Network Skin

I didn't manage to make it to a strip club this week. But ABC TV helped me out via the new hit show: "Desperate Housewives". I should have known that sooner or later one of the characters would, even on a Sunday night in primetime, find their way into a strip club for an extended scene.

If you haven't seen the show yet, it's ABC's attempt at a spicy nighttime soap opera. The desperate housewives in question include:

- a "Stepford Wives" type, but a prissy and controlling one
- a spicy hispanic hottie who's cheating on her hubby with the lawnmower kid
- a normal mom with out of control kids
- a harried recent divorcee' (Terri Hatcher) who's competing for the only eligible bachelor on the block with the other divorcee (Nicolette Sheridan - one of my old favorites from "Knot's Landing" and still looking excellent)

So who goes to the strip club? Prissy wife's son who, after founding out that his dad left his mom, goes to a bar to strip club to drown his sorrows. Prissy mom figures it out and shows up to bring him home. When he refuses to go, Prissy mom pulls up a chair alongside him to wait him out and "see what all the fuss is about" at the club.

Okay, picture that for a minute. Your mom sitting with you at a strip club stage. Talk about a buzzkill.

By the way, I'd have to rate the strip club scene as moderately authentic for a local dive strip club. A little spartan and depressing. Sexy dancers though.

But the strip club scene was upstaged by the polite divorcee catfight over the bachelor. While the bachelor was working on his lawn with his shirt off, still-sexy Nicolette Sheridan came out to wash her car. Standard wet T-shirt, short shorts, very wet and very sexy car wash. Yeow!

I know the World Series was on, but come on! They're desperate housewives, already. What strip club regular worth his salt would choose the game?