f traditional television programming were admitted into the emergency room with its life hanging in the balance, the scene might mirror one straight out of Grey’s Anatomy:  the monitor would glow with the familiar mark of the flat line, its ominous ear-piercing beep would fill the room, and somewhere out of sight the voice of the ultimate authority figure, the doctor, would be heard announcing, “time of death…”  A little melodramatic?  Perhaps.  However, the point is that in the postmodern epoch television has evolved into a new entertainment beast.  No longer do programs fit neatly into clear-cut categories, conform to strict genre conventions, or cater to small, isolated viewing audiences.  I argue that Grey’s Anatomy is a stellar example of programming that now operates by the new rules of televisual postmodernism, and that because it does so, it can be a surprising ally of feminism. 

          The foundation for this essay rests on two very different contemporary scholarly claims.  The first is Susan Douglas’s argument that the mass media have morphed women into “the cultural schizophrenics we are today” due to the “bundle of contradictions” we have grown up with (8-9).  These “media archetypes” are offered up for our consumption, and we seldom are selective as to which we identify with, finding many pleasurably fitting under different circumstances.  I claim that being in this mediated position is both detrimental and empowering all at once.  The second argument I build on is Steven Johnson’s claim that popular culture throughout the past three decades (contrary to the normal consensus) has actually become increasingly complex and has contributed to the smartening, not the dumbing down, of culture.  ABC’s primetime success, Grey’s Anatomy, can be read as a product of the evolution of postmodern televisual texts (blended genres with their crucial coalition audiences) and of feminism’s complicated relationship with the mutated melodramatic art forms of the twenty-first century. 

Concerning the first claim, it is no secret that television tycoons have been capitalizing on the postmodern art of genre blurring and eclecticism for decades now.  Television shows have ceased to exist in neat and tidy categories: dramas and comedies have blended together; westerns have adopted the melodramatic love stories of the romance; crime shows have incorporated science fiction elements into their plots.  However, this is not necessarily due to the postmodern love of appropriation. It has largely been a maneuver by the industry to maximize capital.  In this new era, “[t]he audience is no longer regarded as a homogeneous mass but rather as an amalgamation of microcultural groups stratified by age, gender, race, and geographic location.  Therefore, appealing to a ‘mass’ audience now involves putting together a series of interlocking appeals to a number of discrete but potentially interconnected audiences” (Collins 342).  So, these hybrid shows are actually strategically formulated to draw out viewers from various sought-out focus groups.  Despite the capitalistic cloud that hovers over this practice, I argue that there is something quite positive and powerful about these new coalition audiences.  These new audiences are now larger and more diversified.  One might hope that the active viewing these new audiences participate in could create strategic alliances among persons that were at one time more strictly segregated into smaller entertainment pockets.  And it is quite important to recognize that the type of program these desegregated audiences are interacting with is a different televisual beast than that of the distant past.

In Everything Bad is Good For You, Johnson starts with the argument “that popular culture has, on average, grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past thirty years,” bringing about “a kind of positive brainwashing … steadily, but almost imperceptibly, making our minds sharper as we soak in entertainment usually dismissed as so much lowbrow fluff” (xiii).   Johnson argues that in the broad period labeled as postmodern, unbeknownst to us, “[t]he most debased forms of mass diversion — video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms — turn(ed) out to be nutritional after all,” that while the critics have been mourning the desire of the masses for “dumb, simple pleasures,” the opposite has been happening: “the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less” (9).  Johnson looks to the cognitive benefits of reading – “attention, memory, following threads” and claims that “the nonliterary popular culture” too has been sharpening these skills in the last three decades, and fostering different mental skills as well (23).  He notes that we have all become equipped at multi-tasking, that we have mastered the art of “continuous partial attention,” and that “the eye has learn(ed) to tolerate chaos, to experience disorder as an aesthetic experience” (Johnson 61).  He uses television dramas to demonstrate this heightened need for complexity and intellect in popular culture products, claiming that this particular medium, more than film, has been at the forefront of this smartening of culture for the last thirty years (Johnson 62).  He traces various complex shows such as 24, with their intricate, overlapping plotlines, their refusal to initiate the unfamiliar viewer, their demand for the reader to fill in information, supply character backstory, catch inside references, and assist in unraveling the mystery, to prove that much of television these days is anything but mindless entertainment to be gobbled up thoughtlessly by lifeless, passive couch potatoes.  This evolution of television programming can be seen in standard primetime television and in so-called women’s television alike.  Grey’s, arguably aimed for a female audience, is an example of a complicated mixed-genre show with much going on beneath the surface.  This primetime success rests on the television continuum of the medical and melodramatic milieus as it continues to morph into a show that crosses boundary lines and satisfies the entertainment needs of its ever-expanding, diverse audience.

Grey’s exists as a new form of the medical comedrama, moving beyond the straight medical drama of the ER [1] type or the situational comedy of a show such as Scrubs[2] to achieve a sudsy mix of the two popular formats.  A large appeal of the show, especially as it was originally pitched and marketed, rests on the foundation of the long-successful medical drama, but much of its continued popularity today can be credited to the ways in which it moved beyond that starting block.  Its quasi-campy nature (indicative of its alignment with primetime soap opera) and subtle humor (necessary to counteract its sometimes heavier tragic element) make it more personalized and plot-driven (in the fashion of a relationship-centered sitcom) than the traditional medical drama.  

But to be clear, many of Grey’s most highly acclaimed (and advertised) episodes capitalize on the fact that it can get away with flying under the banner of the medical drama.  Seasons two and three have been especially cognizant of the audience draw that “crisis” episodes can spawn.  The first major episode of this nature was “Into You Like a Train,” wherein a slew of train wreck victims are transported to Seattle Grace. [3] The central patient storyline is that of two people impaled by the same pole.  Despite the extensive injuries these two joined people suffer, the middle-aged man and twenty-something girl remain conscious and jovial through much of the episode, their pain subdued from shock and their panic in check due to not grasping the severity of the situation (the fact that only one of them can be saved). The tearjerker moment of this episode comes when the young woman, Brooke (Michelle Arthur), whispers the parting words she wishes to be relayed to her fiancé, whom she will not be able to say goodbye to in person; she is the one who cannot be saved. 

Only a few months later, Grey’s took advantage of its post-Super Bowl airtime and hyped up its second big crisis episode, “It’s the End of the World.” This two-part episode focused on the hospital’s “Code Black,” in which the staff had to call in a bomb squad after discovering a live explosive lodged inside a patient on the operating table. [4]   Meredith’s opening voice-over sets the tragic tone for the episode:  “It’s a look patients get in their eyes. There is a scent, the smell of death, some kind of sixth sense; when the great beyond is headed for you, you feel it coming.  What’s the one thing you’ve always dreamed of doing before you die?”  Guest stars Christina Ricci (Hannah Davies) and Kyle Chandler (Dylan Young) enter the scene as part of the medical personnel and bomb squad who attempt to defuse the bomb, save the patient, and protect the surrounding hospital staff.  The crisis escalates as Hannah, the novice paramedic, crumbles under the pressure of her task (her steady hand clasped around the bomb housed in the man’s stomach cavity is the only thing keeping it from detonating), and Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) must take her place.  This crucial cast member walks away from the situation alive but the bomb squad operative, Dylan, explodes before her very eyes toward the episode’s end.  While all of this tragedy is occurring, two other plots are interwoven into the drama.  Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), the resident in charge of the key characters, goes into labor at the start of the episode, and her husband is in a near-fatal car accident while racing to meet her at the hospital for delivery.  While Meredith and Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington) deal with the bomb crisis, Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) is forced to perform brain surgery on Bailey’s husband, and the remaining medical staff struggle to convince a hysterical Bailey to continue with her delivery in her husband’s absence.

With two successful catastrophe episodes under its belt, Grey’s decided to incorporate a slightly modified version of such into its three-part finale of season two.  Leading into the final two-hour show the next day, “17 Seconds” focuses on the fallout from a work shooting. While medical personnel are dealing with the victims of the killing spree, the episode focusses primarily on the failing heart of Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the love interest of Isobel (Izzie) Stevens (Katherine Heigl). [5] Burke is en route to retrieve the heart that may save Denny's life when he is shot by a stray bullet from the crazed gunman outside the hospital. Not knowing that Burke is out of commission, Izzie cuts Denny’s LVAD wire in a desperate act, sure that Burke will soon arrive to save the day.  The episode ends with the lives of both men hanging in the balance.  The remaining two episodes of this three-part series, “Deterioration of the Fight or Flight Response” and “Losing My Religion,” bring closure to both storylines.  Sheperd operates on Burke knowing that the success of the surgery will determine the rest of Burke’s medical career. Bailey is forced to clean up the mess that her interns have made of Denny Duquette’s heart transplant and finds a way to save his life without Burke’s assistance.  Denny survives his heart transplant and (in true melodramatic form) proposes to Izzie.  Afterward, the interns stick together, refusing to admit who exactly had cut the LVAD wire, and are temporarily punished by having to throw an impromptu prom at the hospital for the niece of the chief of surgerys, Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), admittedly a very minimal punishment.  While the medical crises are fading into the backdrop, the interpersonal mega-plot that grounds the show (the intersecting love triangles of Derek, Meredith, and Addison Sheperd (Kate Walsh) and Derek, Meredith, and Finn Dandridge (Chris O’Donnell) heats up.

At the hospital gala, estranged lovers Meredith and Derek collide into a passionate sexual encounter in a nearby examination room, abandoning their dates at the adult prom.  Meanwhile, the blissfully happy Izzie travels down the elevator to see her new fiancé before making her own grand entrance.  As she is en route to his bedside, Denny experiences a blood clot that stops his heart and dies before she reaches him.  In perhaps the show’s most emotional scene, her friends surround Denny’s hospital bed where Izzie has affixed herself to his dead body and her ex-love interest, Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), has to pick up her sobbing body and carry her out of the room. [6]

One final example of a crisis mega-episode stretch would be season three’s ferryboat tragedy (systematically placed smack dab in the middle of sweeps month), where the overarching tease was whether the show would actually kill off its partial namesake, Meredith Grey (though in the end it settled for doing so only to her mother). [7]   In this episode, Meredith starts to drown, Derek retrieves her from the water, and she almost dies despite the extravagant efforts of her colleagues to revive her once she arrives back at Seattle Grace.  The other interns face their own crises:  Izzie has to drill holes into a man’s head at the accident site with power tools; Alex saves a pregnant woman from the wreckage; George O’ Malley (T.R. Knight) searches for a lost child; and emotionally-challenged Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) tries to deal with the possibility of losing her “person” as Meredith’s death seems inevitable. 

Although these blockbuster hype-type episodes remain some of the most memorable of the show, the interpersonal relationships centering the plot seem to be the real audience draw, trumping the high-tech, high-tension medical aspects of the show.  The name “McDreamy” has become a pop culture trademark and household name, making it an easy allusion to the show for viewers and non-viewers alike.  Much of the show’s appeal is the upbeat, witty approach that it uses in forwarding the relationship plot lines.  The storylines — which could easily get bogged down by the normal angst-overload associated with drawn out “will they or won’t they?” plot trajectories — avoid this pitfall by juxtaposing their melodramatic moments with ample comic relief.  For example, Grey’s does not shy away from the obvious fantasy/dream scenes utilized often in sitcoms.  One such scene occurs in season one when George fantasizes about a steamy shower incident with his three female colleagues.  A second example is Meredith’s dream in season three, where she imagines awakening in bed with both of her love interests, Derek and Finn, on each side of her.

Although the show would not tout itself in such terms, the genre that seems most fitting for Grey’s is that of the primetime soap (forever morphing and mutating as it may be), more than either the drama or the sitcom.  Many of its soap operatic tendencies have already been mentioned in passing.  The crucial love triangle (those mentioned previously, plus lesser ones such as Derek, Addison, and Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), Izzie, Denny, and Alex, and even the love rectangle from the past that would have included Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), Richard, and their spouses) is of course one staple of the sudsy genre. 

Another borrowed soap tactic would be the infamous cliffhanger.  Primetime soaps began co-opting this crucial daytime plot device in the eighties; the series “Dallas” is still known for its “Who Shot JR?” season finale plot-dangler.  Grey’s has used this soap device multiple times, the first being its season one finale.  “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” ends with Addison confronting Meredith and Derek, delivering Meredith and audience members the shocking revelation that Derek is still married. [8]   Season two brings more of the same as that particular love triangle dominates most of the year.  In “Bring the Pain,” Meredith forces Derek to choose between her and Addison, begging “pick me” and instructing him to meet her at Joe’s bar. [9]   The episode ends with her shooting tequila, eyes glued to the door, waiting for him to walk through.  After Derek does not pick her, she has the chance to make her own choice months later, in the follow-up love triangle including herself, Derek, and Finn.  Near the beginning of season three, Meredith promises herself that she will choose one suitor over the other, and viewers watch to see which man she has chosen as she sits (again at Joe’s bar) waiting for the winner to arrive.  This particular cliffhanger results in both men walking through the door, and viewers are still clueless as to the outcome by the episode’s end.  (In very anti-climatic fashion, the next episode only finds her choosing not to choose, but to “date” both men for a few more weeks).  And, of course, the cliffhangers crucial to the multiple-part episodes already discussed (the bomb scare, Denny Duquette’s heart failure, and the ferryboat accident) only give further proof to the series’ reliance on this device. 

Grey’s, like its soap opera ancestors, utilizes the disrupted narrative pattern of the flashback.  One example would be the first episode of season three, “Time Has Come Today.” [10]   Meredith’s opening voiceover even highlights this focus on time: 

Throughout this episode as the friends struggle to help Izzie (who, still in her pastel prom dress, is immobile on the bathroom floor) cope with Denny’s death, the events in the present day are broken up by the individual memories and flashbacks from key characters.  For example, Derek remembers picking up Meredith in Joe’s bar on the night before she began work at Seattle Grace.  (This never before seen day would have led into the program’s debut episodal events). Addison shares her backstory via flashbacks also, remembering the events that would have sparked Derek’s move to Seattle in the first place — the night that he discovered her affair with his best friend.

Of late, Grey’s has even used the soap opera trope of the near death experience (the pseudo-afterlife encounter).  In the aforementioned ferryboat episode set, Meredith ends up flatlining, and the second episode of that series ends with her awakening in a room with characters who had previously died on the show (Denny and Dylan – already discussed – and her mother’s scrub nurse, Liz Fallon Anna Maria]). In stereotypical fashion, as Meredith struggles for her life, she must come to terms with her emotional hang-ups (in particular, she and her mother have an afterlife make-up session), and then she races down the long purgatory-like hospital hall away from the white light and back to the loving company of her friends. 

Grey’s can be classified as a type of primetime soap not only because of its stylistic practices but also its content.  Overall, the show seems to be directed more toward a female viewing audience: it concerns itself with feminist issues, and it responds to the female-oriented television that precedes it.   One of the underlying thematic concerns of the show, like much programming that might be classified as “feminist,” is how to live up to, surpass, or reject cultural mandates concerning what it is to be a woman in the 21^st century.

Although academia made the bold move during the so-called post-feminist moment of declaring the feminist movement successfully completed and / or dead, Douglas argues that it is alive and well and being broadcast quite nicely in the popular culture realm.  I agree and feel that Grey’s Anatomy is but one place where it secretly surfaces time and time again. Concerning the controversial “F” word, Douglas argues that feminism today lies within “the space between the two cats,” meaning that it is often found between two very contradictory depictions of women and their relationships with one another (244).

Grey’s Anatomy can be read alongside of other late postmodern and neo-postmodern [11] female-oriented television programming, such as Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives, to showcase the straddled fence that is modern-day feminism.  These shows with their strong female protagonists (of both career-driven and relationship-driven types) offer very different depictions of what it means to be a well-adjusted, happy, successful woman in contemporary America. These shows also explore the dynamics of female support systems (constructed / pseudo-family units) and they embrace and constantly re-define female sexuality, without embarrassment or apology, in nearly every episode.  But more specifically, Grey’s can be read as a product of (and / or response to) its two predecessors.  In particular, I argue that Grey’s struggles to deal with the often oversimplified choice that women have to make between work and family, career advancement and marriage, autonomy and love.  Grey’s follows the footsteps of both Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives, addressing this conundrum in its own way, expanding on and critiquing its predecessors’ stances on the issue.

All three shows seem to tackle this issue by drawing upon, and exaggerating, cultural depictions of femininity.  Each program consists of a core ensemble of drastically different female archetypes. Within each of these shows the characterization appears purposely fragmented, offering quite different depictions of femininity within the contrast of the cast members and scripted personas. 

Sex in the City definitely carries out this characterization practice.  For example, the verbal mastery and thoughtful contemplation of sensitive columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) can be contrasted to the typical caricature of career-driven, hard-nosed, cynical lawyer (and later single-mother), Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon).  Both act as excellent foils to the more typical femininity of traditional, proper, sweet Charlotte (Kristin Davis).  And the quartet would not be complete without the unabashedly progressive, confident Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), who complements them all with her overabundance of sexuality and own brand of femininity.  Although this may be seen by many as just another mutation of heroine television [12] (with an extra helping of sexual antics), Mary Vause argues that the show is actually quite progressive in that it “tackles a broad range of feminist issues, including single motherhood, abortion, homosexuality, the glass ceiling, and basic perceptions of femininity” (76).  Each of the four friends struggles with norms of femininity and prescribed female behavior, which they all reject at various intervals throughout the show.  Vause recounts an episode where Carrie pondered:  “What if Prince Charming had never shown up? Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever?  Or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a health-care package, and a baby from her local neighborhood sperm bank?” (Vause 76).  Although the show is to be celebrated for its ability to critique societal standards concerning men and women and relationships in general, it still falls prey to this need to chop up female character traits and delegate representatives into the appropriate stereotypical corner.

Its heir to the televisual throne, Desperate Housewives, does much of the same.  Justin Ravitz notes the similarities between the two:

The players of this sudsy melodramedy include the deceased, serene, stay-at-home mom Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), who commits suicide on a normal day spent “quietly polishing the routine of my perfect life”; Bree Van De Kamp (Marcia Cross), the “helmet-haired Martha Stewart clone whose zealous quest for domestic perfection leaves her family and marriage in tundra”; “a Latina ex-model turned trophy wife,” Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria), who cheats with her adolescent gardener; Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman), “the corporate executive whose remarkable fertility (triplets and an infant in three years) forced the end of her high-flying career,” who “can’t admit she dislikes motherhood and her bratty children”; “the most stereotypically ‘desperate’ of all, Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), a painfully insecure, newly divorced mother whose spouse left her for his secretary”; and her competition, Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan), the more “slutty, aggressive divorcee down the block,” who competes for the love and attention of Mike Delfino (James Denton), the new plumber / bachelor on the block (Ravitz 1).

Like Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives is about the impossible place that women find themselves in in modern-day society.  Despite the claims that the women’s movement has allowed women easy choices and ample opportunity, countless women still struggle in that “space in-between” because cultural depictions make it seem like they must fall either at one end of the spectrum or the other.  Ravitz writes,“In its acerbic yet frothy way, Desperate Housewives satirizes women’s clicheéd, impossible choices:  career or family, love or sex, independence or intimacy.  Our tragicomic heroines face an uphill battle, already bearing fatal flaws (selfishness, neediness, poor judgment, self-hatred, self-delusion) that will hobble their happiness” (1). 

It should be no surprise that Grey’s picks up where these two programs leave off.  After all, Grey’s rose to glory partially due to its network position following Desperate Housewives (during its first two seasons), and Desperate Housewives itself found success by hijacking the Sunday evening time slot that Sex in the City vacated when that series ended. Like its predecessors, Grey’s offers up female characterizations that are meant to contrast with each other.  The bubbly, baking, blonde Izzie is doubtlessly supposed to contrast the hard-nosed, ambitious, emotionally-detached Cristina.  Likewise, the forever suffering, self-reflective, emotionally damaged Meredith is meant to represent a position somewhere in the middle of their continuum (although arguably not always a more desirable one). However, unlike Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City, Grey’s does not necessarily privilege the female characters over the male ones.  In fact, the core cast would actually be incomplete without the men (albeit stereotypically segregated themselves:  Alex and Sloan hovering on the macho end of the masculinity continuum and George and Derek finding rest on the more sensitive end).   

More important than how Grey’s compares to its sister shows in terms of characterization is how it tackles the work/relationship dilemma. Sex in the City existed (at least for most of its tenure) to showcase women choosing careers over family, explorative sexuality over monogamous marriage, etc.  And, of course, life in metropolitan New York (despite exquisite wardrobes, active social circles, and fabulous sex lives) was not quite a feminist utopia for them — they were often “desperately” seeking more. Desperate Housewives took that scenario and turned it on its head.  This show instead showed women who (for the most part) chose family over career and felt “desperately” stifled by their constricted roles and often unsatisfactory marital relationships.  Despite its perfect suburbia backdrop, Wisteria Lane turned out to be no more the feminist ideal than upscale Manhattan. Grey’s Anatomy seems to merge these two extremes and provides viewers with depictions of women who, true to contemporary times, “desperately” want it all:  family and career, love and money, companionship and independence.

One of the central feminist motifs of Grey’s is how the female characters juggle their relationships and their careers, and how both dictate who they are supposed to be according to the overarching cultural hierarchy. Cristina longs to be a sought-after heart surgeon and questions whether she can reach her goal while having anything other than her career in her life. In one of her rare emotional scenes, she approaches Meredith’s mother and asks:  “can I have both,” trying to determine whether accepting Burke’s proposal will sidetrack her successful rise to the top. (Elis, of course, was never able to). Izzie constantly suffers discrimination due to her attractive physical appearance. In season one she was ridiculed for her previous centerfold modeling (despite the fact that it paid for her medical school). In following seasons she still is second guessed by patients and colleagues alike who assume that where there is beauty, there must be no brains. Bailey, often referred to as “the Nazi” due to her strict no-nonsense behavior, is accused of becoming too soft and loses professional respect after she becomes a mother as well as a surgeon. Along with this larger focus, Grey’s also addresses other feminist issues, such as abortion (both Cristina and Addison entertain this choice for different reasons), normative body standards (Callipoe “Callie” Torres [Sara Ramirez] exists as the sole representative of plus-size-six figures), intimacy issues (too many characters apply to this trope to list), and so forth.   

The point is that much more is going on beneath the surface of Grey’s Anatomy than might first be gleaned by the casual viewer. Whether or not this neo-postmodern prime-time soap opera is only an accidental ally of feminism, the show does tackle a myriad of important issues and does so in front of a large viewing audience, of both sexes and various backgrounds, due to its popularity, which very well may be attributed to its stylistic practices and genre adaptation. If Grey’s Anatomy’s success can be attributed to this systematic blending of genre, scholars should be excited concerning the use-value these mutated melodramatic forms may have in the coming years, given that this postmodern televisual trend is not likely to fade away any time soon.  These profitable hybrid-pop cultural creations will endure many decades before they find themselves flatlining.

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Works Cited

Allen, Robert C.  Channels of Discourse Reassembled:  Television and Contemporary Criticism.  Chapel Hill:  The University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Collins, Jim.  “Postmodernism and Television.”  Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: 

Television and Contemporary Criticism.  2^nd ed.  Ed.  Robert C. Allen.  Chapel Hill, North Carolina Press, 1992.

Douglas, Susan J.  Where the Girls Are:  Growing Up Female with Mass Media.  New York:  Three Rivers Press, 1995.

Haralovich, Mary Beth and Lauren Rabinovitz, eds.  Television, History, and American Culture:  Feminist Critical Essays.  Durham:  Duke University Press, 1999.

Johnson, Steven.  Everything Bad is Good for You:  How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.  New York:  Riverhead, 2005.

Ravitz, Justin.  “Desperate Housewives:  No Sweats Allowed.”  Pop Matters.  2004.  7 Feb. 2006.
<https://www.popmatters.com/tv/reviews/d/desperate-housewives-2004.shtml>.

Vause, Mary.  “More Than Just Sex in a City.”  Iris 0.46 (Fall 2003):  76.