Ten years ago Desperate Housewives
debuted and quickly became the guiltiest guilty pleasures of all time. There was an interesting mystery about a suicide, dark underlining humor, and of course, Eva Longoria in her underwear almost every week. Once the mystery as to why Mary Alice killed herself was solved, the show had a hard time coming up with a storyline as gripping (the second season featured some weird kid in the basement storyline that may or may have not been totally cribbed from The Goonies
) and the show slowly went downhill. I gave up on the show right around the time a tornado hit Wisteria Lane. By the time Desperate Housewives was winding down, creator Mark Cherry was reading a spinoff not on any of the main characters but on guest star who works as a maid for the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. ABC passed on Devious Maids, but Lifetime, possibly looking for a buzzy show that was part Desperate Housewives, part modern day Downton Abby, to counter their appearance of being the cheesy ripped from the headlines channel decided to pick it up. Much like its predecessor, it features character with plenty of secrets and dark humor.
And of course the show resolved around a murder mystery. The series premiere featured a maid being murdered and her boyfriend being charged. Naturally he did not do it because that would make a boring show. It turned out the suspect’s mother became the latest maid in the area to spy on the dead maid’s former employers in hopes to uncover who really killed her predecessor. Unfortunately the other four maids on the show had storylines that were not nearly as interesting. There was the maid who caught her employer in bed with a man who was not her husband. The maid who wanted to be a singer. And the mother who did not want her daughter to date the son they worked for.
By the end of the season, the murder mystery was wrapped up in a nice bow with the real killer “confessed before killing himself.” The aspiring pop singer was propositioned to be the beard for her employer in exchanged for a record contract. The daughter maid started packing after her mother lied to her about her boyfriend. And the cliffhanger resolved around the maid who slept with her employer getting arrested by ICE with his wife looking on with a smile on her face.
The second season naturally starts off in 1999. What happened fifteen years ago? Murder of course. Back in 2014, it has been three months since the first season finale. Two of the maid have moved on up to the east side. Carmen is enjoying her life as a beard (granted Odessa is not). Marisol has gone to cleaning houses in Beverly Hills to living in one and now has a devious maid of her own who seems to be even more devious than last year's maids. Rosie is seeking asylum in hopes staying in the country. Zoila and Valentina are still estranged because of the deception. And of course the Powell’s, who remain the most entertaining characters on the show, have a new maid, their sixth in the series (and may quickly be in the need of a seventh whom you will recognize).
Despite the opening, there really is no new murder mystery yet (we the viewers can guess one of two things that happened). The Stapports seem to be gone with nary of a mention. There are some bombshells, but mostly of the run of the mill nighttime soap kind. But hey, at least there are no creepy kids in the basement.
Devious Maids airs Sundays at 10:00 on Lifetimes. You can stream past episodes on Hulu. You can also download Devious Maids on iTunes.
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