives; The Real Housewives of Orange County

A snowy night, a fireplace and not a hell of a lot interesting on tv. We ended up watching Desperate Housewives, something we hadn't done in a long time.

I have to give the writers one thing. They can pack more melodramatic twists and turns into one hour than the daytime soaps can in a year. The central problem tonight has to do with arson at a nightclub which leaves eight people dead. And Carlos blind. Lynette and her husband have to worry that their teenage son Porter set the fire while Edie's latest boy toy is the actual culprit. Orson gets his nose busted in the fire resulting in him snoring so loudly that Bree, about to start peddling her latest bestseller, can't sleep for the noise and kicks him out of their bed. But Orson being Orson drugs her late night tea so he can sneak into bed while she's happily dreaming and paying no attention to his snoring...

Has any group of people ever suffered more than these folks? And learned so little from their suffering? About halfway through we remembered why we gave up watching DH years ago. It used to be snarky and fun. Now it just trudges through its paces.

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The real true Desperate Housewives are coming back to Bravo. You know the Real Housewives of Orange County who have dedicated themselves to accruing everyting life has to offer except dignity, intelligence, compassion and honor. And the same can be said for their men of course. A Bentley is not a subsitute for brains. Nor are store-bought knockers.

The show is a stacked deck in that it intends to shock and does. The wives don't seem to have a clue that they're dim and crass and dull. And why should they? Their men are draping them in clothes, cars, jewelry, houses, exotic vacations...the women are treated like thoroughbred race horses. All except for Vicki who enjoys looting and plundering as much as the men do. A Viking babe if there ever was one.

But every once in awhile actual pain and loss creeps in and it usually has to do with the children. I remember the episodes with the dragon lady Lauri (who incesstantly talks about being entitled to be taken care of by rich guys) dealing with her troubled teenage son. Yep, no doubt he was a pain in the ass. Troubled teenagers usually are. But you got the sense that nothing was going to deter her from marrying the golden boy of her dreams and that the kid had become a nuisance. That was when I quit watching the show. It got a little too real for me.

But I'll give it another whirl of course. It'll be intersting to see how these Bush babes function in the land of Obama. If they've ever heard of him that is.