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READING DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES: BEYOND THE WHITE PICKET FENCE. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, editors. Tauris, 2006. 246 pages; $15.95.
MANICURED SURFACE
Even before it hit the small screen, ABC's Desperate Housewives (2004) courted controversy. The evening soap opera, focusing on the lives of four suburban women after the suicide of their neighbor and friend Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), delves into the lurid secrets lurking just under the neatly manicured surface of the protagonists' lives.
Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass is the latest addition to LB. Tauris' Contemporary Television Series. McCabe and Akass serve as editors and have overseen other volumes including Reading Sex and the City (2004) and Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television (2006). The essays anthologized in Reading Desperate Housewives include writings from scholars and journalists whose contributions range from a transcript of an imagined recording of George W. Bush's comments on an episode to more traditional academic pieces.
The introduction provides a brief history of the creator, Marc Cherry, and the environment at ABC, summarizing some of the reactions characterized as "a pop...