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NO MORE BLACK PEOPLE ON WISTERIA LANE: Mechad Brooks disappointed in the Applewhites’ storyline and resolution.
*After months of watching and waiting for the creepy Applewhite storyline on “Desperate Housewives” to develop into the big bombshell promised early on by series creator Marc Cherry, the resolution finally came Sunday during the season finale, leaving at least one of the Applewhite actors a bit disappointed.
While the drama’s main characters were busy falling in and out of love, committing adultery, abandoning kids and burning houses down throughout the second season, the Applewhites stayed busy doing absolutely nothing but keeping their disturbing secret.
“It’s been frustrating,” Mechad Brooks (Matthew Applewhite) told USA Today of their storyline. “It didn’t pan out. The show is called ‘Desperate Housewives’; it’s not called ‘the Applewhites,’ and Betty Applewhite (Alfre Woodard) wasn’t quite incorporated.”
Brooks says the show’s underutilization of Woodard was puzzling: “You have one of the greatest actresses of our time. …I don’t want to say that her talent was squandered, but a lot of people expected a lot more. And I’m one of those people.”
The Applewhites’ story, however, was finally told in full, with flashbacks to their life in Chicago to boot. [SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading if you have it taped and haven’t seen it yet.]
After a full season of watching the Applewhite brothers freak out the entire neighborhood engaging in one black male stereotype after another, (the mentally impaired brother Caleb often ended up scaring neighbors by emerging from the shadows of their homes; once he was tricked into forcing himself sexually on his brother’s white girlfriend), we find out in the finale that it wasn’t Caleb who killed a girl back in Chicago, but rather his brother Matthew.
Matthew and his current girlfriend, next door neighbor Danielle Van De Kamp, had stolen her mother Bree’s money and were about to run off together into the sunset when Bree showed up unexpectedly and blocked their exit in an “over my dead body” showdown. Matthew pulled a gun on Bree, (another stereotype), but was taken down by a police sniper (thanks to Betty’s 911 call) before he could fire a shot.
It’s the most action the Applewhites have seen since Caleb broke free from his chains in the family basement and took off down Wisteria Lane.
“There was seniority and priority, and we were marginalized and completely segregated from every family except the Van De Kamps,” Brooks said of their characters.
Needless to say, the Applewhites have been written out of the show for next season to focus more attention on the five main characters, Susan, Lynette, Bree, Edie and Gabrielle. And word has it that Susan’s on-off again boyfriend, plumber Mike Delfino, will be a main focus of season three.
Matthew’s death, meanwhile, is one of several sore points Brooks says capped off the 12 months since he was cast in the role.
“I had a really rough personal year,” he says. “The relationship that I was in was completely butting heads with my work. And I lost sleep over a stalker. He found me and gave me a script to read.”
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