Speaking of series – I just saw another large batch of Desperate Housewives episodes yesterday and encountered the probably most awful and most awesome plot device ever.

Consider a relationship that basically works on the fact that it isn’t working; where in every episode you have the feeling that now, finally, those two will get together at last – but of course, they can’t, because that would remove the motivation of the main character, which is in fact, almost exclusively, getting the other one. Letting her reach that target would mean taking them both out of the play. Impossible.

So what do you do? You take out god’s mighty anvil, let it drop onto the supporting character, and let him loose most of his memory. So you can begin, after two seasons, completely fresh, because for one person, everything before never happened.

It’s awful because you can basically see the creators’ despair to break that circle of almost-getting-there-and-screwing-up-in-the-last-minute smeared all over the screen; and how they do it is nothing less than slamming on the emergency brake –

– and it’s awesome because it does work. You do have a clean slate, an alternate reality, without having to resolve to lame spin-offs, imaginary stories or dream sequences.

Now that’s some heavy piece of storytelling …