Entertainment Weekly revealed part of the argument for the defense of the creator of Desperate Housewives against a suit from one of the actresses who was killed off in season 5:

Cherry’s attorneys also pointed out that Sheridan was never officially a series lead, and showed a seven-minute video of 48 deaths in the history of Housewives  – now in its eighth, and final, season – illustrating that shootings, stabbings, and car crashes are de rigueur on the suburban street.

Desperate Housewives is in a long line of suburban critiques where suburban residents are driven to all sorts of crazy acts because of their perfect-appearing yet ultimately stifling houses and families. In other words, this is a hyperbolic and distorted view of suburban life though it is the common image in books, movies, and television (see another example currently on Suburgatory). But this might be some kind of record for violence in even the stereotyped suburbs. Were this to happen in a real-life neighborhood similar to the kind of middle- to upper-class enclave depicted by Wisteria Lane, neighbors and local officials would have been on this issue a long time ago. Perhaps this run of 48 deaths is an odd convergence of two popular media themes: the trivialization of suburban life combined with the trivialization of violence.