Mother's Day 2021: Remembering The Perfectly, Imperfect Mothers From Desperate Housewives

For various reasons, Desperate Housewives had become widely popular as an American television series. The television series had been deeply attached to its Christian catholic roots, with the presence of a mother like Bree Van De Camp. Gabriel had been the representation of the woman of colour who achieved her American dream. Susan became the hopelessly romantic American girl who never gave up, and Lynette Scavo represented the efficient working mother, who knew how to get things done, without anyone coming in her way. 

The entire narration of Desperate Housewives was told from the perspective of Mary Alice who died before any of the viewers could connect with her. But we learnt a lot about her sense of humour from her series of description of events and how she unravelled them. 

When Bree Vande Kamp had entered the narrative of Desperate Housewives, she had two baskets of food in her house, (one of which she wanted to be returned once the guests were served). Her husband was placed on her left and two well-combed haired children placed beside their parents. From a distant, the four Van De Kamps would look like a happy family, but when the camera tracked in, opened the door and welcomed them in the house of Mary Alice, we noticed the exhausted expression in the father and the children. 

Bree Van DeKamp cared more about the image of a happy family. Despite her strict, traditional, conservative upbringing, Bree's children turned out to be the most unorganised non-traditional young American folks, who knew the difference between right and wrong but chose wrong anyway. Her son, Andrew was a confessed gay, who failed to become something on his own, and her daughter Danielle became a teenage mother, who later sold sex swings on the internet for a living. 

In the eyes of Mary Alice, Susan Meyer may have been a hopelessly romantic woman, but there were days when she remained too self-involved to notice that her perfect child Julie, was purposely losing grip of her life. It remained unexplained, why Julie, who knew what could be the best for herself, purposely chose to grow up and become the short-witted woman, who slept around with married men, (despite witnessing the troubles her mother went through when her father cheated on her) but Susan too learned from her mistakes with her second child MJ. 

It was partially due to her pathetic marriage with Carl, Susan failed to be a good mother to Julie, but in her second chance during her marriage with Mike Delphino, when she had MJ she learnt to raise her children the hard way. She had a limited income and with Mike doing the job of a plumber, she couldn't afford to remain a suburban housewife anymore. However, Susan learnt to live with limited income and MJ too had learnt about the shortcomings of not having money. 

The fact that Gabriel Solice didn't have the abilities to become a mother had been a confessed footnote about her character ever since she made her strong screen presence in the first season of the show. Even in her imperfection, Gabriel learnt how to be a mother. It was later explored in the show, that Juanita Solice, the elder daughter had been exchanged in the hospital and her real daughter had been Grace who was brought up by a Mexican family living illegally in America. Gabriel, who had been another careless mother, until then, had suddenly switched her nature in the presence of Grace. She could see her young self in her, and almost hated the fact that even Grace had to be raised in the underprivileged Mexican neighbourhood. She secretly gave Grace the best of everything until she had to part ways from her for her own impatient mistakes. 

Lynette Scavo was the most exhausted mother. In between her husband's mid-life crisis, children running around the town with no supervision, Lynette just didn't know it but she was raising the smartest children in the lane. 

Preston, Parker, Porter, Penny and Paige were the most united siblings in the neighbourhood. MJ and Julie had too much age differences between them, Juanita and Celia had no sense of their own, Daniel and Andrew later parted ways and lost interest in each other as siblings, but the Scavo children knew how to stay with each other, be united as a family.  The Scavos lived with limited income, but each morning this was the only family who had breakfast on the same table with each other, learnt to support their siblings, and basically remain a family without being told to do so. Much of this influence happened because Lynette's influence on them. 

Lynette knew her priorities right. She learnt to say no to a thankless job in America, to support her husband who wanted to open a restaurant. She exposed Keya's misdeeds (the illegitimate daughter of Tom) that landed her in jail. In other words, if anyone came to destroy her family, Lynette knew how to kill the bug, and fix the family again.

Happy Mother's Day to all these women.