Desperate Housewives took a little vacation until a couple of weeks ago, when the ladies scattered Edie's ashes.
I've been watching Desperate Housewives, but it hasn't been moving me as it once did, nor has it provoked too many deep thoughts. Ordinarily, watching Desperate Housewives is like eating something nutritious yet sweet, like, say a fiber bar. Lately, however, it's been like eating cake: not a whole lot of substance there, although there are things that keep me watching (e.g., wanting to see what happens, comedy, etc.).
My last emotional reaction was when Edie was about to die. "Oh, please Edie, don't die," I said. Then, the show went on vacation and came back, and Edie was dead. The ladies were then reminiscing about how Edie had touched their lives, and their stories were fairly moving: Edie informed Susan that her husband was cheating on her. She motivated Lynette to fight her cancer rather than laying down and playing dead. She shamed Bree into visiting her husband Orson, who was in jail. She knew that she wasn't fit to be a parent, so she was actually thinking of her son when she let her ex-husband (I think) take care of him.
The show was trying to move me, but it wasn't having its usual effect for two reasons. First of all, when I watch Desperate Housewives, I wonder if I can write a post about it. But what would I write about this episode? That people have both good and bad in them? (In Edie's case, she's a sex addict, but she's done good in her life.) I've already made that point on this blog--tons of times! Some points get old!
Second, remember when the ladies essentially expelled Edie from their circle? This was Season Five (I think). Edie discovered that Bree was faking her pregnancy so the neighbors wouldn't know that Bree's daughter was pregnant, since they would think that the baby is Bree's. Edie then blackmailed Bree. Edie told Bree to invite her to all her fancy social gatherings. Bree then told her friends, who proceeded to ostracize Edie, forcing her to move from Wysteria Lane. "We tried to be your friend, but you don't know what friendship means," they tell her. But if Edie had done so many things that had touched their lives in positive ways, then she obviously did know what friendship means!
Bree's positive memory of Edie was of a time after Edie had been ostracized, but the others' memories concerned events prior to that time. So it's not believable to me that they ostracized Edie, after she had done so many good things for them!
But maybe there is a lesson here. It goes back to the recent episode with Tom and Gabby, in which Gabby told Tom that he was her "friend with a small f," whereas Lynette was her "friend with a big F." Many of us don't always remember the good deeds of our "friends with a small f," unless something makes us think about them, in this case, Edie's death. But we really value our friends with a big F. When Edie was blackmailing Bree, that really upset those who regarded Bree as a "friend with a big F."
That's how cliques are, I guess. Many tend to value the good deeds of those within their clique more than those done by people on the outside.
But, also, Edie kind of blew it when she blackmailed Bree. I can somewhat sympathize with Edie, who wanted to be included in Bree's high-class social gatherings. But Edie was wrong to blackmail Bree, and that by itself undid whatever good she might have done.
So maybe there was more depth to Edie's story than I thought, and the episode after the series' vacation was not an example of bad ret-conning.