The 'Desperate Housewives' Trial Is Bonkers

I don’t know how many of you have been following Nicollette Sheridan’s wrongful termination suit against “Desperate Housewives” creator Marc Cherry, but allow me to recap it for those of you who haven’t: it is insane. Like, telenovela insane. Vulture put together some of the highlights from Friday, including tweets from The Daily Beast’s MariaElena Fernandez, who is heroically covering this circus blow-by-blow, but allow me to use my fancy legal education to break it all down for you in layman’s terms.

Basically Cherry slapped her one day on set and Sheridan was all “OW! You owe me an apology,” and Cherry was like “OK, I’m sorry,” and then Sheridan was all “Not good enough! Buy me flowers, too,” and Cherry was like “Pfft. Nope.” So then Sheridan was pissed and Cherry was all “Relax, baby” but she wouldn’t relax and then her character got killed off and she was all “This is wrongful termination because you fired me because I was pissed about you slapping me” and Cherry was like “Baby, I said relax. It was a creative decision,” and then everybody got in a van and went to court. On Friday Sheridan took the stand and was like “All that stuff happened except the stuff he says” and her lawyer was all “So he slapped you?” and she was like “Yup” and he was all “How hard? Show me,” and then she slapped the sh-t out of her lawyer in court, and then the other lawyer cross-examined her and asked her a bunch of questions and she cried. Then everybody watched a seven-minute montage of all 43 deaths that have happened on the show and they all went home for the weekend.

That brings us up to this afternoon, when Cherry is scheduled to take the stand. My official legal analysis of this whole situation is that they should make one of those death montage videos for “Justified” and “The Wire” and mail it to my house. That would be great.

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