Let's begin...
Desperate Housewives, ABC, Sundays 9pm
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Okay. So there was this woman named Mary Alice Young, who lived in a Connecticut suburb called Fairview, on a street called Wisteria Lane, with her husband Paul, and their son Zach. One day she killed herself, and now she narrates this series. She left behind four friends (all of whom we like): Susan Mayer, who is divorced and raising her teenage daughter Julie (who we kinda like) alone; Lynette Scavo, a former career woman who's now raising four young, immensely troublesome, stress-inducing children while her husband Tom spends most of his time at work; Bree Van De Kamp, who is pretty much like Martha Stewart (with just a touch of Adrian Monk), and her husband Rex doesn't like who she's become (though that's not his main problem), and they go into marriage counseling, which Bree doesn't like; and Gabrielle Solis, an ex-model who married a rich businessman, Carlos, but the excitement has gone out of the marriage, and now she's having an affair with their 17-year-old gardener, John. These four women find a note among Mary Alice's belongings which suggests she did something awful, and this will be a great mystery, the over-arching mystery of the first season.
Paul doesn't want to talk about Mary Alice with anyone, even Zach, who wishes he would talk about her. Meanwhile, a plumber named Mike Delfino just moved into the neighborhood, and Susan is interested in him, but has a rival in another woman, Edie Britt (who I will grudgingly admit that we perhaps like, though we really can't stand her). Meanwhile, tangential mysteries arise, such as who was blackmailing Mary Alice, and why. Another neighbor, Martha Huber, is murdered at one point, and the mystery of who killed her and why will of course tie in to the mysteries about Mary Alice. Also Mike has a mysterious past, which- you guessed it- ties in to the other mysteries. After Mrs. Huber is murdered, her sister, Felicia Tilman (who never liked her) moves to town, and she'll eventually help tie everything together. Yes, everything will be revealed by the end of the first season, including some more related myseteries, which I don't want to mention because they're so intrinsically tied to the greater mysteries... I don't want to give anything away about any of this. In fact I fear I've already said far too much.
Meanwhile... aside from all of the mysteries which the four friends intermittently wonder about, they all have some terribly complicated and interesting, if commonplace (compared to murder) dramas going on in their personal lives. My initial descriptions of each of them barely hints at some of the things going on in their lives, and doesn't begin to hint at some of the things that develop... The shows' mysteries actually are sort of incidental to the main characters' personal drama. And there's plenty of humor, both light and dark. Anyway, as with the mysteries, I don't want to give anything away about that, either. I will say, however, that just as all the mysteries are being wrapped up at the end of the first season, a new family moves to town (Betty Applewhite and her son, Matthew), who will provide the over-arcing mystery of season 2.... Which most critics and fans will agree wasn't as good as season 1. And I can't think of much to say about the season or its mystery.
And now season 3 has begun. And really, to say anything at all about it would require spoiling events from the first 2 seasons, but with any luck it'll be better than season 2 was. Not that I was wild about season one, nor disliked season 2, but whatever. The whole series is just okay in my book, good enough to keep watching. And... I dunno, maybe there's no point in describing each season's mysteries or anything, anyway. Maybe it's enough just to say that the series has mysteries and personal drama and humor and, you know, eye candy. And leave it at that.