The drama series Desperate Housewives was never a stranger to time jumps but the show took a giant five-year leap forward in time for the season 4 finale which may be the reason it remained successful for years after. The showrunner Marc Cherry's initial desire for a ten-year jump may have been asking for too much but a huge time jump prevented the show from falling into the trappings of melodramatic soap operas. There were more narrative opportunities in store for a time jump and it miraculously accomplished more than just resetting the story as Cherry intended.
Desperate Housewives is a drama series revolving around a community of wives who live together on Wisteria Lane. It aired from 2004 to 2012 for eight seasons on ABC and totaled up to 180 episodes. Before the fifth season of Desperate Housewives, there were a couple of time jumps but those leaps in the timeline never exceed more than a year. A sixth-month jump takes place at the beginning of season 3 after Orson Hodge puts Mike Delfino in a coma. A one-month jump takes place at the beginning of season 4 and the aftermath of Edie Britt's suicide attempt is developed more because of that.
Why Did The Desperate Housewives Time Jump Skip 5 Years?
In 2009, Marc Cherry revealed the reason for the five-year time jump was a result of his desire to reset the drama before it escalated beyond his creative control. "I wanted to go back to what the pilot was which was smaller problems" (via filming Desperate Housewives was, "I don't like it when, kind of, the soap takes over." He wanted to reinstitute an element of relatability to these characters by distancing them greatly from the previous hectic four seasons. Five years later Bree ran a business, Edie returned with a new husband, and most of the children became unruly teenagers. Thus, Desperate Housewives was able to rejuvenate the dwindling engagement of its audience.
Desperate Housewives Time Jump Was A Reset (& It Worked)
The gamble Marc Cherry made to reset the narrative and keep the spark of the series alive worked because season 5 was able to successfully emulate season 1 and refresh the viewers' interest. It was renewed for three more seasons, highlighting this success. Cherry further revealed in Paley Center's that inspiration for the time jump came from the positive reception the time jump in the hit drama series Lost garnered. Cherry put that show's successes into consideration when he decided to switch things up for Desperate Housewives season 5. It paid off and perfectly started the series back at square one.
The five-year time jump in Desperate Housewives may not remain the biggest gap in the story of Wisteria Lane if the talks of a reboot come to fruition and bring the wives back for another season. Marc Cherry cleverly kept the series from becoming a confusing soap opera with a convoluted plot by resetting the narrative back to the standards of season 1. As a result Desperate Housewives expanded its legacy with the success derived from the time jump.