BASEMENT SALE

After a wonderfully tight, comic first season, built on a well-crafted mystery about Mary Alice's death, "Desperate Housewives" lost its way. When the show returned for the second season, it was a cartoon version of itself, filled with stupid slapstick and time-killing plotlines. There was no unity or intrigue. The worst of the worst was the addition of Alfre Woodard as Betty Applewhite, a secretive single mother with a son locked up in the basement. The mystery unfurled painfully slowly, almost grudgingly, as if the writers regretted introducing Betty and her sons. Woodard, who should have been great, fizzled, and the show never quite recovered its magic.