< Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives/Characters


This is the character sheet for Desperate Housewives.

Main Characters

Susan Delfino (Teri Hatcher)

  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Susan is just as bitchy as the other Housewives, yet she's the one who tends to get away with it because of how "cute" and "klutzy" she is.
  • Butt Monkey: Is incredibly unlucky, romantic issues, liver issues, being forced out of the lane, and friendship troubles in the last season and not being able to deal with things in the final season.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Occasionally.

Edie: "I have a husband now."
Susan: "Really? Who's?"

Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman)

Bree Van de Kamp (Marcia Cross)

  • The Alcoholic: In Season 2, plus the occasional relapse. There was her slip during the time jump, and Bree's current arc has her falling off the wagon. Hard.
  • Badass: When it comes to guns. Also when she kicks her son Andrew's bedroom door in when she finds out he is at a strip club.
  • Butt Monkey: If something traumatic is going to happen to one of the leading females in the cast, it is inevitably going to be Bree.
  • Cartwright Curse: One surefire way to predict if a male character is going to die is judged by one question: Is he Bree's love interest? So far, the one--one—love interest she's had who didn't end up dead by the end of the affair is Orson who ends up in a wheelchair for life by the end of the relationship. In comparison to the others, he got off lucky.
    • Lampshaded in a Season Five promo, where the paper boy recaps the events of the past four seasons, and ends his recap of Bree with "I hope Orson doesn't die, too."
    • She even lampshades it herself during Season 7:

Bree: My track record with lovers... two dead, one in a wheelchair.

  • Control Freak: And how.
  • Despair Event Horizon: During Season 8, with her ex-boyfriend cop harassing her (and explicitly doing it in order to make her feel miserable) and the loss of her friends, Bree relapses into alcoholism, and in the 9th episode, she ends up alone in a hotel room, with only a bottle of wine and a gun, speaking to an imaginary Mary Alice and contemplating the idea of suicide.
  • Driven to Suicide: Averted, thanks to Renee.
  • Fiery Redhead: When she wants to be.
  • The Fifties: Her look, more so in the earlier series: A-line skirts and dresses, twin-sets with pearls, white gloves, her "flip" hair-do etc.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic.
  • Freudian Excuse: Her mother died traumatically when she was 5 and her stepmother was a distant and unloving woman.
  • Housewife: Obviously. She's the most classic example in the series and evokes the archetypal 1950's housewife.
  • Iron Woobie: More like adamant woobie. She lost 3 husbands and 2 boyfriends, her son hated her with passion for several seasons, her daughter doesn't like her much either, and she succumbed to alcoholism. She managed to get back on her feet each time, despite the odds, the people, and the universe working against her. That is, until Season 8, when she finally snaps, and is on the verge of suicide a la Mary Alice by the end of the 9th episode.
  • Lady Drunk: During Season 8, the tension between the girls became so high that she ended becoming their scapegoat, and finally they abandoned her. She then relapses hard into alcoholism. She was on the verge of suicide, but is stopped just in time, thanks to the intervention of Renee. Now, she views herself as lost, not knowing anymore who she is. Slowly, she is deconstructing herself, and is becoming easy, something she acknowledges. She didn't even deny when an angry spouse called her a whore (truth to be told, she was quite drunk at that time, but she doesn't seems to care at all, if the end of the 12th episode is any indication).
  • Love Hurts: Despite the perfect facade, she is consistently unlucky in love.

Rex Van De Kamp: Bree, I can't live in this detergent commercial anymore!

  • Neat Freak
  • The Perfectionist: Especially in the first season, when she couldn't even stand the sight of a loose button.
  • Pretty in Mink
  • Proper Lady: Deconstructed since the very first episode.
  • Really Gets Around: Yes, you read that right. During Season 8, she relapses into alcoholism, and began to date a lot in bars. However, what was only a brief experience became an habit, and it becomes clear that she has a different man each night in her bed. When she is confronted by an angry spouse (because she had sex with her husband) in the middle of the church during the 12th episode, she doesn't deny it. Worse: she actually acknowledges it, and is on her way to embrace this way of life.
  • Sexy Coat Flashing
  • Stepford Smiler: The other housewives have traces of this, but Bree is the ultimate Stepford Smiler of the show. Her own son calls her out on it in the pilot, saying she acts like she's running for Mayor of Stepford.
  • Sugar and Ice Personality
  • Super OCD: There were hints of this, especially in the early seasons, but it was never explored very much. She also referred to her quirks in terms of "anal retentiveness" and not "obsessive compulsiveness".
  • Team Mom

Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria)

  • Aesop Amnesia: How many times has she learned being a better person is more important than having material possessions or looking pretty?
  • Book Dumb: Especially when it comes to geography (she thinks Argentina is beside Romania).
  • Deadpan Snarker
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric.
  • Hollywood Homely: All the characters seem to notice a massive decline in Gabrielle's appearance over time, while the audience certainly doesn't. We're really supposed to believe someone as gorgeous as Eva Longoria looks bad in sweats?
  • Hot Mom: To Juanita who was switched at birth with another girl, thus explaining why they don't look anything like each other, and Celia.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold
  • Mrs Vice Gal: Openly vain, materialistic and immature but a loyal friend and (eventually) loving wife and mother.
  • Rich Bitch: Her "bitch" status depends on the writer.
  • Spicy Latina: A subversion believe or not. Yes Gabby is sexy and she certainly has the temper but she lacks the stereotypical accent, can't speak Spanish and as several episodes have shown is indifferent at best towards her Hispanic heritage.
  • Spoiled Brat: When it comes to material possessions.
  • Volleying Insults: She and Carlos do this a lot, and were at their most tempestuous in the early seasons.

Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong)


Other Housewives

Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan)

"Well, someone's gotta say it - Susan, what the hell have you been smoking?"

Karen McCluskey (Kathryn Joosten)

Karen: (to Lynette) No offense, but you should be sterilized.

Katherine Mayfair (Dana Delany)

  • The Artifact: In Season Six, the writers didn't really know what to do with her after Mike marries Susan. So she ends up going through various hysterics that were almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the season's plot, before randomly finding out she's a lesbian and leaving for Paris with her new ex-stripper lover.
  • Back for the Finale
  • Mysterious Past
  • Put on a Bus
  • Villainy Discretion Shot: Was gratuitously cruel to her dying aunt and treated her daughter poorly before her secret was revealed and she joined the core group.
  • Yandere: In Season 6, towards Mike.
    • She's practically a poster child. She got increasingly insane in the first half of the season, but then regained sanity later. Turned out she's much more sane in a lesbian relationship.

Betty Applewhite (Alfre Woodard)

Angie Bolen aka Angela DeLuca (Drea De Matteo)


The Families

Mike Delfino (James Denton)

Tom Scavo (Doug Savant)

  • Butt Monkey
  • Fan Service: His thong scene.
  • Flanderization: Both he and his wife suffered this a lot in Season Five, going from a couple that had their problems but could still work through them together, to a "couple" that argued every other episode over the smallest most insignificant problems (well, insignificant compared to a tornado, a psychopathic child from a previous relationship, and cancer).
  • Henpecked Husband
  • Hollywood Homely: One episode of Season Six had Tom wanting to get plastic surgery to remove the large amount of wrinkles on his face. Coincidentally, that was the only episode that season where Tom's actor wore fake wrinkle makeup. Even though he chose against the surgery, he still looks ten years younger again the next episode.
  • Hot Dad
  • Papa Wolf

Carlos Solis (Ricardo Antonio Chavira)

Gabrielle: Go on, go all cholo on his ass!

Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan)

Rex Van de Kamp (Steven Culp)

Paul Young (Mark Moses)

Karl Mayer (Richard Burgi)

Andrew Van De Kamp (Shawn Pyform)

  • Calling The Old Lady Out: Blames the majority of his problems on his mother.
  • Coming Out Story
  • Gayngst: Initially, though by the beginning of Season 3, he seemed to become much more well adjusted.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: During Season 6, when it seemed Bree was replacing Andrew with the son she always wanted.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: During Season 8, he comes back to his mother's house... And then nothing. He completely disappears from the radar, and isn't even present during the season finale. Please note that he should be living with his mother at this point, in her house, while she's put on trial. But he doesn't show up at all, not even for the trial. It seems that the scenarists completely forgot his existence.

Danielle Van De Kamp (Joy Lauren)

Bree: When I was young, my stepmother told me that I was very lucky. I possessed beauty, wit, cunning, and insight. These were weapons all women needed to survive in the world.
Danielle: So?
Bree: So take good care of your looks, Danielle. You don’t have any other weapons at your disposal.

    • Also:

Danielle: Benjamin's already reading at a third grade level.
Bree: So what are you going to do next year when he overtakes you?

"I don't care as long as I have my own bathroom..."

Julie Mayer (Andrea Bowen)

Zachary Young (Cody Kasch))

Adam Mayfair (Nathan Fillion)

Ana Solis (Maiara Walsh)


Other Characters

Martha Huber (Christine Estabrook)

Felicia Tillman (Harriet Sansom Harris)

Gloria Hodge (Dixie Carter)

Bob Hunter and Lee McDermott (Tuc Watkins and Kevin Rahm)

  • Faux Yay: Lee pretends to be straight in one episode in Gabrielle's scheme to catch her housemate in the act of soliciting sex.
  • Invisible to Gaydar: Bob is a tad more masculine than Lee, but they both act like your average middle aged man.
  • Only Sane Man: There are exactly two men in this show that are sane and normal and without any drama in their lives. They are married to each other.
  • Pet Homosexual: Much to their frustration, the housewives always invite them over when they need some gay friends.
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: The first thing the two do when they move in is put in a giant gaudy metal piece of art in their yard, which is also a fountain.

Maisy Gibbons (Sharon Lawrence)

Robin Gallagher (Julie Benz)

Eddie Orlofsky (Jason Schwartzman)

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