Desperate Housewives’ upcoming eighth season will be its last, sources close to the show confirm. This coming season will be the show’s first and only without creator Marc Cherry as showrunner, though show insiders say he could come back to write the series finale.
The thing about soaps is that they burn through story lines incredibly quickly, and in the last few seasons, Housewives just couldn’t find an arc that made sense for more than a few weeks: How many pregnancy subplots can one show support? How many natural disasters? Failing pizza establishments? Mysterious new neighbors? Whatever the exact numbers are, Desperate Housewives exceeded them years ago.
Back in 2004, there was nary a watercooler without folks kibbitzing about Mary Alice’s tragic fate, or arguing about which character was more delightfully salacious; this past season, viewership dipped to less than half what it once was. Housewives has been running on fumes for years now. If we say “hallelujah†to this news, does that just rub in the fact that Marc Cherry’s pilot Hallelujah didn’t get picked up this season?