Sunday, May 20, 2007

IN WHICH KEITH MARS LEADS A LIFE OF QUIET DESPERATION: A thought spurred by tonight's season finale of Desperate Housewives and this week's cancellation of Veronica Mars. In spite of the two shows being polar opposites in terms of ratings success, don't they show one critical thing in common? Both had incredibly clear narrative arcs for their first seasons (in fact, Veronica was originally developed as a novel about Veronica investigating the murder of Lily Kane), and neither really seemed to expect getting renewed for subsequent seasons. In both cases, after a second season considered to be disappointing, the third season brought substantial creative changes (Veronica's change to mini-arcs and stand alone episodes rather than a season-long mystery, Housewives doing the same, with the Orson mystery resolving early and turning into mini-arcs and standalones later in the season). So, to fix Housewives, do we need to do something radical like bump everything ahead 4 or 5 years, or can it be fixed?

Edited: I hadn't finished watching the finale when I wrote this post. Given that one of my gripes about this season was how much prominence was given to one character (apparently in an effort to substitute/make up for the absence of Bree while Marcia Cross was on maternity leave), the season-ending cliffhanger certainly seemed to resolve that problem.

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