Lynette Scavo

Lynette Scavo
File:Dh 1024x768 huffman 01.jpg Felicity Huffman as Lynette
First appearance	Pilot (episode 1.01)
Created by	Marc Cherry
Portrayed by	Felicity Huffman
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Occupation	Marketing Executive former housewife
Family	Rodney Scavo (father-in-law) Allison Scavo (mother-in-law) unnamed mother and sisters
Spouse	Tom Scavo
Children	Preston & Porter Scavo Parker Scavo Penny Scavo

Lynette Scavo is the name of a fictional character on the ABC television series Desperate Housewives. The character is played by actress Felicity Huffman.

History

Lynette Scavo represents that person inside all of us who just can't seem to hold it together. She is loveable because of her chaotic life, her struggles and, most important, her ability to be honest about them. How could anyone cope with the family Lynette has? She used to be a high-powered ad exec but now her husband Tom travels almost all the time and her ADD afflicted boys and infant daughter are driving her crazy. It is as though she took a new job she thought she would love, and now she desperately misses her old one. It's not that she doesn't love her children, but like many women, she doesn't love being a stay-at-home mother.

It doesn't help that her children are impossible to handle. But Lynette is so driven that she tries to apply the same go-getter methods she used at work to being a mom. And it doesn't always work. Worse, Tom seems to have no idea how harried she is. He's oblivious to her plight, and his cluelessness only fuels her frustration.

Lynette is fearless and able to say it like it is. When the worlds scariest stay-at-home mother, Maisy Gibbons, insists on a politically correct version of Little Red Riding Hood the impressionable Lynette gives Maisy a talking to, even offering to "throw down" outside. But Lynette, although a toughie, is also an intense overachiever, and in her frenzied attempt to get the costumes made on time, she winds up getting hooked on her sons' ADD medication. The career woman who once had it all begins to unravel, realizing shes not cut out for the life she leads.

Strung out and exhausted, she hallucinates that Mary Alice is offering her a revolver. When she finally calms down, she admits to Bree and Susan, in one of the most moving scenes of the show, that she thinks she's a terrible mother. This admission itself only becomes more painful to Lynette when her friends confess that they too found motherhood challenging. For the first time Lynette realizes that no one has an easy time of motherhood, and she sobs to the girls, "We should tell each other this stuff."

Seeking a solution to their problems, Tom and Lynette hire a nanny, but she turns out to be a little bit too attractive to keep around. Then, when Tom is offered a lucrative promotion that entails him travelling for work even more, Lynette finds a way to ensure that the offer is retracted.

Frazzled, but smart and willful, Lynette is a mother and wife who, unlike many others, wonders how generations of women did it before them. Nostalgic for her old days on the career path, she is ambivalent and frustrated with the challenges of what is supposed to be a placid, ideal life. As she begins to see what's right for her family might not be right for her, Lynette displays mettle we haven't seen before. When Tom quits his job and decides to be a stay-at-home dad, Lynette is torn by her desire to return to work and anxiety about leaving her kids.