Well that’s more like it.

After a disappointing couple of seasons, the queen mother of suburban satires seems to have finally returned to form. The first two episodes of the fifth season of Desperate Housewives [1] -- which has flashed forward five years -- have been chock full of storylines about motherhood and work, behind the white picket fences.

Take Gabby Solis (Eva Longoria Parker). At the end of the fourth season, she was still the pampered, glamorous former model who’d reunited with her hunky ex-husband Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) who’d just been blinded in an accident. Gabby was a shallow, raging narcissist. Now, in the current season, five years into the future, Gabby’s the mother of two girls (including a 4-year-old with weight issues), has put on weight of her own (moving from having a stick-like figure to one of an ordinary woman) and dresses in off-the-rack, machine washable clothing. While Carlos is thriving and happy to be a masseuse and to have the love of his wife and daughters, Gabby is woefully unhappy that she’s lost her social cache, her sub-zero figure and her Vera Wang wardrobe.

And watching this previously self-absorbed character try to parent reminds me of watching Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) circa season one of Desperate Housewives, when it was at its satirical apex. Take Gabby’s daughter Juanita’s weight problem, about which Gabby had been in denial. After watching her daughter scarf down two pieces of cake at a princess birthday party, Gabby realized something had to be done to change her daughter’s ways. So what did she do? Make Juanita, still wearing a fluffy pink princess dress from the party, strap on sneakers and try to catch up to Gabby’s car as Gabby repeatedly sped up each time Juanita got within arm’s length of the car door.

Then there’s Bree Van de Kamp Hodge (Marcia Cross), who started her own catering business and is on her way to becoming the next Martha Stewart. In last season’s silly, over-the-top story arc, Bree pretended to be pregnant in order to hide the fact that her teenage daughter was pregnant, then acted as though the baby was her son. Luckily, this season, Desperate Housewives has veered away from the overtly crazy and is instead spending time on Bree’s attempts to cope with her husband Orson’s (Kyle MacLachlan) jealousy over her success and disappointment that she’s no longer doting on him like a 1950s housewife. This was dramatized by a scene where Bree, while promoting Mrs. Van de Kamp’s Old Fashion Cooking book on a national radio show, said: “I think a lot of people miss the way life used to be back when women had more time to cook. It’s always been important for me to have the family gathering around the table every night for hot, lovingly prepared meals.” As Orson was listening to the interview alone at home, he was eating Chinese take-out from the containers. Angered by the lack of home cooked meals and that Bree wouldn’t use his last name as her professional name, Orson lashed out at her after she came home from work at midnight, insisting that she immediately make him the pot roast dinner she’d promised to make him earlier. And she did, but through a curtain of tears.

As for Wisteria Lane’s resident everymom, Lynette Scavo, her kids are five years older and have teenaged problems, like her twins’ delinquent behavior of drinking and gambling at the Scavo family restaurant after-hours, risking the family’s liquor license. Lynette later became so concerned that her son Porter might be hanging around with a boy who was busted for drug dealing, that she created an alter online ego on a Facebook-type web site in order to learn more about the teen who’d stopped confiding in her and had withdrawn into his own world. There was a certain poignancy in Lynette’s lament that she felt as though she didn’t know Porter anymore and only got to see the real Porter when using the guise of a fictional 16-year-old girl named Sarah.

As for Susan Mayer, last season, she was newly married to her longtime love, Mike Delfino and was pregnant with his baby. This season we learned that she and Mike divorced after tearing their relationship apart in the wake of a fatal car crash where their SUV had plowed into another vehicle, killing a mother and her daughter, who’d been born on the same day and in the same hospital as their son. So now Susan’s a divorced, single mom – again -- who’s trying to figure out how to have an adult life while being the mother of a small child.

Also back from the dead are great one-liners, most them given to Gabby:

“Carlos, our daughter sucked down half a sheet cake, and afterwards no one could find the candles. Wake up, we have a problem.”

 

“What’s happened to my life? We used to have help. Now we are the help.”

 

Other than the sudsy Edie Britt story involving a mysterious rage-a-holic husband, I hope the first two episodes are indicative of a season of sharp dramedy. It’s about time.

Desperate Housewives airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on ABC. Full episodes are available online at ABC’s web site [2].