Weeds vs. Desperate Housewives

    


Original Channel

Weeds: Showtime

Desperate Housewives: ABC

Creators

Weeds: Jenji Kohan

Desperate Housewives: Marc Cherry

Stars (Season One)

Weeds: Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Tonye Patano, Romany Malco, Justin Kirk, Hunter Parrish, Alexander Gould, Kevin Nealon

Desperate Housewives: Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria, Nicollette Sheridan, Steven Culp, Ricardo Antonio Chavira

Air dates

Weeds: August 8, 2005 - present

Desperate Housewives: October 3, 2004 – May 13, 2012

Season structure (Season One)

Weeds: 10 episodes of 26 minutes

Desperate Housewives: 23 episodes of 42 minutes

Why?

Suburban Ladies

The Similarities

Secret lives: The central theme of both shows is that there is more to the suburban housewife than meets the eye. They try to present a picture of the perfect, happy life to everyone else, but they all have their own secrets. On DH: Gabrielle is having an affair, Rex wants a divorce from Bree, Susan burns Edie’s house, Lynette can’t handle her children alone. On Weeds: Nancy is a drug dealer. On the pilot of DH, the idyllic neighborhood of Wisteria Lane is shown, and we see Mary Alice performing standard housewife tasks. Then she kills herself. On Weeds, the credits show identical houses, cars and people, then we see Nancy getting her drugs after a parent association meeting. There’s more than meets the eye.

Struggle to be happy: All the women are trying to present a version of themselves that looks good to everyone else, but they’re all unhappy. As Gabrielle says, “We wouldn’t want them to think we’re not happy.” To everyone else, Bree looks like the perfect wife and mother, but her family hates her. Cecilia’s husband is cheating on her. Nancy is trying to gain control over her life, and has to turn to her dealers for a support system. None of these women are perfect, even though they feel pressure to have control and make it look easy to others.

Dark comedy: Two examples follow.

DH: 1:00 mark

Weeds

The Differences

Drugs: It’s obvious by looking at the respective plots of the shows, but Weeds revolves around the main character being a drug dealer, and Desperate Housewives does not. Some of the main characters are her suppliers, and the others are the people she deals with (who also happen to be people in her social circle). There’s a whole other side to the story than just the suburban housewife activities. Nancy has to face her own moral dilemma about being a dealer, yet not wanting young kids to smoke. While there will be storylines revolving drugs in later episodes of DH, they don’t have the same focus as on Weeds. This involves racial issues, since she and her friends are white but the dealers are black.

Neighborhood & Friendships: Weeds is somewhat about the frenemy dynamic between Nancy and Cecilia, but it doesn’t have the friendship focus that DH has. There’s competition among women in both, but you can tell the women all support each other on DH. The show is about an ensemble of various housewives, where Nancy is the sole main character on Weeds. We feel she’s more alone. This extends to the idea of the neighborhood. Wisteria Lane is almost like another character on DH, since the women are constantly going from house to house or interacting in the street. It feels more internal on Weeds.

Conclusion

Weeds is offered a lot more freedom to go darker and more ambiguous on cable. It can explore the drug culture, in how it relates to a suburban mom’s life. It’s not clear how we should feel about Nancy being a dealer. On DH, even though we may find Gabrielle’s affair or Susan burning Edie’s house immoral, we can kind of look at it as, “Oh, that’s just a fun thing they’re doing, but there aren’t any real consequences!” Because it’s so soapy, it’s all in good fun. There’s a somewhat dangerous/sinister side to the drug dealing on Weeds though that being on cable affords. Because DH has pressure to be more entertaining, it actually is. Even though the episodes are longer, the pacing is quicker and it's more fun to watch.