Desperate Housewives season 1

Desperate Housewives Season 1
Season 1
File:Desphousewives.jpg DVD cover
No. of episodes	23
Release
Original network	ABC
Original release	October 3, 2004 – May 22, 2005
Season chronology

This article contains a summary of the first season of the American dramedy television series Desperate Housewives.

The season first aired on October 3, 2004 and concluded on May 22, 2005. In addition to the twenty-three regular episodes in season one, a special, "Sorting Out the Dirty Laundry", was aired on April 24, 2005.

Cast

For the first season of Desperate Housewives, thirteen characters were included in the main cast: the five leading women, as well as Rex Van De Kamp, Carlos Solis, Paul, Zach and Mary Alice Young, Julie Mayer, John Rowland and Mike Delfino.

Starring

• Teri Hatcher - Susan Mayer
• Felicity Huffman - Lynette Scavo
• Marcia Cross - Bree Van De Kamp
• Eva Longoria - Gabrielle Solis
• Nicollette Sheridan - Edie Britt
• Steven Culp - Rex Van De Kamp
• Ricardo Antonio Chavira - Carlos Solis
• Mark Moses - Paul Young
• Andrea Bowen - Julie Mayer
• Cody Kasch - Zach Young
• Jesse Metcalfe - John Rowland

with

• Brenda Strong - Mary Alice Young

and

• James Denton - Mike Delfino

Production

Joining series creator Marc Cherry as executive producers for the first season of Desperate Housewives was Tom Spezialy and Michael Edelstein, while Kevin Murphy served as co-executive producer.

Cherry and Spezialy also wrote the most episodes. The other writers of the first season include Kevin Murphy, John Pardee and Joey Murphy, Alexandra Cunningham, Jenna Bans, Kevin Etten, Josh Senter, Chris Black, Adam Barr, David Schulner, Katie Ford, Oliver Goldstick, Patty Lin and Tracy Stern - many of them also serving as producers.

Writer Kevin Etten also was story editor during the shows first year.

Seven directors worked with the show during the season: Larry Shaw (who also was one of the producers during the season), Arlene Sanford, Jeff Melman, Fred Gerber, David Grossman, John David Coles and Charles McDougall.

Ratings

Nielsen Ranking (2004-05 U.S. TV season; based on average total viewers per episode): #4 (23.71 million viewers)

Plot summary

The show opens with the suicide of Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), who narrates the episodes from beyond the grave. Mary Alice's suicide leaves behind a mystery involving her husband Paul Young (Mark Moses), her son Zach (Cody Kasch), and a mysterious toy chest, which Paul digs out from underneath the family's pool. Ultimately, it is revealed to have contained the skeletal remains of a dead woman's body. The story unravels through Mary Alice's four friends and neighbors. Each has her own storyline that ties into the theme of being a desperate housewife: accident-prone single mother Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) trying to find love; perfect housewife Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross), mother of two problematic teenagers, who struggles to save her marriage; married Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) tries to be super-mom to four children while longing to return to her life as a corporate executive; and materialistic, adulterous ex-runway model Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) who tries to keep her husband from finding out about her affair, and then finds out she's pregnant.

In its first season, the show reveals the mystery of why Mary Alice took her own life and the quest by a mysterious "plumber" named Mike Delfino (James Denton) to find out the fate of his former lover, drug addict Deirdre. By the end of the season, the show resolves the mystery with the revelation that 15 years ago, when Mary Alice's name was Angela Forrest, she buys the heroin-addicted Deirdre's only son Dana, and then flees with her husband Todd (now Paul) to Fairview (the town Housewives is set in) to keep the child (now named Zach) from being taken away from them. When Deirdre finds them, Mary Alice refuses to give up the child.

Upon being accused of being back on drugs, Deirdre hits Paul (Mary Alice's husband) and goes to get her son. Mary Alice, shocked, murders her, checks her arm for signs of drug use (she was not), and has her horrified husband dismember the body, put it in Zach's toy-chest, and bury it where the family is building a new pool in their backyard. All this happens while a 4-year-old Zach is watching them from the staircase. What Mary Alice does not count on is that one of her neighbours, Martha Huber, learns of Mary Alice's secret from her sister, Felicia Tilman (Harriet Sansom Harris), (with whom Mary Alice had worked before coming to Fairview). After learning the secret, Martha attempts to blackmail Mary Alice. Rather than face the blackmail, Mary Alice kills herself.

Later, when Paul finds this out, he kills Martha after she tells him she does not have any regrets about her blackmailing and its result. Mike (Deirdre's former lover) learns this information from Paul, whom Mike leaves in the desert (rather than killing) after Mike realizes Zach is his son. As a surprising twist, Bree's husband Rex (Steven Culp) dies of poisoning shortly after George Williams, a pharmacist in love with Bree, tampered with his heart attack medication and Bree intentionally prolonged his desperate attempt to reach medical help in a hospital. Bree's behavior is caused by her being angry at her husband because she was told by George, who lied and said that Rex had bragged to his co-workers about their sex life, or more specifically Bree's attempts at being a dominatrix to satiate Rex's BDSM needs.