IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

‘Desperate Housewives’ keeps reusing plots

Warning: Spoilers for Sunday's "Desperate Housewives" episode follow.After returning from several weeks off, "Desperate Housewives" decided to go ahead and throw its viewers a big fat juicy bone Sunday night — revealing that Preston and Danny's friend Eddie (the stringy-haired failed comedian) is apparently Fairview's Serial Strangler. He promptly added another name to his list by knocking off P
/ Source: msnbc.com

Warning: Spoilers for Sunday's "Desperate Housewives" episode follow.

After returning from several weeks off, "Desperate Housewives" decided to go ahead and throw its viewers a big fat juicy bone Sunday night — revealing that Preston and Danny's friend Eddie (the stringy-haired failed comedian) is apparently Fairview's Serial Strangler. He promptly added another name to his list by knocking off Preston's one-time fiance, Russian golddigger Irina, who will be missed by exactly no one.

That isn't a bad reveal, actually — a teen psycho is just off-kilter enough to make things kind of interesting. (At least it wasn't Danny, Nick, or Katherine.) But the rest of the episode made viewers wonder if perhaps the writers are completely running out of things for the main characters to do. The plots they are engaged in now are the same plots these characters have been engaged in for years now.

Stop me if you've heard these tunes before. Bree doesn't trust her own son, but wholeheartedly throws herself behind someone else, in this case, Sam, who's claiming to be Rex's son and really, really wants to be Martin Stewart Jr. to Bree's Martha. And just how many dinner disasters can one cookbook author oversee?

Lynette wants to control her kids' lives no matter how old they are, usually convinces good-hearted husband Tom to go along, and in the end, always gets her way, even though her machinations are bizarre. This week, she consulted an immigration official who told her Irina had left a trail of broken hearts and empty wallets across the globe. Irina of course admitted everything, of course Preston just happened to be standing right behind her, and the wedding was off faster than you can say "Nyet."

Susan and Mike continued their Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, 1950s-gender-role-style relationship. Apparently Mike's in debt, way more than he'll let on, and Susan thinks she can fix it by setting up fake plumbing emergencies with the cooperation of all her neighborhood friends.

Gaby continues her love-hate relationship with motherhood, at first offering to be an egg donor for neighbors Bob and Lee, then taking back her offer when she decides she can't have a child out there who isn't a part of her daily life.

"Desperate Housewives" is like a plot treadmill, where the characters keep churning through the same problems over and over again, rarely learning, rarely growing. It can be frustrating — as with Lynette and Bree, whose torturing of their own children can be hard to take. It can sometimes be engaging — it fits Gaby's personality that she would never learn from her mistakes, and Eva Longoria Parker manages to make her character hard to dislike.

Yes, fans watch the show for many of these reasons, but a little growth would be fun to see, and would really open up the writers to travel down new and interesting paths.

One episode briefly hinted that Tom could no longer handle Lynette's iron fist of control — how about returning to that, maybe splitting them up for at least a while?

Mike's debt could prove interesting, as he's been the level-headed one in that relationship, but his muleish determination to be the stereotypical macho man is a little wearying. Yes, he could just be using that as a facade, but how much in debt could he be that the sale of a strip club couldn't dig him out?

For a supposedly smart businesswoman, Bree is constantly proving herself an idiot when it comes to trusting people. Bless Orson, who in this episode seemed to be completely on to Sam.

There are alleys these plots can head down that can rescue them from the "Desperate" cliches. We'll have to see if the writers go there, or if they keep retracing the same well-worn steps over and over again.