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 Tenny.
So we have to talk a little bit more about this particular episode, and I want to hone in on what I think and I think we can all agree is maybe one of the certainly one of the best scenes of the first season of Desperate Housewives, but maybe of the entire series, which is Lynette's big hallucination break down at the kitchen sink where she sees at Mary Alice appear and mary Alice extends her gun out to her and she's having this moment that basically crescendos into
the broad theme of the episode, which is, gosh, is it hard to ask for help from people? And so I think there's a lot to talk about here.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not good at asking for help. I'll just start with that.
But I feel like that's an I'm Terry Hatcher and I'm not good at asking for help.
Yeah, I'm Terry Hatcher and I'm not good asking for help.
Ye, I did know, I mean episode eight Guilty.
I do think an alternate title for guilty could have been I can't ask for help. But you know, actually, as I say it, I'm like that, No, that would be a bad title. And so they were right to call episode eight guilty, and I'm glad that they did. And I promise I am a fairly decent writer who comes up with clever things sometimes. But I do think I think it is really hard to ask for help
a mom. I totally see you struggle with asking for help, especially as a single person who has, I would say, as an outsider, an abundant well of resource in terms of friends and family and people who are in your corner and love you and champion you, but who you, of your own admissions, say that you don't want.
To burden by reaching out.
Tom, there's an interesting trick that I think I actually talk to you about in regard to relationships.
Oh, I know what you're gonna say, and you did, and I do think of this.
Should I say it?
Or do you want to say you said that you.
Can go ahead?
Well, no, you say it, you gave the advice. You say it.
Well, I remember when you were dating. I remember in the beginning, and I remember saying to you that letting other people feel needed is a very important quality of a relationship.
So you like said this to me, Oh I do. Yeah, Oh, this is great advice. I thought about it ever since you told me it.
Wow, okay, well I have and what am I called?
TV mom?
Hey?
Thanks TV Mom for the great advice.
Yeah. We went to dinner and you shared this with me, and I thought it was really it has stuck with me since and that.
Was years ago.
Oh well, thank you, And I do think it's true, and I think about it like I think I still have to work on this actually, which is asking for help. Where you think it might be a weakness, you're actually allowing that other person in your life to show up in a way that makes them feel needed.
Well, I mean, I think one of the biggest ways to strength and intimacy is to have the vulnerability to let someone in and tell them what you need and ask them for help. And as much as I am saying that now and I really do believe it and I try to practice it, it is still difficult. And it's difficult in this industry. It's difficult in every industry. But I think, speaking from my experience in the film industry, I do. And I wonder if you relate to this,
Andrea or Mom. There is this kind of assumption, especially when you were early on in your career, that you are just supposed to know how to do things for the first time. I'm thinking about when I first graduated college and I moved back to la and it was right in the beginning of the pandemic in twenty twenty, and I was working as a tutor, and I was like starting to write my first script, speckscript, and I was looking for work, and I was looking for work
in the industry. And I had a friend of mine who is a DP and he was working on this non union, really random documentary that was shooting all of the reenactments for the documentary between Vegas and reading California and ready He's like North, it's like almost like clog. Yeah, And they said, you know, we need a because it's super low budget. We need like a PA who can also drive a camera van and also do like COVID testing and are you free and would you do this?
It's like a three week shoot. And I said, yeah, sure, of course I'll do it. And then of course the first thing I get is the gigantic camera van and I in LA that I need to drive to Vegas and then eventually drive from Vegas to Oregon basically, and I was like, yeah, I can drive that, like i've and I took the job.
I drive. I made it in the van down to Vegas.
We then have an excruciating week of only night shoots. We wrap out after like a week and a half of doing this and I am exhausted and I get into this big, like twenty foot camera van that I'm still not great at driving, and I plug in the address for where we're going and reading. It was like our day off, but it was a travel day, so
it wasn't really a day off. And I think it's now like four thirty in the afternoon, and I plug in the address for reading and it says it's gonna take me sixteen hours to get there, and I started crying in the car. I was like, I, there's no way I'm gonna be like, I'm exhausted, I've been sleeping no hours. There's no way I'm gonna be able to drive this van there or but it would be safe. No,
And it certainly was not safe. And I but I'm not asking anyone for help not admitting to anyone that I didn't know how to drive this van.
Well, that I was exhausted because I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do? I took this job. I need to show up for it.
I need to deliver what I said I could deliver, Like I'm getting paid. People are counting on me. The camera equipment has to be there, so I make it up there. I had like twelve hours to sleep, and the next day I didn't have to drive the camera van, but my job was again. Another night shoot was at five am when they were like wrapping up. The night shoot was to pick up talent in a mini van a different car and drive them from the bar where they were filming back to the hotel. And we're now
in Reading, California, really small, like dark streets. A lot of streets have been closed, and all night that we'd been filming, we'd been hearing this train. We were right by these train tracks, and we've been hearing this train.
Go by and go by.
And I am coming back from having dropped off the first group of crews. I'm alone in the minivan and I'm looking at the GPS, but I'm like trying to figure out what ever, how to get there. A couple of roads have been closed because now it's so late at night, and it says, okay, make a left onto
railroad Avenue. And I see okay, Railroad Avenue, and I go and I make a left and there was not enough light, and instead of turning onto the street, I turn onto the train track that I've just heard trains going down, and I like immediately nuserk reaction, pressed on the accelerator and the car sped further onto the train
tracks and lodged like perpendicular to the train tracks. And I'm pressing on the gas and the wheels are spinning because now I'm on the train tracks, so the car is completely elevated, and I had this moment where I said, oh my god, this is how people get hit by trains. Like I'm pressing the gas. I know trains come down. I can't get the car off the train tracks. And I put on the hazards and I grabbed actually the backpack with the hard drives in it, and I because I'm such.
A good oh my gosh, I gave the movie.
I threw up in the car door and I ran off of the train tracks leaving the car there, and I immediately called nine one one and they were able to shut down the train before it came and hit the car.
Wow.
It took all of that to get you to call for help.
And I was like, God, I need to be better about admitting when I'm in over my head.
Wow, because I almost just got hit by train.
Oh my god, what is the scariest way? You never asked for help?
Oh gosh, Well, this shows up in my life in all kinds of ways. But listening to Emerson's story and then thinking about it in the context of work, I have definitely felt like I need to be better at asking for help in work environments. I've touched on this. I prided myself and I've throughout my life of being so prepared and so capable, you know, and that started from being young.
Yeah, and it's an industry where maybe not now so much, but twenty years ago. I mean I showed up after having a miscarriage, I showed up with one hundred and three fever. I showed up having pneumonia, right like you basically.
Must go on.
Yeah, that's what we're taught.
Honestly.
Yeah, it still is like that. Maybe an intelliged in different language, but it's still like that.
Yeah, And an example of that in my career.
And I laugh about it now because there was so many funny things that came out of this particular experience.
But I did. I was a guest star on the show The Ghost Whisper.
I remember that show, yes, And I had a great experience in terms of, you know, working with everyone in the cast and the role I had initially auditioned for I didn't get and instead they they offered me what
they said was the better role. They were like, oh, this is that You're now the featured ghost of the episode, you know, and so we were like, okay, great, And then I showed up to set and my in my trailer as a part of my costume was a burlap sack and we were confused as to what that was and they were like, that's to go on your head. And then I realized that for the majority of the episode, I had a burlap sack on my head.
So that's this is.
I know.
So that's a different story, but very funny. And then as the Ghost Whisper arc of the ghost in.
The episode, does you find out their backstory and you find out how they died. And my particular character had died in a sorority hazing ritual where she had to wear a sack on her head and horrible. Yeah, yeah, okay, And we were filming an Angela's Crest National Forest out here in LA and what happens is that she has this thing on her head and then she ends up falling off of a cliff and kind of getting tangled with the tree and the sack and she hangs herself and and so that's the story of.
How my ghost characters died.
Right.
So to do this, we had to do a kind of a stunt. They put me up on a crane.
They had a crane, you know, working, and they were gonna suspend me, and they did this, and because I didn't want to be difficult and I didn't want to challenge anyone, I just went along with this stunt that shouldn't I should not have performed, probably, but it wasn't set up correctly, and so I ended up losing my voice for several weeks after the episode and having some kind of like damn minor but present cord damage and visible bruising around my neck, which I showed up to
work on desperate housals because I was filming at the same time, and our makeup and hair people were like, what happened to your neck?
Like why do you have bruises on your neck?
And I told them this story and they were horrified that I, you know, that that happened to me. But then also it was like, why didn't you say anything? And not that it was my fault. No one was insinuating it was my fault. But it really was a lesson of like it's okay to say, hey, this is uncomfortable. Hey I need someone to come help me, I don't
feel safe or whatever. I didn't, and you know, I'm obviously fine, but but it was a lesson that stuck with me, and I've tried, really do try to be better now and I certainly like to spread the message to other actors and younger actors that you really need to advocate for yourself and asking for help is a form of a great form of advocating for us.
A very short story that happened to me a thousand years ago, but I won't.
Ever forget it.
I pulled up at within a taxi at the George Sank, which is like the fanciest hotel in Paris, and I was by myself and the you know, the the valet guy from the hotel, you know, comes out, and the taxi's opening the thing. This is pre uber and and you know, the taxi guy gets the luggage out and the man says, you know, can I get your luggage for you? And I was like, oh no, that's okay, I've got it myself. And he says to me, if you don't let anyone and help you, no one ever will. Wow.
Okay, Guardian angel VALI.
Now I know why they charge so much for that hotel because it comes with advice.
It comes with advice.
Wow.
Yeah, that was that stuck with me. But you know, it's still it's still hard and I and I and I circle back to I believe it's hard for us to ask for help because it's hard for us to admit that we can't do everything, because that challenges our own value. And I think we mistakenly sort of settle in this place of associating our value with independence, and that's where we go off the train tracks. We go off right there at the connection between value and doing
it all by yourself. And I would argue that value is elevated by being vulnerable enough to ask for help, that that actually makes you more powerful. Yeah, that you can do that.
And honestly, we also don't know what asking for help can lead to. I mean, we see even in this same episode eight with Rex and Brie when they agree to finally help each other dispose of Andrew's car. However, could, like you know, morally questionable. That may be it's this act of working together that is potentially going to maybe open the door for saving their marriage. And I do think there is there's so much strength that can come out of allowing ourselves to say.
I can't do this alone.
I feel like I feel like this is a really good example of where our three generations are make things really obvious, because I feel like my generation, my mother's generation, we did not ask for help, We did not say what was happening. We just we put up and shove up and carried on like that that was me. And I feel like your generation at least was having like the awareness of it, the the ability to sort of
start to shift. And I feel like you are your generation is really in a place where you're like, we're not taking it anymore.
And you know, this episode, just to wrap it all up with a bow, made me think of a beautiful quote from the amazing My Angelou and I think we should leave it with this, which is she said, when we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
Ah and I love bos.
There you go and Maya Angelou.
Yeah, we're just so devoted to My Angela.
We are, and we're desperately devoted to you. So come back next week for for more, for more taps,