And, no doubt, there will be those who will argue both sides of the outcome.

DREA'S DESPERATE: ABC has announced that there will be a new resident on Wisteria Lane this fall — Drea de Matteo will join the ranks of the "Desperate Housewives."

This is good news, because de Matteo is great fun to watch. Best known for her role as mob girlfriend turned FBI informant turned corpse on "The Sopranos," she also played Joey's older sister on the "Friends" spinoff, "Joey."

It wasn't a great show, but de Matteo was very good in it. Better than the material she had to work with.

And, judging by the past couple of seasons of "Desperate Housewives," she should have better material.

While "Housewives" was an out-of-the-box hit and got all kinds of acclaim for its first season, the show is actually much better now than it was then. Yes, it was funny, and the characters were great that first season, but there were problems with the show. Storylines and characters would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time — it just wasn't well structured.

But creator/executive producer Marc Cherry, after suffering through a rather tough sophomore slump in the second season, rallied in Seasons 3, 4 and 5. The show remains as funny as it ever was, and the soap-opera plotting has gotten better and better.

"Desperate Housewives" Great Leap Forward — the show jumped ahead five years at the end of Season 4 and remained there for Season 5 — was a rousing success.

According to ABC, de Matteo will play a native New Yorker who moves to Fairview with her (yet-to-be-cast) husband and teenage son.

And, no doubt, she'll bring some kind of secret along with her.

Can't wait until Sept. 27, when the seventh season of "Desperate Housewives" is slated to begin.

E-mail: pierce@desnews.com