Desperate Housewives and Desperate Presidents

Did anyone notice the little dig at President Bush that the writers of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" snuck into Sunday night's two-hour season finale? It was subtle, but if you listened and paid attention to context, it was unmistakable.

Much of Sunday night's episode consisted of flashbacks, which allowed us not only to see characters that we've been watching for the past two years in a time period that we're not familiar with, it gave us the opportunity to view their past while realizing what their future has in store for them. It's a little like watching the beginning of "Oedipus the King" while realizing, as the play's original audience did, that Oedipus is going to blind himself at the end.

The most revealing of these flashbacks was at the beginning of the second hour. It showed Bree Van De Kamp and her husband Rex at the drugstore with their rebellious daughter, Danielle. Their daughter has streaked her hair a particularly obnoxious color -- and that, to a conservative, gun-toting right-winger like Bree, is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

She tells her husband that she's going to buy hair color to dye Danielle's hair back to its original color, regardless of the girl's wishes. She also says that she will tie her daughter to a chair if she tries to resist.

"How can you be so damn sure of yourself all the time?" her husband asks her.

"Why is my certainty a flaw?" Bree asks in response. "I know what I'm about, I know my values, and I know what's right. Why shouldn't I stay the course?"

She turns for support to the druggist, who is off-camera.

"Am I right, Mr. Williams?" she asks the druggist rhetorically.

The druggist looks at her deadpan, and says, "My mother always took a firm hand with me, and I thank her for it."

"Exactly," Bree says. "And look how well you turned out."

Now, the fun of this scene, for people who have been watching "Desperate Houswives" for the past two seasons, is in its subtext. We know that Bree's husband, Rex, will be poisoned by the druggist. We also know that Bree's children, far from appreciating her "firm hand," will grow to hate her -- and that Bree herself will allow the druggist to die rather than lift a finger to save his life, once she realizes that he killed her husband.

The key to the political subtext, obviously, is the phrase "stay the course," an expression that is to President Bush what "Na-Noo, Na-Noo" was to Mork from Ork. When he doesn't know what else to say, he says "stay the course."

The meaning of the scene is clear -- mindless, unbending conservatism, the kind that makes you "stay the course" no matter how badly things are going, will lead you to disaster. By this reading, Bree's inflexible, dogmatic, unbending nature (all qualities that she shares with her President), destroys her family.

As I see it, Bree Van De Kamp's disastrous family life is a metaphor for what has happened to this country in the past five years. And I'm pretty sure the creator of the show intended it to be read that way.

By the end of Sunday's season finale, Bree is able to at least save her daughter. It will be interesting to see what President Bush can salvage from the next two and a half years. If anything.

Tom Moran