I began watching Desperate Housewives much later than the four girls in my graduating class who were downright obsessed; every week, in the halls or the lunch room, you would hear them either raving incredulously about the plot twist of the new episode from the night before or eagerly discussing what they thought might happen in the new episode later that week. Having never watched an episode myself, I had a hard time understanding how they got so wrapped up in it week after week. I watched my first episode of Desperate Housewives this summer. And just five or six episodes into the first season, I was hooked.
Desperate Housewives, with its over-the-top plot twists, not to mention its campy suburban world, reminds me of the laughably dramatic soap operas that I would occasionally catch a few minutes of as I flipped through TV channels on sick days in middle school. For whatever reason, my mom has always made it clear that she thought all soap operas were “trash.” Maybe it’s partly for my mom’s early-on critical view of the soap opera genre it belongs to that I consider Desperate Housewives to be a guilty pleasure. It’s also partly because the characters are often transparent and shallow, and the plot line is singularly entertaining, without any of the moral dilemmas that you find woven through the plot of other TV dramas. But its over-the-top plot twists are exactly what make it so entertaining. And combined with the likable characters and the frequency of their funny and stupid mishaps,–in one episode, Teri Hatcher’s character gets locked out of her house naked and frantically attempts to hide in a bush when she notices her love interest approaching, but he spots her and a cringe-worthy encounter ensues–this is one of my favorite TV shows to watch.
The older people get in our culture, the more they’re expected to not just watch or read something because it’s enjoyable. They’re expected to challenge themselves and to better themselves in some way with each bit of culture they choose to consume, whether it serves the purpose of opening their eyes to a problem in the world or teaches them how to be a better person. Watching Desperate Housewives goes against this commonly held belief that I shouldn’t choose to consume something purely for its enjoyability and entertainment value, and this is why it’s a guilty pleasure.