Hi, Welcome to Desperately Devoted, the Ultimate Desperate Housewives rewatch hosted by me, Terry Hatcher, my on screen daughter Andrea Bowen, and my real life daughter Emerson Tenney.
Welcome back to Desperately Devoted.
Our conversation about season one, episode seven, Anything you Can Do. We are jumping back in at an incredible place in the story seeing of redeeming themselves while Lynette in the park trying, is strung out in the park like and she looks awful.
Yeah, that is true.
Felicity is committed to and playing this character would be so well. And it is hilarious to see the kids running around on the jungle gym and she is giving I kept thinking of Timothy Shalome and a beautiful boy where he is like heroin addict. But of course it's about kids, Ady d.
But she is she's needing her fixed.
Yeah, she is jones ing, yes, and she shot down.
The threat at the end. Yeah. Well, when girl scouts come, when girl Scout Clickie comes, just don't come to my door, you know, I know, it's.
Like such a week week she could possibly leverage any amount of power.
But it leads her into scheduling a play eight with another neighborhood boy basically to essentially try and get some of that child's add medication.
That's a pretty big low.
Which I have to say in this scene.
The second the scene popped up, I screamed out loud because the boy's mom in this guest star character is Terry Walters, who is my dad's sister in law. Oh my gosh, I know what I obviously. I mean, I've known her for many many years in my life and love her. And this was in two thousand and four. I was like, what a small world overlap. I never knew that she was an actress, or I knew she was an actress, but I just never knew that she was in Desperate Housewives. And I has never come up.
And I don't even know she remembers it. It's such a small moment. I imagine she would remember it. But I was I was laughing out loud that this is who is playing the character of the mom that Lenna steals the pills gry wool.
That wild, wild, small world.
Okay, So I had a moment that I thought was really like stop. You talk about being like stopped by a surprise. I was stopped because I thought this might I don't know if this is going to be relevant to you guys, But okay, So when Rex and Bury are in this dinner scene and they're telling the kids that they're getting divorced, and you know, sort of talking about what that might be like, and the Sun says, can I live with dad?
So quickly?
And I mean you just see the world fall out from underneath Breeth like it. It just wasn't ever a consideration that she somehow wasn't a good enough mother or to be able to hold her son's affection, and so that not only is her marriage falling away, but her children are falling away too. It's really I mean really I had to stop the TV there too because it was and I'm really grateful. I don't I don't have that experience with you. I think, you know, we're really close,
and but I think a lot of people do. Yeah. I think I think a lot of people have. I mean, I have a pretty distant relationship, even though I spend a lot of my life taking care of my parents. Do I think emotionally there is a lot of distance there. You know. It's not that there's not a it's not a loving support system. It's a it's a well, not reciprocally reciprocally any I guess.
I mean, And I think that's the interesting thing also about the idea of divorce when kids are teenagers or starting you know, older in middle school and high school, that you don't really consider when parents get divorced, Like the age that I was when you got divorced.
You know, I was five and a half.
Of course, you know you both you and my dad were great parents, and there was never a question about I was going to spend time with both of you, equal time with both of you. But when your kids are autonomous ish teenagers, they have their own perceptions about who they think is to blame or who, and you know, they're obviously I think.
And there's a child in their schools or maybe certain programs, or certainly for a young boy who's getting into his going to strip clubs, he's getting into his sexual kind of awakening. Maybe he wants to be around more masculinity and wants to be around his dad, all super legit things. But I just know I do have some friends that are still having their kids go off to college for the first time. Oh and even though it's not in a sad way the way this this particular family a
Breon Rex dynamic is. But it's still it's a it's a loss, it's a it's a it's a grief. It's an empty nesting thing. Yeah, and I don't know. So this scene really got me.
Yeah, and it is hard.
It's hard to see how how as Emerson mentioned that line is at the kind of at the beginning of the scene. And you can imagine knowing Breeze character by now that she's given this conversation a lot of thought and consideration of how she's going to handle it, how it's going to go, what's the best way of presenting this news to them, and then she is sidelined so quickly with that level of hurt of heart pain, direct
heart pain. And then it kind of builds because she asks Danielle shout out to Joy, who I'm very close with still and absolutely adore.
But but she yeah, she's.
So great and and you know, then she says to Danielle, do you feel that way? And Danielle says, I don't really care as long as I have my own bathroom.
And it's it's like a doubling up of we.
Not only don't you know, are not choosing you, but we don't even you know, in this case, Danielle doesn't even care. And oh gosh, yeah, my heart really hurt for Brion that scene as well.
I just yeah, and it made me wonder about I mean, especially about her daughter, because we've seen all of Bree's conflict with her son and obvious maybe reasons why he would not want to be living with her, but the level of kind of apathy that her daughter seems to have about where she's going to be living made me just think a lot about how what are the ways
that we guard ourselves against painful scenarios? You know, it seems like her daughter has put up such a huge dissociative wall around even addressing the fact that there's a lot of hurt and pain and confusion in her relationship with her mom, to the point where instead of being able to respond with any level of emotion, she goes, well, I just want to make sure I'm own the bathroom, which.
Feels really honest, but you're right about the psychology that comes behind it. I mean, I don't know, what do you do? I think I'm i error in deep hurt in putting up walls. Yeah, and I and I say that it's I say that it's I wish I had a different tool like I wish I was when I'm very hurt, which I think it takes actually kind of
a lot to get me really hurt. But I think once you do, I think it's I think that's my protective thing is like a wall, and it's I don't it's not great because it because it means that I just can't communicate anymore. But it's just too much pain, I think.
I think, Yeah, it's interesting how separation seems to be a common coping mechanism and whether that's defensiveness, whether that's just going inside oneself or whatever it is.
I had an illuminating moment in.
My life when my sister Gillian pointed out to me that when I'm confronted with big feelings, whether that be anger or sadness or overwhelm.
That I go to sleep. Oh wow, And she.
That seems like a positive tool.
Maybe it is.
I mean, it's positive for my under eyeback opposite.
Right now.
Yeah, And I think it's a combination of things.
I think it allows my brain, which gets really crowded to just shut off for a few hours, and it also is a time passer inherently, you know. And then it gives some space because when I wake up, I've had built in space.
And I also think maybe the surge of.
Emotions I feel does make me exhausted, and then I just decide to turn turn off and tune out by going to sleep.
That's so interesting. Do you have what's your Do you think you have a pattern?
I love that.
Yeah.
I mean I think I go to like I like a like a If I'm really really frustrated about something, I will I will scream along to Meg the Stallion's hiss no, and then maybe like go for a run. I like to have some sort of physical release. I'm also really big on I think I maybe if I shut down, I just sit on top of the feelings that I'm feeling. But I also don't believe in being reactive. Like I recognize I can be hurt and that's not always the best time to respond immediately to the person
that's hurt you. So I am a big proponent of when I'm really upset about something, write a letter, which actually Meg the Stallion says at the end of Hiss but that's not where I got the idea from.
I writing a letter. I write, don't you the person?
I write a letter to the person, and sometimes it can go on for pages, and I use every every explicit word, like every way. Would never actually talk to someone, but all of the feelings that I'm feeling, get them out onto paper, set it aside, do nothing about.
It for the day, and then the next day, after you've slept, you know, maybe reapproach it.
What part of these emotions do I actually need to communicate to get something out of this exchange? Which of these emotions are just reactive? And it's good that they're in the letter and I got them out, but I'm certainly not going to share them. Or is there actually nothing that I'm gonna get from confronting this person? That's
great because sometimes there isn't. Sometimes as much as you maybe want to make someone know that they were wrong or they hurt you, there's not actually an objective to be gained.
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty wise. Emerson.
We've been building to the iconic scene that is now a gift? Is it gift for Jiff?
I think it is Giff.
It's it's Giff. We're getting we're getting feedback from the room.
Is the peanut butter gift? Is the imaging?
Yes? Okay, well, okay, so things culminate at Saddle Ranch, and I think it's hilarious that it's at Saddle Ranch and it's called Saddle Ranch, which is because Westeria Lane exists in a place that is nowhere, you know, it is like in America until they're calling out an iconic place in West Hollywood in Los Angeles by its own actual name.
Okay, so let's set this up.
Let's set this up.
So we have we know that we've got Kendra, the mysterious new hot chick who's checking up with Mike. We have the first date that didn't happen with Susan.
And he makes mince meat out of susan humiliation.
Then Edie tips Susan off that Mike is headed to Saddle Ranch with this mysterious Kendra.
And she kind of and invites Susan.
They go together, which is leading me to a comment we've gotten from a listener. Okay, it was on Spotify. They didn't even write directly in Camilla I believe is her name. Hi, Camilla, I loved your Spotify comment, and now I will talk about it. I'm gonna paraphrase it. But she said that she is rewatching the show for the upteenth time, and she always thought that Susan and Edie had romantic tension and would make a really good
romantic storyline. And then another woman responded to the comment totally agree.
Oh wow, I just thought.
I mean, I know, this is obviously not where the show goes, and maybe Hunting Wives picked up all the missed lesbian opportunities from But I kind of love the alternate universe we could live in where Susan and Edie could go from rivals to lovers.
I love a rivals to lovers narrative.
And everybody's been begging for a reboot. I haven't heard a better suggestion than mad in twenty years. So yeah, you know, are you out there? Oh my god, Lives is leading the way Susan, And you know, I do know, I mean, this is sidebar. I don't know anything about science, but I do know quite a few women who after fifty and after being married and after having children, have fallen in love with women.
Because it's great. As the resident, you know.
You do seem awfully happy, which I'm very happy for you, but don't you. But it is interesting, right that, like at this point where maybe your postmenopausal. I don't know if it's a hormonal thing. I don't know if these friends of mine who've made these kinds of transitions, like if they always felt that win they didn't know it, or or then it just a light bulb went off. But I'm just saying it is kind of a thing. Maybe it's enough that, like it's not just one person.
I mean there, I guarantee you that some of our audience you're laughing at me.
Not some person. There are many there.
I think could be.
You know, you trust yourself more and more and more as you get older, you you are more fearless, you're more self accepting, your braver, You're I mean hopefully right, that's hopefully the trajectory we all follow as as humans and as women, and so so maybe it's that and and maybe there's a world in which somewhere out there, Susan and d are together now in the multiverse in an alternate Timeline's.
First of all, I love that listeners are writing in on Spotify or anyway. I just I just over that, and I love that I love you, and it kind of goes off of what I was saying earlier without the gay bent on it. But I I really think I mean, and I don't know that it's like underestimated, because I do feel like Edie and Susan get into some pretty fantastic uh adventures and antics over the next number of episodes. But we probably could have leaned into
it more like I do think. I do think that they could carry their own show.
Yeah, the dynamic is so entertaining.
It's such an entertaining it's a little bit like ab fab.
I could see it being like British. Yeah, I could see it being like that total I mean, with different but like that I've made my pitch mark and anybody else listening to this we have on the show. We love it. We have to go therapy first. We have it'll be worth it anything for a job we have.
We have Susan and Edie our favorite frenemies in Saddle Ranch, where Mike is in fact there with Kendra and Susan is immediately ten minutes into being there, she's like, I should leave.
I'm embarrassed. I can't believe it. You talked me into this.
We also over here, which obviously Susan does not yet that Mike is with Kendra. They know each other because he is looking for Kendra's sister, who was the last seen at Saddle Ram.
And Kendra is the daughter of the man that we've met in prior episodes that clearly is a part Floyd.
Mike too, yes to dig up why neighborhood?
Yeah?
Why is he really on Mysteria Lane? And then Mike spots Susan and I Love. They have a moment where, you know, he calls her out on being there, and she tries to say she's just casually there, but he's already found Edie and he's onto them. But while this conversation is happening, and I need to know because a part of me feels like this was.
Nicolette and this was not a stunt.
Double Edi is in the background of the scene riding this bull in the craziest, most sexual no hands. She is riding the bull and I rode horses in the same barn as Nicolette in Hidden Hills, and so I know she's a great equestrian and great rider, and I thought, I bet she's doing her own stuff.
She absolutely did that I mean again, I'm not sure I remember it, but from looking at it, it looks it's her. She is a great horseman, ship horsemen rider. Okay, yeah, and so I'm and I'm and she loves that. I mean, it's like in her bones. So I'm sure that that was her.
She was great at it.
But I count I'm just going to go back to, like even I'm going I go back to the real Estate scene that Edie with Paul. She is portraying Edie with such power and it stands out because it is it is a a cog in the wheel of these women that no one else has. You know, It's it's not the way bri is playing it. It's not the way Lynette is playing it. It's not the way Gabby or Susan. It's a called for finishing kind of quintuplet quin.
Of of like like like she's needed, she's needed.
She has such agency to.
Tell the story of the archetypes of women. And it is why I will say I, you know, I don't really get credited, but in the early days I was super championing her as the fifth housewife, and it really did go back and forth, like on the posters, initially it was the four of us, and like Mark Cherry would sometimes be very much like, nope, it's four housewives. It's definitely four housewives, only four housewives. And I think that probably was hurtful, you know, like because but so
it is. It was like this flexing thing, and I just felt like, this is an example of a scene where she comes she just screams off the screen.
Oh my god, she's so just standing in her power in every and not just because her thighs are so powerful.
Clearly they go the musody.
They are okay.
So, but have either of you ridden a bull one of those types of bulls?
I haven't, And I have this weird sometimes I get this incredibly strange overconfidence where I believe I will be really good at something I've never done before and I'm not. And I feel like bull riding falls into the category of one of those things that I just in my body.
I'm like, yeah, it'd be great at that, And I am.
Sure if I ever even for one moment sat on a mechanical ball, I would go lying across the room and there's no way I would be good at it. But I'm personally over confident about.
Thinking why you haven't done it, I think because you're like, you know what, let me live with that fantas head that that is.
I have also never done.
I have never been a bowl, but I have now been a time for ranch a lot over over the area, and now I can't. Yes, I have, and I think I've canout this food that yes, okay, So this week, yeah, so this week I took up the task of bringing in that white element.
Okay, great, thanks thanks TV mom.
Yeah, I I took up the torch of of bringing in an item inspired by this week's episode, and I decided to make buffalo cauliflower in the style of buffalo wings, which I feel like would have been served at a place like Saddle Ranch, or is served in a place like certainly is now, yes, certainly something I would have ordered. And and so this is just, uh, you know, a vegan or vegetarian or gluten free kind of spin on
chicken wings buffalo wings. This particular recipe is neither none of those things.
Because it does have.
It's cauliflower, but it does have breadcrumbs, so there goes the gluten free thing, and there's some butter in there, so it does you know whatever but that's really good.
Yeah, is it good? Okay, I'm excited.
I also made a Greek yogurt style ranch dipping sauce to go with it, as ranch would be.
It's it's really spicy. But I love this.
Okay, Yeah, I cannot morning. I'm just I'm still living in saddle Ranch. Where Eadie gets.
Off of the bowl and then Susan says she commits to the bit with Mike. She goes, no, I am here, I'm here to ride the ball and she hops in and she is so cute. She's oh, she's a tieing up her little shirt and she gets over and she's the wings are hot over her head. And I love this kind of physical comedy. This is oh my humor
and slapstick. I would write into a script. She the roser hat across the room and it blinds the guy who's operating the mechanical bull who leans back, who presses the lever before she's on it, and the bull bucks are right in the face. Right, mom, talk about filming this scene that has now been turned into a gift.
Well, first of all, I love that you love that kind of comedy. Do you think that you got some of that sense of humor from me.
Oh, I completely.
I think between your actual physicalized comedy and choreography. I mean, you know, we talk about the scene in the yard with the running across, between that and my dad's dark, dark slapstick humor. In terms of like dark jokes between the two of you, I mean, I was just bound to write only jokes where people though out of trees and get hit by cars and get run aver and I think it's hilarious. I am totally the person that will watch the video of someone falling down the stairs and I can't help the.
Last Oh my gosh.
Well, I'm sorry.
Now, I'm glad that we both pepper jew with that personality and equal equal dimension. I don't remember if I actually wrote the bill or not. I mean, that's the big question I have. Obviously I know, but I'm just wondering in between scenes. You're there, You're you know, you're you know. It feels to me like Terry Hatcher would have said, Hey, can I get on it and write it and see if it's hard my assumption that you did.
Doesn't it feel you definitely wrote that I did, And so we would have to ask somebody involved if I did not because I can't. I can't commit to that I have that memory. I just feel like I wouldn't have been there and not done it anyway.
Well, that was in another amazing moment. As I'm chowing down on.
It's really good, spy, but it is. It is great.
We have Lynette at the same time that all this happening is throwing her dinner party that she's finally agreed to throw. She's made the cannapas she's serving dessert. It seems like it's.
Gone really well.
Tom finally makes his big pitch, which is to put the advertising for his advertising brand on the side of the shopping shopping carts, and then Lynette can't help but pipe up from across the room. Or you could put it on dry cleaning bags, and of course this is the idea they all love. But I noted down this feels so meta because Desperate Housewives used this tactic to market the first season of the show, putting the images on the dry cleaning bags.
Which I think we talked about in maybe in the first pilot or sh We all agreed that that was so brilliant yet marketing, and so do Tom's colleagues agree that Lynnette's idea is so brilliant.
Yes, so we have so anyway, we have Lynette having her canna pay moment that then unfortunately Tom feels like she's stepped on his toes even though she's just trying to do what she does well in a really honest way, and.
He almost calls her out, like he almost that something's going on.
And then she has this line which I did take a note of because I thought it was interesting, which is when she's saying that she's she used to be someone who could win at work, and she says, I can't win where I'm at. I'm stuck in the middle.
And I think, you know, obviously, we can measure success outside of the home in a different way, using a different metric system than the way we measure success in the home, and so it's tougher for her to find something tangible to latch onto about how she's winning in her personal life. And we obviously know now that she's using this medication as a coping mechanism or a way to give herself a boost, so she probably feels like a loser, not a winner.
And yeah, well no, I think I think this is you see this you see like people moms living their ego and their identity through their children. You know, like what what like what what accomplishments is are their kids having? Or what kind of car are they driving?
Or what like?
These are the wins, but they're not really but you.
Have nothing else to hang out and they're not really Lynette's winds because she was used to having other type of business wins.
I mean, it's a it's a it's a little like tangential. But it is why I think we should consider paying stay at home moms totally. You know that that should be a salary position because part of getting a salary is saying to you you have value, right, you have something that you have to accomplish. You've accomplished it, and we are recognizing that with your salary.
Yeah, and in our super capitalist society, you know, for that is our super capitalist good.
But that is what it is. And to not do that to the woman in the home that is pretty much making everything happen and in this case, even making the job happen. Yeah, you know, it's you, no wonder she feels like she has to take pills.
Yeah, exactly, And so.
Then yes, all this is going on we have Edie. I just is having a drink now with the private investigator has showed up at Saddle Ranch. You know, Susan's icing her face. She kind of gets tipped off, maybe by Kendra, that there's more to Mic than there seams. And I just had to circling back quickly to the private investigator shows up. Clearly he's closing in on Edie. But we've gotten a line that he says to Paul before he says five K to hurt her, ten k to make her disappear.
And I wrote again, whoa hold hold up ten k to kill someone? Seems really low?
Yeah?
Yeah, but also.
Doesn't that seem I mean, look, I'm I'm missing something because I don't remember where this is all leading, which I'm happy about because I get to be so entertained watching it. But it seems extreme that Paul is considering having Edie oft.
For having the same No no, but I see, but but he's really I think this is where you see his deep pain and emotion. He is in this moment holding eighty responsible for the death of his wife, right, and so it's revenge, it's an eye to I, it's all thatt revenge, very biblical. You you killed my wife and I'm gonna and I'm gonna get you.
Yeah.
But then it has the most dramatic ending and this Yeah again, I'm going to go back to I cannot believe how much happened in this episode. And so now we're all finally done. Yes, that that the Gabby's mother in law has gathered the evidence. She's gotten a picture. She stormed in on Gabby and John, that picture of them in bed.
Which I just have to say so pre iPhone. She comes in with the actual physical camera to take a picture of them having their closure sex.
Right and and get you can see Gabby is just like, this is it. She's not even fighting it. She's taking her fancy Louis Vuitton bag or whatever, and she's filling it up with the most expensive things because this is it. There's no fighting this. I'm going to just take what I can and I'm gonna walk away.
But John is fighting it.
John chases after Onannita, Yeah.
Trying to get the camera back, and Juanita runs into the street where and she.
Is run over by none other than drunk Andrew Yeah, who.
Of course has been teed up for this by everything going on with his parents and their marriage, and so he.
And he's just been turned away by his own dad who says, you actually can't.
Live with me, right, And so he goes out, he gets loaded, he drives the new car, the new bribed car that he got, and boom, he he hits Wanita in the middle of the street, and we are left with paramedics there attending to Janita. And then this chilling image of the first time we really see Brie and Rex as a united front, and it's to cover up this terrible accident that their son has caused. And they stand together and close the door of that garage and I really got.
Themselves into the house and that's where we wrap it up.
Oh my god, it was a huge episode.
It was such a huge episode. I don't know. I mean, how could we have a lot of discipline to not have just press play for.
Episode everything play. I cannot wait. I actually cannot wait until next week. I'm chomping at the bend. I want to hear everyone's question.
We can't wait to be back with you next week at episode eight. So make sure you're keeping up and make sure you're following and writing us in writing in, and that's and because we're here for you, because we are desperately devoted to you,