Why the final season of 'Desperate Housewives' was the absolute worst of the series

As some may know, I'm a big fan of the ABC dramedy/primetime soap Desperate Housewives. I rewatch the series constantly because I love the concept of it all; a soap based off of what happens behind the closed doors of seemingly perfect suburban homes. Creator Marc Cherry stated on many occasions he first got the idea for the series while watching a news report on Andrea Yates with his mother. Yates was an American mother from Texas who was secretly dealing with postpartum psychosis after her pregnancies. In 2001, she snapped and drowned her five children in their bathtub. She wasn't convicted, however; she was deemed insane and sent to a psychiatric hospital. Cherry's version of that became an American mother, Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), with a beautiful home with a beautiful husband and son unexpectedly committed suicide one day, and so began the saga of Desperate Housewives.

Anyway, for the first time ever, I've rewatched the entire season from the first season to the last season. I've always attempted to avoid the final season when rewatching because, personally, it's the worst of the series. It had become apparent in the seventh season that, story-wise, the show was starting to die. The seasonal mystery was Paul Young's (Mark Moses) return to Wisteria Lane after years in prison, as well as addressing several other plotpoints that had been left unresolved since the first years of the show. Unfinished business, one might call it. It was then confirmed that the eighth season would be its last, and maybe that's what plagued its final season. The seasonal mystery (even though it wasn't even a mystery) was the 4 main housewives covering up a murder. Wacky and out-of-touch with the traditional approach to storytelling, but okay. Then, Bree (Marcia Cross) receives a letter identical to the letter Mary Alice received on the day she shot herself; "I know what you did. It makes me sick. I'm going to tell." So, clearly, the writers were trying to have the housewives face a "desperate" situation much like the one Mary Alice faced, which didn't work. Not at all. The end result was more like having the girls face a situation like the one the teenagers in I Know What You Did Last Summer faced. Then, the secret tears the women apart. They don't speak anymore. Bree becomes depressed, falls off the wagon and contemplates suicide herself in a hotel room, where she talks to Mary Alice's ghost. I'm sorry, what?! She doesn't do it, thank god, but thereafter she sleeps with a string of men and never calls them again. That's right; conservative, Christian, well-kept Bree Van de Kamp becomes a slut. Talk about unrecognizable. Later on in the season, Bree is on trial for the murder and is about to be convicted when longtime neighbor Karen McCluskey (Kathryn Joosten), whose health was whithering, gets on the stand and confesses, knowing full well they wouldn't pursue convicting her given her age and condition. Yeah. Okay. That's...just no.

Not to mention Lynette (Felicity Huffman) and Tom (Doug Savant). The couple that had endured everything from day one had separated and were on the verge of divorce, all because Tom got a new job and made more money than Lynette ever did. She could no longer control her marriage, or her husband, and Tom had finally stepped out of his "I'm forty-five years old and still don't know what I want to do with my life" phase. I'm not saying having these two facing divorce wasn't a good idea, I'm saying they should've done it earlier on and not saved it to the last season when everything was ending (including the show's once soaring ratings). They reunite by season's end and everything is okay again, but everything in the middle is pretty hard to sit through. Much like the rest of the season. To me, it seems the producers saw they had one last season, so they figured they could do whatever they wanted and get away with it. Just like on Roseanne, when the once working-class Conner family had won the lottery and were more than financially secure. It just doesn't work. The Desperate Housewives producers still managed to put on a fairly good series finale after wrapping up the murder cover-up mess, but it would've felt a whole lot better if everything that preceded it had been a better storyline.

'Pitch Perfect 2' hits the perfect note (pun intended)

Last weekend I saw the much anticipated Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel to the mega popular 2012 musical film that gained a large cult following. Both films follow acapella groups at the fictional Barton University, one of which is an all-female group, the Barton Bellas. The second installment saw the return of all the same cast members as well a new 'Bella', Emily Junk (Hailee Steinfeld, Begin Again), daughter of one of the Bellas' most prominent alums (Katey Sagal). 

Generally people find that sequels aren't as good as the first. Which is very true in some cases. Sequels of super popular movies with funny jokes also tend to not be as good as filmmakers now know what people found funny and overcompensate in their sequels. And that definitely happened in Pitch Perfect 2. They knew that Fat Amy (played by Rebel Wilson) was popular with viewers and so they gave her more of a storyline in the sequel as well as making her much more crass than we knew her to be. But you know what? At the end of the day, the movie was still just as funny and entertaining as the first one. Anna Kendrick was still glowing as Becca, the leader of the group, as well as Brittany Snow as mousy Chloe, who must deal with the fact of finally saying goodbye to university and leaving the Bellas (something she had previously avoided for seven years). 

Rumors of a third Pitch Perfect are currently underway, and in all honesty, I'm totally here for that. The cast has great chemistry, the songs are beautiful (especially the original songs introduced in Pitch Perfect 2) and it's just genuinely funny and enjoyable to watch. I definitely recommend watching both movies if you haven't already. I have yet to meet a soul who didn't enjoy them at least a little bit! 

Fox prepares to say goodbye to 'American Idol'

This week, Fox announced some big news: they decided to cancel their iconic American Idol and confirmed that its fifteenth season, scheduled to air next year, will be its last. The final season of the once most popular show on television will see the return of the same judging panel as the last three cycles; Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick, Jr. 

It's the truth. Idol was once the most popular show on television, and was dubbed Fox's "Death Star" as no other show from any other network was able to outbid it in its timeslot. Over 35 million people watched Idol each week in 2007, and in recent years, those numbers started to go down. Drastically. For seven seasons, the show's judging panel consisted of the brutally honest and hard-to-impress Simon Cowell, record producer Randy Jackson and recording artist Paula Abdul. Arguably Idol's most popular panel of judges, by 2010 both Cowell and Abdul had left respectively. Ratings began to go down thereafter, despite Jackson remaining on the panel and the addition of Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. 2013 saw the addition of Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban and Mariah Carey to the judging panel, which arguably became the most controversial season of the series. Jackson left the panel after that year after thirteen seasons (but remained briefly with the show as a mentor). Since then, the panel has consisted of Urban, Lopez, and Connick, Jr., and despite them having great chemistry together as a whole, it didn't save the show's continuously falling ratings.

When Fox announced their decision to cancel Idol this week, people on Twitter were buzzing so much that "Fox cancels American Idol" was trending. But mostly with negativity... Many people were saying they were surprised Idol was even still on, and it should've been ended years ago. Yes, the show undoubtedly ran way longer than it should have. Yes, the quality definitely decreased the past few years as well as the talent levels of contestants. But why so negative? American Idol paved the way for basically every other talent competition show on television in the 2000s. Sure, it had become unpopular in the past few years, but it was once the most popular show on television. Without a doubt. Fact, not fiction. And yes, it's definitely time to retire the show. Its ran its run. But what we should be buzzing about is the impact its had on American television. Without American Idol, there would be no America's Got Talent, no Dancing with the Stars, and certainly, most definitely, no The Voice (which essentially took over most of Idol's viewing audience after 2011. Congrats, NBC. Someone over there finally outbid what was once outbidable.)

The fifteenth and final season of Idol is scheduled to air on Fox in 2016, with special guests and events planned to pay homage to the long-running series.