Is Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria for Real?

One Man's Take on the Breakout Star of Desperate Housewives

When I first heard of Desperate Housewives, I immediately did not care. As the summer of 2004 wore on, I kept hearing buzz after buzz of the show. Never in my young life had I heard of a show that was being plugged as incessantly as this satire about five women living, loving and killing on Wisteria Lane.

I did not watch the premiere, and as of yet I have yet to sit through an entire show. Yet every time I turned on the television, got online, or turned on the radio, I was being bombarded with Desperate Housewives this, Desperate Housewives that. The show has only started its second season, and already it is overrated.

Felicity Huffman notwithstanding, the actresses aren't that great. The plot is too far fetched and campy, even for a gay man like me. But I am not here to talk about the show. I am here to talk about an actress who has, in the last year, become the center of the pop culture universe. She is, of course, Eva Longoria.

Ms. Longoria, a beauty queen from Corpus Christi, Texas, was a relative nobody until she signed on to Desperate Housewives. Sure, she was on The Young and the Restless from 2001 to 2003, but it wasn't like she was Susan Lucci or Erika Slezak. Upon DH's massive debut on ABC, people starting talking about her.

I did not really care about her. To me, she was no different from any one of the starlets in Hollywood. But I slowly starting getting annoyed with her. As the first season progressed, she started appearing on virtually every magazine cover in the universe: People, OK, Us Weekly, etc. I was surprised that she hadn't graced the cover of Cook's Illustrated! Oh, and don't get me started on that vibrator thing in Rolling Stone.

And then, in July of this year, something "shocking" happened. The Emmy nominations were announced, and forecasters were predicting that the show would nab the most nominations and give all five women a shot at the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series award.