TRYINGTHINGS#06: Watching the entire boxset of Desperate Housewives is my winter sport
A teenage cultural moment becomes an adult hobby
My first job, aged 14, was in a pharmacy on the edge of one of Europe’s largest council estates. It was as close to the world of Shameless as you could hope to get without having your trainers stolen from your feet at the bus stop.
My former workplace is now a derelict section of the Bradford Decorating Centre
Saturdays at the chemist followed a regular rhythm. Someone would rush in offering a great deal on the trainers/meat they had just ‘retrieved’ from a local warehouse/supermarket lorry. Someone would come in bleeding, having been forcibly relieved of their very in-demand blue diazepams (10mg for the uninitiated). We would inevitably run out of the highly popular chocolate-flavoured Fortisip fortification drinks, and a small riot would ensue. Later in the calendar year, orders would be taken for Christmas gifts, which would then be ‘picked up’ from Next or M&S for 1/10th of the usual price.
I continued to work at that action-packed little drug shed for five years. It saw me through a formative period of my life, and indeed it was a formative experience in itself. I became an expert methadone dispenser, needle exchange coordinator and pill counter. I knew each recovering heroin addict in the area by name, which came in handy on the couple of occasions that they tried to rob me. Shouting ‘PAUL, GIVE THAT BACK YOU TWAT’ is a much more effective method to get your Motorola Razr back than a generic scream.
Right in the middle of my pharmacy years, a new show landed on our non-flatscreen TVs. Every Wednesday evening, 30% of the UK population would gather on their sofa and be transported to a generic, sunny, suburban, Americana pseudo-paradise featuring some of the most beautiful, shiny, early-botox-adopting, gardener-shagging, affair-having, house-burning, sometimes-murdering women on our televisions at the time. It couldn’t be less relatable or further away from the needle exchange counter. I couldn’t have loved it more.
It won Emmys, SAGs and Golden Globes. American First Lady Laura Bush referred to herself as a Desperate Housewife. By 2012, it remained the most popular show in its demographic worldwide. It inspired one of the most successful reality TV franchises of all time, the Real Housewives, which now has more than 30 versions around the world.
In the age of appointment television, being able to discuss the episode from the night before was required for cultural capital at school, even if it meant that you had to suffer through incredibly adult sexual references whilst sitting between your parents on the sofa. The next morning, during double maths, you would make comparisons between algebraic manipulation and the rings Gabrielle Solis ran around Carlos (kidding, we mainly talked about John the gardener’s abs).
21 years later, my personal parallels with the lives of the Desperate Housewives have narrowed. I’ve had at least two affairs with my domestic staff, and my chardonnay habit has gone from ‘mommy juice’ to 'breakfast drink’.
Sometimes I am Lynette, overwhelmed and under-appreciated. Sometimes I’m Bree, hiding quite a serious drinking problem. Or I’m Gabby, doing yoga nude on my front porch. Mainly, I’m Susan, falling over a lot. These housewives have now inhabited my brain to the point that I regularly start anecdotes with ‘Oh I know a story about that…’ before realising it’s a plotline from series three. Methadone only rarely features in my day-to-day.
The creator of Desperate Housewives, Marc Cherry, said in a New York Times interview that he was inspired to create the show after reading the story of Andrea Yates, a mother from Texas who drowned each of her five children, one by one, in the bath. He watched the news coverage from the trial with his own mother and said to her: “'Gosh, can you imagine a woman so desperate that she would hurt her own children?”
Marc’s mother said yes, she could. For the first time, she told her (now adult) son what her life was like as a mother of three young children, with a husband who was studying for a masters degree and frequently away from home. And so, Desperate Housewives was born.
Cherry struggled to get the show picked up when it was labelled as a ‘black comedy’. With new agents, it was re-pitched as a ‘soap’ and quickly landed a primetime spot. I guess it worked - my personal journey with the housewives started as family viewing and finally landed in relatability, two decades later.
2004 was different. I like to think a show so clumsy on important issues, particularly race, would not be made in the same way today. But for now, I am back there, a noughties teen with a dodgy Saturday job, finding joy in the dysfunctional drama of Wisteria Lane.
It’s cold outside (in the Southern Hemisphere). Down your tools. Watch TV. I’ve found you a new hobby.
(Listen to me bang on to another 2004 banger, the underrated but seminal rom-com Wimbledon here).
Where is THE HIGH? Watching this absurd show and finally relating to some of it 21 years later.
Physical fitness? Watching Gabrielle Solis’ commitment to yoga IS my cardio.
Sense of satisfaction? Successfully gaslighting you into starting the series (PLEASE).
Long-term commitment? It’s eight seasons and they’re mainly 23 episodes long, so, yeah.