Desperate Housewives - Part 2
Moderator: S2k Moderators
-
Brent
- S2K Supporter
- Posts: 38090
- Age: 36
- Joined: Sun May 16, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Tulsa Oklahoma
- Contact:
Spoilers from Ausiello!
What changes did you want to see, coming in?
Jeff Greenstein: To me, as a fan, I want a more compelling mystery and I want the show to be funnier. We started months earlier than they did last year. We spent a lot of time working out the arc of the mystery, and you're going to get a better, more compelling mystery. It's smack-dab in the center of the show. It involves Bree and the man that she has married, Orson, played by Kyle MacLachlan. And at the same time, the show is going to be funnier. That's something that [former Frasier scribe and new DH producer] Joe Keenan and I have hammered away at a lot. So we're approaching story lines from the perspective of, "Yes, we want them to be compelling and dramatic and emotional and real, but we also want it to be funny."
I heard that the Orson mystery is going to be much different from what was originally planned.
Greenstein: I wasn't really privy to what last year's plan was. We were encouraged to come in with a bit of a clean slate and proceed from where we left off. Orson hits Mike with a car. Why'd he do that? A romance was ignited between Bree and Orson. Where are we going? So we really started with a blank sheet of paper and thought, "What would be the most compelling thing we could come up with and hook all the women into it? Mike's hooked into it; Susan's hooked into it; Bree's obviously very hooked into it; Bree's kids get hooked into it.
So Orson is at the center of all this?
Greenstein: Really, Bree is at the hot center of it. And Kyle is great. He can go from charming to enigmatic in the flash of an eyebrow. He's a great character to write for in that regard. And also he and Bree are two of a kind. They're both kind of compulsive, they love things done in a certain way, they're emotionally repressed.... They're fun to write together.
And what about Susan's new love interest (played by Dougray Scott)?
Greenstein: Here's how he figures into it: Mike is in a coma at the start of the year, so Susan has been dutifully attending to him. In the course of doing so, she meets a handsome man whose wife is in a coma across the hall. And the analogy Marc used, which I love, is that as she's dutifully attending to the comatose Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant walks in. So they become sort of coma buddies. It starts out with the two of them sharing coffee in the hallway, and it sort of blossoms into a romance. Obviously, that's going to get really complicated when Mike comes around.
Susan became unbearable last season. Your thoughts?
Greenstein: I think it is important that she have strong and relatable things to play. So we thought it would be fun to get her into a bona fide romantic-comedy kind of relationship that threatens her preexisting relationship with Mike. She's got a lot of really strong stuff to play. There is some physical comedy, 'cause I think she's adorable doing it. There's a wonderful moment in the first episode with her and Dougray.... He's really charming, very different from James Denton. So I think it'll give her some really good stuff to play and show you some sides to the character we haven't gotten to yet.
Where's Bree's son, and how long is it going to take him to find his way home?
Greenstein: He'll come back, and we learn what he was doing while he was away. We find out what he's been up to by the way Bree finds him. That happens early in the season.
What about Edie?
Greenstein: Her nephew, Austin [Aaron Stanford, aka X-Men's Pyro, was allegedly circling the role, but now I'm told that isn't happening], comes to town and begins a relationship with Susan's daughter, Julie. So that becomes sort of a Montague-Capulet sort of situation. It's fun seeing Edie in a parental context. We haven't really seen that too much.
Will Lynette still be in the office?
Greenstein: We're in the middle of working on the sixth episode, and we're not really doing that much with Lynette at the office. I think most of what you'll be seeing is Lynette's home life and how her life with Tom is threatened by the interloper Nora, and also the fact that she's got a new daughter to attend to in Kayla. Kayla's sort of an enigmatic figure, who becomes more and more interesting as the season moves on. Lynette's going to have some trouble integrating yet another kid into the family.
And Gabrielle?
Greenstein: Gabrielle's got a great story. [When] we pick up at the start of the season, Xiao-Mei is eight and a half months pregnant, so the roles have reversed. Xiao-Mei has been put on bed rest, and now Gabrielle has to wait on her, which is really funny. At the same time, she's going through an increasingly bitter and acrimonious divorce with Carlos. They're trying to hold together the chards of their relationship because they have a kid on the way. So these two trains are converging, and those things will crash into each other early in the season.
How much time will have passed between the finale and the premiere?
Greenstein: Six months. It's a great thing. It's something we hit on early in the story-breaking process. It gives us the opportunity to throttle forward to the moment of maximum dramatic impact. Xiao-Mei is on the verge of giving birth; Lynette is reaching her breaking point with Nora; Bree and Orson are getting engaged. All of a sudden we're reaching a point of maximum drama. I think one of the things that we took away from last season was, "Let's get up and running fast. Let's get into the hot drama of these situations as quickly as possible." It felt like some of the early episodes of last season were in the business of setting things up. Now we forget the setup and go right to the crisis.
Did you consider getting rid of narration?
Greenstein: Never going to happen.
Last season it felt like the narration was forcing the writers to tie all the stories together, and it showed.
Greenstein: Theme is so important to the making of these episodes, from the moment that we break the story. We're never trying to artificially paste a theme on after the fact. We start with the idea of, "This is a story about baggage." So we talk about what everybody's baggage is in the story and how they try to escape from it over the course of an episode. And to me, it helps enrich the show, so when Mary Alice is talking, she isn't trying to force something that isn't really there.
What if all the stories don't fit together nicely?
Greenstein: We make sure [they do]. If we have a story that is about getaways and it doesn't fit into a particular episode, we move it down the board a little bit until it fits into a thematic hole in an attempt to make the show more unified. The women are checking in with each other more, there will be more group scenes, group crises. The show needs to be funnier, and theme is really important — high drama but also high comedy. And an edge. That edge of wickedness and perversity that characterized the show so much.
What changes did you want to see, coming in?
Jeff Greenstein: To me, as a fan, I want a more compelling mystery and I want the show to be funnier. We started months earlier than they did last year. We spent a lot of time working out the arc of the mystery, and you're going to get a better, more compelling mystery. It's smack-dab in the center of the show. It involves Bree and the man that she has married, Orson, played by Kyle MacLachlan. And at the same time, the show is going to be funnier. That's something that [former Frasier scribe and new DH producer] Joe Keenan and I have hammered away at a lot. So we're approaching story lines from the perspective of, "Yes, we want them to be compelling and dramatic and emotional and real, but we also want it to be funny."
I heard that the Orson mystery is going to be much different from what was originally planned.
Greenstein: I wasn't really privy to what last year's plan was. We were encouraged to come in with a bit of a clean slate and proceed from where we left off. Orson hits Mike with a car. Why'd he do that? A romance was ignited between Bree and Orson. Where are we going? So we really started with a blank sheet of paper and thought, "What would be the most compelling thing we could come up with and hook all the women into it? Mike's hooked into it; Susan's hooked into it; Bree's obviously very hooked into it; Bree's kids get hooked into it.
So Orson is at the center of all this?
Greenstein: Really, Bree is at the hot center of it. And Kyle is great. He can go from charming to enigmatic in the flash of an eyebrow. He's a great character to write for in that regard. And also he and Bree are two of a kind. They're both kind of compulsive, they love things done in a certain way, they're emotionally repressed.... They're fun to write together.
And what about Susan's new love interest (played by Dougray Scott)?
Greenstein: Here's how he figures into it: Mike is in a coma at the start of the year, so Susan has been dutifully attending to him. In the course of doing so, she meets a handsome man whose wife is in a coma across the hall. And the analogy Marc used, which I love, is that as she's dutifully attending to the comatose Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant walks in. So they become sort of coma buddies. It starts out with the two of them sharing coffee in the hallway, and it sort of blossoms into a romance. Obviously, that's going to get really complicated when Mike comes around.
Susan became unbearable last season. Your thoughts?
Greenstein: I think it is important that she have strong and relatable things to play. So we thought it would be fun to get her into a bona fide romantic-comedy kind of relationship that threatens her preexisting relationship with Mike. She's got a lot of really strong stuff to play. There is some physical comedy, 'cause I think she's adorable doing it. There's a wonderful moment in the first episode with her and Dougray.... He's really charming, very different from James Denton. So I think it'll give her some really good stuff to play and show you some sides to the character we haven't gotten to yet.
Where's Bree's son, and how long is it going to take him to find his way home?
Greenstein: He'll come back, and we learn what he was doing while he was away. We find out what he's been up to by the way Bree finds him. That happens early in the season.
What about Edie?
Greenstein: Her nephew, Austin [Aaron Stanford, aka X-Men's Pyro, was allegedly circling the role, but now I'm told that isn't happening], comes to town and begins a relationship with Susan's daughter, Julie. So that becomes sort of a Montague-Capulet sort of situation. It's fun seeing Edie in a parental context. We haven't really seen that too much.
Will Lynette still be in the office?
Greenstein: We're in the middle of working on the sixth episode, and we're not really doing that much with Lynette at the office. I think most of what you'll be seeing is Lynette's home life and how her life with Tom is threatened by the interloper Nora, and also the fact that she's got a new daughter to attend to in Kayla. Kayla's sort of an enigmatic figure, who becomes more and more interesting as the season moves on. Lynette's going to have some trouble integrating yet another kid into the family.
And Gabrielle?
Greenstein: Gabrielle's got a great story. [When] we pick up at the start of the season, Xiao-Mei is eight and a half months pregnant, so the roles have reversed. Xiao-Mei has been put on bed rest, and now Gabrielle has to wait on her, which is really funny. At the same time, she's going through an increasingly bitter and acrimonious divorce with Carlos. They're trying to hold together the chards of their relationship because they have a kid on the way. So these two trains are converging, and those things will crash into each other early in the season.
How much time will have passed between the finale and the premiere?
Greenstein: Six months. It's a great thing. It's something we hit on early in the story-breaking process. It gives us the opportunity to throttle forward to the moment of maximum dramatic impact. Xiao-Mei is on the verge of giving birth; Lynette is reaching her breaking point with Nora; Bree and Orson are getting engaged. All of a sudden we're reaching a point of maximum drama. I think one of the things that we took away from last season was, "Let's get up and running fast. Let's get into the hot drama of these situations as quickly as possible." It felt like some of the early episodes of last season were in the business of setting things up. Now we forget the setup and go right to the crisis.
Did you consider getting rid of narration?
Greenstein: Never going to happen.
Last season it felt like the narration was forcing the writers to tie all the stories together, and it showed.
Greenstein: Theme is so important to the making of these episodes, from the moment that we break the story. We're never trying to artificially paste a theme on after the fact. We start with the idea of, "This is a story about baggage." So we talk about what everybody's baggage is in the story and how they try to escape from it over the course of an episode. And to me, it helps enrich the show, so when Mary Alice is talking, she isn't trying to force something that isn't really there.
What if all the stories don't fit together nicely?
Greenstein: We make sure [they do]. If we have a story that is about getaways and it doesn't fit into a particular episode, we move it down the board a little bit until it fits into a thematic hole in an attempt to make the show more unified. The women are checking in with each other more, there will be more group scenes, group crises. The show needs to be funnier, and theme is really important — high drama but also high comedy. And an edge. That edge of wickedness and perversity that characterized the show so much.
0 likes
#neversummer
-
Brent
- S2K Supporter
- Posts: 38090
- Age: 36
- Joined: Sun May 16, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Tulsa Oklahoma
- Contact:
MAJOR SPOILER in the spoiler thread from TV Guide! 
http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic ... t=#1390803
http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic ... t=#1390803
0 likes
#neversummer
-
GalvestonDuck
- Category 5
- Posts: 15941
- Age: 57
- Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2002 8:11 am
- Location: Galveston, oh Galveston (And yeah, it's a barrier island. Wanna make something of it?)
-
GalvestonDuck
- Category 5
- Posts: 15941
- Age: 57
- Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2002 8:11 am
- Location: Galveston, oh Galveston (And yeah, it's a barrier island. Wanna make something of it?)
-
GalvestonDuck
- Category 5
- Posts: 15941
- Age: 57
- Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2002 8:11 am
- Location: Galveston, oh Galveston (And yeah, it's a barrier island. Wanna make something of it?)
-
GalvestonDuck
- Category 5
- Posts: 15941
- Age: 57
- Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2002 8:11 am
- Location: Galveston, oh Galveston (And yeah, it's a barrier island. Wanna make something of it?)
-
Brent
- S2K Supporter
- Posts: 38090
- Age: 36
- Joined: Sun May 16, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Tulsa Oklahoma
- Contact:
The NY Post has a great preview of tonight's premiere(DON'T FORGET!!!!! 9pm ET/PT on ABC!!!)
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/mov ... n10202.htm
It sounds really good.
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/mov ... n10202.htm
It sounds really good.
0 likes
#neversummer
-
Brent
- S2K Supporter
- Posts: 38090
- Age: 36
- Joined: Sun May 16, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Tulsa Oklahoma
- Contact:
DON'T FORGET ABOUT IT.
Here's another encouraging review from USA Today:
Things are looking up on Wisteria Lane.
That's good news indeed for those Desperate Housewives fans who have been hoping the show can recover from its deep sophomore slump. No, Sunday's third-season premiere is not Desperate at its best, but it's better than most anything the show had to offer last year, particularly at the start.
The most notable achievement of the episode, written by Marc Cherry and Jeff Greenstein, is the way it sidesteps so many of last year's early mistakes. Where last season's central mystery was imposed on the neighborhood from the outside, this year's story — what is Orson (Kyle MacLachlan) up to? — is hot-wired into the housewives themselves.
Having run down Mike (James Denton), Orson now wants to marry Bree (Marcia Cross). That should provide plenty of opportunities for Bree's friends to come to her assistance. And by the end of the hour, it already feels as if they've spent more time together than they did most of last year.
Though Bree is center stage tonight (a spot Cross holds very well), everyone is busy. Susan is caring for Mike while weighing an offer from a new man, a conflict that gives Teri Hatcher a genuinely funny, rather than forced, sight gag. Edie is trying to sell Paul's house; Lynette is dealing with Tom's love child; and Gaby is battling the pregnant, English-challenged Xiao Mei. ("You've been in this country a year. Modify your nouns.")
Still, as wise as the writers were to rid themselves of last year's plot, that's the easy part of the equation. The harder mistake to overcome is the damage the show did to its main characters — allowing them to behave in ways that made them seem weak, selfish, stupid and, at times, despicable. Here are three steadfast rules for TV behavior: We do not seduce our parents' dates; we do not dump our children by the side of the road; and we do not, whatever the provocation, burn down a house without checking to see if anyone is inside.
It will take more than one good episode to win us back after all that. But it's certainly a good place to start.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television ... iere_x.htm
Here's another encouraging review from USA Today:
Things are looking up on Wisteria Lane.
That's good news indeed for those Desperate Housewives fans who have been hoping the show can recover from its deep sophomore slump. No, Sunday's third-season premiere is not Desperate at its best, but it's better than most anything the show had to offer last year, particularly at the start.
The most notable achievement of the episode, written by Marc Cherry and Jeff Greenstein, is the way it sidesteps so many of last year's early mistakes. Where last season's central mystery was imposed on the neighborhood from the outside, this year's story — what is Orson (Kyle MacLachlan) up to? — is hot-wired into the housewives themselves.
Having run down Mike (James Denton), Orson now wants to marry Bree (Marcia Cross). That should provide plenty of opportunities for Bree's friends to come to her assistance. And by the end of the hour, it already feels as if they've spent more time together than they did most of last year.
Though Bree is center stage tonight (a spot Cross holds very well), everyone is busy. Susan is caring for Mike while weighing an offer from a new man, a conflict that gives Teri Hatcher a genuinely funny, rather than forced, sight gag. Edie is trying to sell Paul's house; Lynette is dealing with Tom's love child; and Gaby is battling the pregnant, English-challenged Xiao Mei. ("You've been in this country a year. Modify your nouns.")
Still, as wise as the writers were to rid themselves of last year's plot, that's the easy part of the equation. The harder mistake to overcome is the damage the show did to its main characters — allowing them to behave in ways that made them seem weak, selfish, stupid and, at times, despicable. Here are three steadfast rules for TV behavior: We do not seduce our parents' dates; we do not dump our children by the side of the road; and we do not, whatever the provocation, burn down a house without checking to see if anyone is inside.
It will take more than one good episode to win us back after all that. But it's certainly a good place to start.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television ... iere_x.htm
0 likes
#neversummer
-
Brent
- S2K Supporter
- Posts: 38090
- Age: 36
- Joined: Sun May 16, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Tulsa Oklahoma
- Contact:
sfgal wrote:OK, GalvestonDuck and Brent -- please help a gal out. Who is the Housewife in the ER picture? I went to imdb.com to check the ER episode guide for the fifth show of the first season, but did not see any DH actress credited. Who has the big blond hair?
Brenda Strong, who plays Mary Alice Young(the narrator who killed herself in the Pilot).
Oh God, Bree, DON'T DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL at Gabby when Bree announced the engagement.
LOL at anything with Gaby and Xiao-Mei.
Nora sucks.
Poor Susan.
0 likes
#neversummer
-
Brent
- S2K Supporter
- Posts: 38090
- Age: 36
- Joined: Sun May 16, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Tulsa Oklahoma
- Contact:
CajunMama wrote:Bree had me laughing so much...her trip to the doctor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I laughed alot in tonights episode. Looks like they may be back on track.
Yeah.
and WOW at that ending! I had seen spoilers about it but it was still very dramatic. I can't wait to see how this plays out. Laurie Metcalf was awesome!
0 likes
#neversummer
-
Miss Mary
Brent - good Season 3 opener. Lots to work with. Susan and the new guy in her life. However, I kept hoping Mike would just wake up or at least groan! I see Gabby and Carlos getting back together. That baby will bring them back together. Question - is the baby also Gabby's, biologically speaking? Lynette is a saint to put up with that situation, IMHO. And still my favorite housewife (the rest are a very, very wacky bunch and Lynette continues to be the most sane and normal of all of them, again, IMHO). Bree - I don't know what to say. She needs to be alone and I mean really, really alone for a while. She does not need a man in her life! Geez.......that girl needs a break. Ah, but how are they going to explain the pregnancy soon I wonder. Can't quite say it's Rex's now can we? Or yikes, George's baby.
One change I liked, is the time frame. Wish they'd do that on Lost! So I uh wouldn't be so Lost....he he
Notice how Edie is conveniently univited to ladies luncheons, all the time? No wonder she's nasty to the other 4.
And God love Mrs. whatever her name, the older lady who babysits Lynette's kids. She just tells it like it is!
Finally, did you all catch the young gay couple looking at the house for sale? That would be a nice, diversity change in the character mix. I'd welcome that breath of fresh air.
Mary
One change I liked, is the time frame. Wish they'd do that on Lost! So I uh wouldn't be so Lost....he he
Notice how Edie is conveniently univited to ladies luncheons, all the time? No wonder she's nasty to the other 4.
And God love Mrs. whatever her name, the older lady who babysits Lynette's kids. She just tells it like it is!
Finally, did you all catch the young gay couple looking at the house for sale? That would be a nice, diversity change in the character mix. I'd welcome that breath of fresh air.
Mary
0 likes
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests