And he loves the title. "The best I've ever come up with. Desperate. Housewives. Such an interesting juxtaposition of words. Housewife. A '50s ideal of domestic bliss. And desperate. An adjective you don't normally connect with our ideas about the suburbs."
Cherry himself was a bit desperate when he sat down to write the pilot. He'd been a writer for "Golden Girls" in the early '90s. He executive-produced the forgotten "Five Mrs. Buchanans" in 1994. Then he hit a very dry patch.
"I think my love of this world comes through in the project," says show creator Marc Cherry of the top-rated series' seemingly serene setting.
(Kevork Djansezian -- Abc)
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Sordid or Silly, Shows That Pulled Us In
You watch. We know you watch. How can you not watch television's guilty pleasure shows that, for reasons obvious and mysterious, suck you back to the viewing couch each week.
Alas, tonight the TV gods have preempted that guiltiest of pleasures, "Desperate Housewives," in favor of the American Music Awards.
To help with the withdrawal symptoms, we indulge in some nostalgia for guilty pleasure shows of yore that lasted at least five seasons and made guilty (but satisfied) viewers of us all.
Peyton Place (premiered in 1964). It was the mid-1960s and Americans, judging by the show's audience size, were ready to delve into the lives of these New Englanders with their extramarital affairs, illegitimate children and philandering priests. Television's first successful prime-time soap opera also launched the careers of Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal.
Hawaii Five-O (1968). Hula dancers. A villain called Wo Fat. The catchy opening tune (by composer Mort Stevens, who also penned the "Gunsmoke" theme). Jack Lord's hair! Viewers indulged in this over-the-top cop drama for its fast pace and beautiful scenery (filmed on location), but who knew there was so much crime in this tropical paradise?
Dallas (1978). The masterpiece spawned a whole generation of prime-time dramas, including "Knots Landing," "Falcon Crest" and "Dynasty." J.R. became a household name and millions of children may have learned the facts of life from all that cavorting taking place at Southfork. We loved the series so much, we even forgave the producers for writing off Bobby's death (and the entire 1985-86 season) as just a dream.
Fantasy Island (1978). Who didn't want to be greeted by the happy islanders bearing fruity drinks and have Ricardo Montalban hand them their dreams? Viewers could empathize with the Average Joes with large problems getting off "da plane! da plane!," seeking answers from the wise and cunning Mr. Roarke.
Knight Rider (1982). Yeah, the car could talk; you got a problem with that? It could also reach speeds of 300 mph and defy gravity, and we all like to watch cars fly. Plus it seated one fabulously coiffed and blue-jeaned David Hasselhoff, whom a nation embraced. That nation is Germany, but he was pretty big in the United States as well.
The A-Team (1983). I pity the fool . . . who wasn't in the demographic and therefore missed out on this ragtag team of outlaws fighting injustice. We elevated Mr. T (B.A.) into a pop culture superstar, but the names Hannibal, Faceman and "Howling Mad" Murdock will always be ingrained in our memory.
MacGyver (1985). The ingenious secret agent could turn a turnip into a truck, a lollipop into a laser and a Danish into a dagger. Sure we made those up, but we tuned in for eight years to see what unbelievable concoction our hero could invent next.
Melrose Place (1992). We tuned in to see what tragedy would befall Allison next. We taped and rewinded to see Dr. Michael slowly transform from all-around nice guy to certified meanie. We rushed home to see cat fighting and attempted suicides and the Melrose Place apartment complex blow up. But mostly . . . we watched to see Heather Locklear.
Dawson's Creek (1998). The high school love affairs and the platonic, almost-love affairs. That's what drew us in every week as Dawson, Joey and Pacey sorted out their sordid affairs. Its downfall? That annoying Paula Cole theme song still -- a year after the show went off the air -- is stuck in our heads.
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"Honestly, I wrote this script because I wasn't working. I went three staffing seasons without a job interview, let alone a job. I was kinda depressed, because apparently I didn't have the best rep in town. I knew I was smart, darn it, so I sat down to write the smartest thing I knew how to do." Darn it. Gosh. Golly. That's the Midwesterner in Cherry coming out (his dad was an oil exec, so he lived in Oklahoma, Hong Kong and Iran as a kid).
Cherry, a bachelor, says the inspiration came from his mother. The two were sitting around one day at her place in Orange County when a bit appeared on the news about the Andrea Yates trial -- the woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub. Son Marc said something like, "How desperate." Mother Martha Cherry remarked, "I've been there." And the idea was born.
"I wanted the four archetypes to represent the four different types of women I experienced in the suburbs. To look at my own mother, there are aspects of all four. She had three kids, my father was off getting his master's degree, and she couldn't handle us. It was actually a revelation of how difficult those times were that led me to this idea. My mother was a woman who insisted on everything being pleasant, and wearing pearls, and wanting everything to seem so very nice. We were a very repressed family who didn't express our emotions a lot."
That's where Bree comes from.
"But I also had a relationship with my mom, being able to talk to her about almost anything. And that's very much in evidence in Teri Hatcher's character (divorcee Susan Mayer) and her relationship with her daughter in the series."
And the vixen Gabrielle? Or the overworked mom Lynette, who stepped off the corporate ladder to raise the ankle-biters?
"My mom was a woman who gave up her career as a singer to move to the suburbs," says Cherry. "I don't think she was ever bored and had an affair with her gardener, but certainly what Gabrielle goes through in terms of having an exciting life and now living in the burbs, yes, I drew some colors from that."
Cherry says that "Desperate Housewives" is a kind of skewed homage to burbo life -- and he found inspiration in everything from the later "I Love Lucy" episodes (after they move to Connecticut) to the Oscar-winning "American Beauty." He also admired "Sex and the City" but knew he couldn't reproduce that R-rated vibe on prime-time network TV, though he held dear the concept of four women sitting around a table dishing about their lives.
"I love the idea of a beautiful neighborhood that represents the very best of American values, but also as a fun backdrop to some darker, deliciously sneaky things going on in people's lives," he says. "The truth is I see both in suburbs. I think that is one of the secrets of our success. Unlike other writers" -- and here he means East Coast urban intellectual snobs -- "who are incredibly cynical about suburban life, I think my love of this world comes through in the project."
But not everyone got it, at least not at first. Cherry peddled his pilot script to the four big broadcast networks, and a bunch of cable channels, and he was roundly rejected. "They heard 'women, comedy, dark,' and said, 'I don't think so,' " he says.
He switched agents (his previous one went to jail for embezzlement) and his new reps at Paradigm suggested he sell the script as a prime-time soap. Cherry reworked some scenes, and voilà.
"We started calling it a soap opera, then they started saying it was funny," he says. "What it did, it changed their expectations of how much they were going to laugh. Then the comedy was a pleasant surprise, versus 'You're going to be laughing your head off.' "
It's funny, Cherry says, "the joke is that one of the reasons the script has such a different tone is that more experienced writers for hour-long dramas wouldn't be so stupid as to write something so expensive to shoot" -- with all the ensemble characters in many scenes and sets.
Funny, too, in the way television works: The ABC executives who eventually bought "Desperate Housewives" (Lloyd Braun and Susan Lyne) were ousted from the network before the show aired.
Back on Wisteria Lane, between takes, Culp (Bree's husband, who in an earlier episode suggested a sex surrogate to patch up their marriage) says, "I thought this would be too offbeat for network TV."
That might be a good thing.
Get paid for your H I P I M P L A N T troubles.>>