I just got off the phone with "DH" creative force and show-runner Marc Cherry - he's doing a round of press interviews with the, umm, press - to talk about this Sunday's big return, and he laid some very interesting stuff on me.
Will write about more fully in the paper Friday, but this is too good to hold so here we go.
First, he disputes some story making the rounds on the Internets that the show'll pick up five-or-whatever weeks (or years) in the future; in fact, he says, it picks up right were we left off last winter:
"We pick up almost immediately," he says, while adding that Edie - Nicollette Sheridan, natch - "who's recovering emotionally after being dumped by Carlos is going to do something fairly shocking involving the husband of another woman; this will lead to fury against Edie unlike anything we've ever seen...leading to a shocking conclusion to her time on Wisteria Lane."
Yes, friends. You read those last words correctly, we repeat: "leading to a shocking conclusion to her time on Wisteria Lane."
So, does this appear Sheridan is about to become one of the first core cast-members - one of the true card-carrying desperate housewives - to depart our happy little family?
It would seem to read that way, wouldn't it?
I press Marc on this question: "I like to shake things up in my neighborhood..."
Oh yeah. Anyway, this would also appear to reverse some of Sheridan's own declarations about her future on Wisteria.
He says all this takes place in the season's penultimate episode (seven to go); the two hour finale wraps the Katherine Mayfair storyline - and I DO think the casting of Dana Delany on "DH" this season was one of the stand-out decisions on TV anywhere this year.
Meanwhile, Marc says he's standing by an earlier decision he made - that he'll walk away from "DH" after seven years, and will wrap the show accordingly by then. Does, ahhh, ABC know about this? His answer...this Friday.