TV review: Poor Edie's shock probably a temporary jolt

Nicolette Sheridan starred as Edie Britt. Photo / Supplied

Poor Edie. Electrocuted after driving into a lamp-post and bringing down a power line. Poor Desperate Housewives (TV2, Mondays, 8.30pm). We all know that when a huge jolt of electricity is required, it looks awfully like a last-ditch attempt at revival.

"Life is full of nasty shocks," intoned the narrator in last night's episode, the one where the show starts killing off core cast members.

True to its heavy-handed ironical form, this show would never suffer us to work out the subtext on our own. And, for anyone who reads any entertainment press, the demise of Edie comes as no surprise.

Poor Edie, again. She was always going to be the most expendable. She was the outsider, the blonde bombshell who exploited her natural charms to an extent she never could be accorded true housewife status, even in this day and age. Or, as the show's creator explained, it was hard to know what to do with the character once she'd slept with all the men.

But if Edie was the resident slapper ("slack tarts" we used to call them with relish in my suburb ca 1975), proving that although double standards might be kept in the closet these days they're still out there, she also had another important role as the resident tough-talker.

Even in her final hour, she was allowed a parting sardonic shot, when Wisteria Lane's token crone Karen complained about her aches and pains: "You're old."

Next week's tribute episode, where the wives look back at Edie's effect on their lives, might highlight the risky nature of the show's sacrifice. No one could be offensive as pithily as Edie.

For those of us who have more or less given up on DHW but couldn't help tuning in for the execution episode, the "nasty shock" was in how much it hasn't changed.

The ploy to retain viewers by advancing the characters' lives five years was a Great Leap Forward Chairman Mao might have been proud of. But the old dilemmas, frustrations and murder plots seem merely to have been shuffled around the deck of characters. Bree is still a magnet for the malevolent and mentally impaired male.

Her nutcase partner Orson continues as a painful reminder that actor Kyle McLachlan, once the compelling FBI agent provocateur on Twin Peaks, has never been allowed a scintillating TV role again.

Soppy Susan is still sparring with the ex-husband who just won't go away. Likewise, Carlos and Gabrielle's tale of mismatched marital libidos is doing its second or third time around the clock. And Lynette is still trapped in her awful muddle of mothering and middle American corporate grind, a role that leaves her with the worst clothes but the best lines.

It's hard to see the "nasty shock" of Edie's demise providing more than a temporary jolt.

As we know from all those soaps, once the medics come running with the defibrillators, the patient's chances of survival are slim.