This ‘Desperate Housewives’ Episode Changed the Show for Good

In a show like Desperate Housewives which thrives off of unhinged drama, it’s hard to narrow down one specific moment that changed the series. The show begins with the death of Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), who also serves as the show’s narrator. Her death is shocking enough on its own considering it happens in the first few minutes of the pilot episode, but it helped get the show rolling as the entirety of the first season followed the mystery surrounding her death. Going forward the series dropped lots of major bombshells. From creepy neighbors, to loan sharks, and tornadoes. Every storyline played into making Desperate Housewives what it is, but there’s one episode in particular that sticks out as a turning point for the show, and it’s the episode “Bang” from Season 3.

Desperate Housewives

Secrets and truths unfold through the lives of female friends in one suburban neighborhood after the mysterious suicide of a neighbor. 

Release Date

October 3, 2004

Creator

Marc Cherry

Main Genre

Comedy

Seasons

8

Studio

ABC

What Happens in “Bang”?

“Bang” happens early on in Season 3, the seventh episode to be exact, which makes the events of the episode all the more surprising. The episode begins with a classic Mary Alice voice-over, only it’s not one of the main housewives we’re seeing, it’s Carolyn Bigsby (Laurie Metcalf), a former neighbor of Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan). We see her a few times throughout the season as she knew Orson before he married Bree (Marcia Cross), and was good friends with his previous wife, Alma (Valerie Mahaffey), before she mysteriously went missing one day. She believes that Orson killed her, something she tells Bree repeatedly, and in a last-ditch effort to get her to back off, Bree tells Carolyn that her husband Harvey (Brian Kerwin) has been having an affair. Bree assumes that the revelation will be enough to put Carolyn’s focus on her own marital troubles and stay out of Bree and Orson’s. And it does, but it also has some disastrous consequences.

Mary Alice begins by telling us that it was supposed to be an ordinary day for Carolyn Bigsby. She had plans to do benign things such as bake her husband a strudel, give the dog a bath, and water the flowers. But upon learning of her husband’s affair, she changed her plans, grabbed a gun, and went to the grocery store — of which her husband was the manager. She shoots at him but misses, and he ends up locking himself in his office with Edie Britt (Nicolette Sheridan), which only serves to anger Carolyn more. With no chance of Harvey coming out of the office, and far too many witnesses around to just drop it and go home, Carolyn points her gun at the customers and tells them they’re not going anywhere. Among these customers are some familiar faces, which only ups the already high stakes. There’s Julie Mayer (Andrea Bowen), Edie’s nephew Austin (Josh Henderson), the newest neighbor on Wisteria Lane, Art (Matt Roth), and Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman). There’s also Nora (Kiersten Warren), who we discovered earlier in the season shares a daughter with Lynette’s husband, Tom (Doug Savant). Naturally, Lynette and Nora butt heads, but for the sake of Tom and Nora’s daughter, and Lynette’s new step-daughter, they try to at least be civil. It doesn’t work, and the pair bicker in front of Carolyn as she holds them hostage in the supermarket. When Carolyn scolds them for talking, Nora fires back by saying Lynette is trying to steal her child, to which Lynette says that Nora seduced her husband. And when Carolyn hears this she aims her gun at Nora and shoots her without any hesitation. It’s devastating and shocking, and makes an already stressful episode all the more terrifying.

This is made even worse when Lynette, in a fit of rage and devastation over Nora’s death, begins to yell at Carolyn. Carolyn shrugs it off at first, claiming that Lynette told Carolyn about Nora trying to seduce Tom, despite knowing that the same thing happened to her and is the reason why she’s holding them hostage to begin with. But Lynette insists she didn’t want Nora to die, and that she doesn’t care that Carolyn’s husband cheated on her because they all have pain and things they struggle with, but they don’t go shooting people like Carolyn is. Carolyn then cries out that Nora deserved it, to which Lynette responds that maybe Carolyn deserved to be cheated on. There’s immediate fear and regret on her face as soon as she says it, but it’s too late because Carolyn picks up her gun and points it at Lynette, intending to shoot her too. Luckily, Art manages to throw something at Carolyn and is able to throw her aim off and Lynette is shot in the shoulder, only wounded and not fatally injured like it seemed would be the case. But despite the rest of the townsfolk getting out of the store alive, and Carolyn being killed herself, there’s still some hefty trauma that follows in the next few episodes. Specifically with Lynette and her son Parker (Zane Huett), who is terrified something bad will happen to her again. But it wasn’t just the characters who were affected by the aftermath of the event. The entire show underwent a major change going forward.

How Did “Bang” Change the Show?

“Bang” is one of the most memorable episodes of the show, partly due to how heavy of a storyline it follows, but also because it was the first time we had seen the show get so dark and sad. Some of the previous storylines were definitely twisted, but there was always a sense of absurdity to them. Things that were so far-fetched you knew they likely wouldn’t happen in reality but made for good television nonetheless. “Bang” was the complete opposite. It seems like a fairly normal episode at first. After all, it’s not the first or last time we’ll see a housewife angry at her husband on the show. But things quickly took a turn for the worse, and the episode tapped into an all too real topic of gun-related violence. The fact is the events of the episode do happen in real life. Maybe not in the same way, but unfortunately, it is something that is all too frequently seen on the news. Anytime a show or movie digs into real-world issues, it tends to get under the skin more, and that’s exactly what “Bang” did.

More than that though, “Bang” allowed Desperate Housewives to fully embark into darker storylines. Due to the success of the episode, and how flawlessly it was pulled off (seriously, it’s incredibly well done), the show was then able to get much more intense with its storylines. But it also still kept its humor throughout, and that is arguably one of the best parts of the series, how well it balances the dark drama with humor. Even in “Bang” we see how the show juggles the different tones. Like when Gaby (Eva Longoria) and Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) come home from their divorce settlement and take turns destroying one another’s property in the house out of spite. Or how Bree decides to throw a viewing party of sorts in her home, where she puts out snacks and invites the people of Wisteria Lane to come watch the news coverage in her living room. But by the end of the episode, Gaby and Carlos talk candidly about how they hate what their divorce has done to them, and Bree begins to think she’s partly to blame for Carolyn’s rampage upon discovering it’s her behind the hostage situation. Desperate Housewives always had a knack for being funny but still managing to tug on the heartstrings, and that aspect was really perfected in “Bang”.

The success of “Bang” allowed the show to incorporate more disaster episodes throughout its run. Without it, we wouldn’t have gotten some other major episodes, such as the Tornado episode, or the fire at the nightclub. It was a way for the show to test the waters and see how fans would react to such heavy topics and seeing the beloved characters in such scary situations. It was also a huge episode for the cast as well, as Felicity Huffman scored an Emmy nomination for her performance in the episode, which is a testament to both her prowess as an actress and just how well-written the episode itself was. As hard as it can be to watch, “Bang” set a precedent for the show going forward. It changed everything and allowed Desperate Housewives to transition into a new era that was darker and more mature than it was when it began. It still had its lighter moments, of course, but “Bang” allowed the show to go dark when it wanted to. Without it, storylines such as Katherine’s (Dana Delany) in Season 4, and literally the entirety of Season 8, just wouldn’t have worked as well as they did. Going forward the show felt more freeing, and it was able to push a lot of boundaries that it may not have done before. And if there’s one thing fans of Desperate Housewives love most, it’s the drama.

Desperate Housewives is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.

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