Is This What You Call Love? (''Desperate Housewives'')

"Is This What You Call Love?" is the 170th episode of the ABC television series, Desperate Housewives. It is the thirteenth episode of the show's eighth season and was broadcast on February 12, 2012. This is the least watched episode of the series and the lowest rated episode in the 18-49 demographic.

Plot

Since Bree is spending time meeting men at the bar and/or in bed, the only person who can help her is her ex-husband, Orson Hodge, the man who ran over Mike Delfino years ago; Susan finds out that Julie is pregnant; Gabrielle tries to handle a situation at school involving her daughter, Juanita.

Reception

Although it was down from the previous episode, due to CBS's broadcast of the 54th Grammy Awards on the same night, "Is This What You Call Love" managed to place second in its time slot, scoring a 1.8/5 among 18-49s and a 4.0/6 overall, with 6.4 million viewers tuning in.^[1] The episode was competing against 54th Grammy Awards on CBS which was watched by 39.91 million viewers and held 14.4/32 rating in the 18-49 demographic, Family Guy and American Dad!' on Fox which were watched by 5.03 million viewers and held 2.5/5 rating in the 18-49 demographic and by 3.5 million viewers and had a 1.7/4 and Fear Factor on NBC, which averaged 3.7 million viewers and a 1.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic.. With 6.4 million viewers, "Is This What You Call Love?" is currently the least watched episode in the history of the series in both viewers and in the 18-49 demographic but that was expected because of The 54th Grammy Awards, which received a major boost in viewership, due to the tribute to Whitney Houston who died a day earlier. The episode was also competing with The Walking Dead on AMC which broke cable viewership records at the time, with 8.1 million viewers and a 4.2 in the 18-49 demographic.^[2] The episode gained an additional 2.2 million viewers and 1.0 rating in the week following the original broadcast due to DVR recordings.^[3][4]

Notes

• Although credited, Ricardo Antonio Chavira (Carlos Solis) and Doug Savant (Tom Scavo) did not appear in this episode. Charles Mesure (Ben Faulkner) does not appear and is not credited.
• No actors are credited as "Also Starring" in this episode. This is the first time this has happened since the first season.
• The episode title comes from Sondheim's musical Passion.
• When Lynette tells Gaby and Susan about her night, Gaby compares Lynette's situation with buying a car without doing a test-drive, which is exactly the same thing she told Bree in the third season premiere when Bree announced that she got engaged to Orson but didn't have sex with him yet.
• This is the least watched episode of the series, with a decline of 79% in viewers and 87% in adults 18-49 from the series most watched episode. Viewership is down 24.22 million viewers from the season one finale and down 15.24 million viewers from the Pilot episode.

International titles

• German: Das soll also Liebe sein? (Is it supposed to be love?)
• Polish: Ty to nazywasz miłością? (Are you calling it love?)

References