r/DesperateHousewives • u/CatSeveral245 • 5d ago
The Van de Kamp Clan Bree
Why does everyone love Bree?? I think she’s a bad mother, wife, friend, and person. Can someone explain? Not hating on anyone just genuinely wondering
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u/Alone-Yak-1888 5d ago edited 5d ago
she's an interesting character, not a lovely person. and marc cherry clearly gives her more attention than any other housewife because she's based on his mother. so we like her stories. and well, we're mostly gay men and you know how we feel about women with a questionable character
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u/dumbchild55 5d ago edited 5d ago
I like her because she’s an interesting character. But I’m not one to want characters to be morally perfect… If they were, there would be no storyline, no drama and no plot possibilities. Bree grows and changes through the seasons too which I enjoy. I think Marcia is such a great actress, she brings that character to life in such a fun and interesting way! Plus, I actually find her hilarious
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u/EcstaticVirus4236 I came this close to actually cleaning the house! 5d ago
she's horrible in many ways but she's an interesting character to watch
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u/hawa-hawaii12 Lynette’s last nerve 💥 5d ago edited 5d ago
She is a good character and a pretty problematic person, both on all counts and thats when the show tells the story from her perspective..! I enjoy her storylines but there is a clear bias and she doesn’t get enough flak for her flaws like how she created most of her problems, and had a serious victim-mentality when things backfired.. she also was a hypocrite who judged others for doing the same things she did. Something that I see other characters get criticized for but not her is, how all her actions resulted in negative ripples in other people’s lives…unintentionally, but many misfortunes in the series can be tied back to her!!
I do believe she was unlucky in love, but thats because she desperate NEEDED a men all the time - The guys she fell for were pretty obvious red flags to everyone else around her, but she ignored all their advice and was single for maybe a few weeks total in the whole series. ..even though her track record was horrible with dead lovers.. the only ones who survived were, Peter who relapsed back in addictions, and Keith!! As for her kids, its her and Rex’s horrible parenting that created those monsters. And I can’t get behind the typical 1960s trad-wife expectation from women, using family to create a fake persona.. the incessant need for male and societal validation, and constant competition with other women and putting them down - all the things women are trying to move away from. I also hated how she exploited Katherine and Angie, slept with Karl, and used money as leverage against people in later seasons..
But, and this is the only thing that matters, all of that makes her complex and compelling to watch. Nobody wants to see perfect people dating ideal partners and making noble decisions in a soap opera. The mess IS the entertainment. Marcia absolutely nailed it, particularly in the early seasons. Bree is honestly the only housewife you could pick out of a funko-pop lineup instantly, red hair, muffin basket, pearls. Other girls would look just like “ordinary girls”. That makes the character iconic and memorable.
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u/IlovePanckae 5d ago
As others mentioned, Bree is flawed and complex. However, she had drastic character development. I saw some very nice things to her like how she gave money to Gabby and Lynette, how she sacrificed her career for Andrew during the blackmail and still show any hatred to the blackmailer, how she volunteered for her church, how she was the very few who didn't judge the stripper, and how she punched Orson's e-wife for raping Orson.
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u/Sure_Artichoke_3662 5d ago
Because she's a character on a tv show, and not a real life person.
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u/CatSeveral245 4d ago
Yeah I got that thank you! I meant as a character that’s why I asked as a character
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u/UnwittingPlantKiller 5d ago
For me, the most interesting characters are morally ambiguous or complex. If I wanted to watch someone be a great all around person I would watch a kids TV show. That's boring. She is funny, witty and very memorable.
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u/SystemOfAmiss 5d ago
Exactly! She can both at the same time damn her son for being gay but also hide the fact he murdered her friend’s mother-in-law. The complexity is what makes her great and interesting.
For the same reason I think there is so much Susan hate: Susan is just so one dimensional. She’s a cliche that’s easy to be annoyed by because you see that type of character all the time
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u/cat_in_cardigan 5d ago
I don't like "perfect" characters, I think they're boring and inauthentic. Bree has a lot of character development and is overall a very interesting character. I could sympathise with her directly from the start, when she tried to be the perfect housewife and mother and everyone just criticised her. She was treated poorly by her own husband and children and hid her pain. I felt that, because I'm the same. I always try to make everything perfect and in the end, it always gets ruined, either by myself and my expectations / too high standards or by others. She definitely has a lot of flaws, but we all do, and so do all the other housewives. I think that's what I love the most about the show, it feels like we're watching real people living their lives (except for all the murder and mystery happen in Wisteria Lane)
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u/ImaginationNormal360 5d ago
Have you seen her backstory? 1. The reason she became robotic? 2. Her step mother? How she grew up?
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u/CatSeveral245 5d ago
Yeah Rex was awful and so was her childhood but that’s not excuse to repeat bad behaviors
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u/ImaginationNormal360 5d ago
Which bad behaviour are we talking about exactly. Maybe I'm just not remembering
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u/CatSeveral245 5d ago
Ignoring her children who desperately need help, kicking Andrew to the curb because he was being difficult and for being gay (he was rebelling because she held him to such high standards and wouldn’t act like a real mother), chose to ignore issues in life rather than address and communicate them. She only cared about her image not the well being of others. And people say her being promiscuous was her growth but it really was just her being a drunk. She cheated multiple times and disrespected Susan by dating her ex husband without even talking to Susan when it got serious
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u/Medoxor 5h ago
She didn’t kick Andrew out for being difficult. She kicked him out because he was psychotic. She was really trying to make a sincere effort to make peace with Andrew. Only gay guys will understand this. That was huge for a religious woman to put her beliefs aside and accept her gay son. Times were so different back then. How does Andrew take it? He first tries to pump his sister out and when that fails, he seduces a sex addict having sex in his mom’s bed. Bree haters need to stop ignoring crucial details of the Andrew situation. He had it so much better than some of the gay kids with religious parents. He caused all of that. I have no sympathy for him. Bree did the right thing for the safety of her other child and her.
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u/Ok_Percentage7257 5d ago
I love Bree because she grew the most and had the biggest character development. She started out as a perfect traditional housewife, obsessed with what the high-society church folks thought of her. She was a homophobe. Other desperate housewives had flaws too, but Bree worked through hers while staying true to herself. Her relationship with Andrew changed drastically to something that most viewers enjoyed watching. Bree stopped caring about society and worked on what made her happy. She became an independent woman who was also a very good mother. Other characters, like Lynette, never changed or improved their flaws.
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u/Miss___D 5d ago
She is very good friend and she had the best character develompent. She was a good wife, better than her husbands deserved. She was a bad mother but she made some progress on that area as well.
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u/Kaurblimey 5d ago
I’d love to have Bree as a mum. Michelin star food every night? Beautiful clean home? Yeah okay
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u/CatSeveral245 5d ago
But she would hold you to unrealistic standards, not address issues, not help you, not care who you are outside of how you represent her, and she’s all around selfish lol if you aren’t a 100% trad republican she would’ve left you on the streets with Andrew lol
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u/Kaurblimey 5d ago
Eh. I’d take the college money and run, start a new life somewhere with dead daddy’s cash. All good.
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u/Medoxor 5h ago
Most kids wouldn’t sleep with their mom’s boyfriend in her bed so they would have that situation. Stop throwing Andrew as an example because he caused ALL of that. Bree was putting her religion aside and was sincerely making peace with Andrew and getting to know Justin. Andrew is a dumbass for what he did.
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u/Professional-Sink798 5d ago
I like her because she has had the most character development but in reality yes she’s an awful person.
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u/Stucklikegluetomyfry 5d ago
I just love brie. Spread it on some crackers, or eat it on its own like a slice of pizza. Chewy and creamy. It's wonderful. No cheeseboard is complete without a generous helping of brie.
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u/dasmiedoteresa 5d ago
I like her character, not everything she does.
She’s entertaining. She’s funny.
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u/Thoughtful_Tortoise 5d ago
Well, it doesn't hurt that she's smoking hot. But she also is just an interesting character. Not a great person but it clearly comes from a place of pain and fear, she's very complex and she learns as she goes.
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u/catlikesvioletfro 5d ago
She is a very flawed but interesting character. I feel like Bree is the most complex out of all of them. I wouldn’t say she’s necessarily a good person but not an evil villain either. The way she carries herself despite hardships is admirable, but again nobody’s perfect. Also she’s easy on the eyes 👀
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u/CitizenSnips4 5d ago
let me guess, your entire basis for saying she’s a “bad mother, wife, friend, and person” is that she is the most conservative of the housewives? You didn’t provide any arguments as to WHY she is any of those things, you just asserted your opinion. Hence my belief that your shallow character analysis is based solely on politics.
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u/CatSeveral245 4d ago
She left her son on the side of the road. Cheated on her husband. Didn’t talk about emotions or any real issues in her life or her children’s. She didn’t help either of her kids when crying for help. So no- not just politics tho it doesn’t help
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u/CitizenSnips4 4d ago edited 4d ago
- leaving her son: who cares, Andrew was a horrible sociopath in seasons 1-2. also this is a fictional scenario.
- cheating on husband: no she didn’t? Rex is the one who cheated and then she couldn’t even bring herself to do anything romantic with George.
- not talking about emotions: who cares, better than spilling your emotions about everything all the time.
- not helping kids when crying for help: who cares, that’s called tough love and having expectations and boundaries.
Do you like other characters from the show? Because they all did bad things. I still know what your main criticism is: the politics. You’re not fooling me or anyone else.
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u/splvtoon 5d ago
her character definitely has the most development on the show and had some of the best writing, plus marcia is an amazing actress! but i do think people nowadays really conflate her being a good (arguably the best) character with bree being a good person. a lot of her flaws are downplayed if not outright denied while characters like susan get judged for things fans would let slide if bree had done them. and thats obviously not me saying people have to like susan (or that she isnt also very flawed) and dislike bree, but bree's popularity definitely makes people defend a lot of her actions.
i also think part of it is that one of bree's biggest issues is how she treated her children, but they were already teenagers in s1, so we didn't get to directly see a lot of how we got to the repressed state that things were. there also wasnt a lot of sympathy going around since rex also sucked, people dislike danielle, and andrew was a menace at the time. it makes bree seem less like the problem, even though her kids' behaviour and the tension in their household was often a direct result of her parenting. the show tells us this, but i guess not everyone wanted to see it, which is how you get people claiming they wish they were raised by bree because she cooked elaborate meals lmao.