And — again, without giving anything away — after watching the first two hours, The Great Leap Forward really does look like a great idea. By jumping ahead five years, "Desperate Housewives" has been rejuvenated.

Cherry promises that while he's bringing the show back to earth, it won't stay there indefinitely.

"Of course, the ball will start rolling and pick up steam as the year goes on," he said. "But I thought it would be a good chance to do something interesting and give everyone some challenges.

"That's what I love about my gals is that, for all the glamour, they're all actresses first. And that can't be said on some TV shows because I have friends who constantly marvel at what my gals allow me to do and how ridiculously silly I make them and how wickedly driven I make the characters, but they really go with me. And I've always been very fortunate in that regard."

LONGORIA PARKER said she's excited about the chance "to really start from scratch and explore more things" about her character. And it's a chance "to play something other than glamour."

"I love it, because I come into hair and makeup now and it's like 10 minutes instead of two hours," she said. "I wake up and go straight to set."

But it wasn't that easy. The early attempts to make her frumpy didn't work.

"I said, 'You know, she's not looking bad enough. Take off all her makeup.' And they did, and she looked like a 12-year-old," Cherry said. "And it became a big topic of conversation on our set — that it is really hard to make Eva Longoria look bad."

Longoria Parker is outfitted with a whole bunch of padding, and the makeup people draw dark circles under her eyes. And she said she got a "mom haircut ... because I didn't want to wear a wig once he told me how long it was going to last."

How long will it last?

"We'll get her back to looking glamorous somewhere in the middle of the season, I would think," Cherry said.

For now, though, it's "a challenge just because there are levels of frumpiness," Longoria Parker said. "She does have her past and she was a runway model. So, in her frumpiness, there's efforts of trying to be glamorous and it's just tragic."

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com