REALITY
Packaged as a sort of reality Desperate Housewives, this seven-week series is an anthropological study of a handful or so of women in a rich gated community in Southern California. Judging from the first few episodes, no one's got it too desperate. Wouldn't you like to be able to buy a second home (value: $780,000 plus) so you could install your son there and let him attend a different high school? The most touching character, so far, is Lauri Waring, a middle-aged blonde whose divorce has forced her to downsize into a tiny house outside the community. It's as if Nicollette Sheridan were banished from Wisteria Lane and made to live off locusts in the desert.
