Wikipedia:Peer review/Pilot (Desperate Housewives)/archive1

Pilot (Desperate Housewives)

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I've listed this article for peer review because I hope to improve it to at least good article status. I am particularly concerned with the Casting and Filming sections.

Thanks, Akcvtt (talk) 01:05, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: Looks generally good. I have several suggestions for further improvement.

Overlinking

I would not link the names of the actors or characters more than once in the lead plus once in the main text. For example, Susan Mayer and Teri Hatcher are linked once each in the lead, again in the "Plot" section, again in "Casting", as well as in the infobox. I'd at least remove the repetitious links from "Casting" and probably the repetitious ones from the infobox. It's a short article, and readers will not find all of these links useful. Also, I would not bother to link "swimming pool", and I would not link "slut" more than once in the article; it's linked in "Plot" and "Casting".

Lead

"struggles with the disillusion of her marriage to Rex (Steven Culp)" - The word disillusion is so close to dissolution that I'd suggest altering the sentence to simply say, "struggles with her failing marriage to Rex (Steven Culp)".

Plot

"a plumber who has recently moved onto Wisteria Lane" - Maybe just "to Wisteria Lane" since "onto" would put him in the middle of the street.

"Meanwhile, Gabrielle, a former model, grows increasingly unhappy with her marriage to Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira), who buys her love with extravagant gifts, and continues an affair with her sixteen-year-old gardener, John Rowland (Jesse Metcalfe)." - It's not completely clear from this whether Gabrielle is having an affair with John or whether Ricardo is having an affair with John. Suggestion: "Meanwhile, Gabrielle, a former model, grows increasingly unhappy with her marriage to Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira), who buys her love with extravagant gifts. She continues an affair with her 16-year-old gardener, John Rowland (Jesse Metcalfe)."

Creation and development

"The network ordered thirteen episodes of the series." - Numbers bigger than nine are usually written as digits unless they start a sentence; i.e., 13 rather than thirteen.

Casting

"Marcia Cross, who originally auditioned for the role of deceased series narrator Mary Alice Young, was cast in the role of "Stepfordish perfect homemaker" Bree Van de Kamp." - Words inside direct quotes should not be linked since the links were not part of the original. You might use a work-around like this: [Marcia Cross]], who originally auditioned for the role of deceased series narrator Mary Alice Young, was cast in the role of Bree Van de Kamp, a "perfect homemaker" reminiscent of The Stepford Wives.

Filming and subsequent casting changes

"Filming took place for thirteen days in March 2004.[3] ABC picked up the series for thirteen episodes" - Change to 13 and 13?

Ratings

"among the demographic of women from ages 18 to 49" - Tighten to "among women aged 18 to 49"?

Critical reception

"[a]s involving as any new drama and funnier than any new sitcom [because it] matches high visual style with a witty-but-never arch sensibility." - The first set of brackets look odd. Maybe putting the "as" outside the quotes would make this tidier; i.e., as "involving as any new... "? Ditto for at least some of the other brackets. They make the text harder to read; sometimes they are necessary and useful, but it's good to keep them to a minimum.

"tragique tribute and back again" - Is the misspelling of "tragic" in the original?

Quote boxes

Curly quotation marks are generally frowned upon in Wikipedia articles since they don't follow house style. (See WP:MOSQUOTE) Just use normal quotation marks snug against the quotes.

References

In citations 37 through 40, use Wikipedia house style for the search-engine data; e.g., "Felicity Huffman" rather than "FELICITY HUFFMAN". Ditto for the other words in all-caps.

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog at WP:PR; that is where I found this one. I don't usually watch the PR archives or check corrections or changes. If my comments are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]