Welcome to Wisteria Lane. Now go home, before we corrupt you with adultery, arson, and our sordid affairs before the hour is up.

Wisteria Lane—the now-infamous street where ABC’s Desperate Housewives reside—is a street filled with contrasts. How to be beautiful and painfully lonely at the same time. How to hide your marital secrets while placing your best muffins on the table. How to have an affair and not get caught.

In short, it’s a daytime soap with a prime time audience. And people across the country are lapping it up.

Housewives took hold of the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings with more than 21 million viewers tuning in for the pilot episode.  Episodes two and three garnered similar numbers.  Audiences and critics alike have deemed “Desperate Housewives” the biggest hit of the fall season.

Why is that?

Some have admitted to liking the show as much for what it is not as for what it actually is.  Diane Masiello of Valrico, Florida, puts it this way: “I’m so sick of reality TV, and this show definitely does not portray anything close to any reality I have ever known. It’s fun. It’s fantasy. It’s escape.”

Sacramento’s Sandra Giarde echoes this sentiment. “For me, it’s nice to see an hour drama that does not revolve around a crime scene lab, police station or District Attorney’s office.”

So fine, it’s not “Survivor” and it’s not “CSI.” Which begs the question – what exactly is it?

For starters, it is sex – adultery, to be precise.  Eva Longoria plays Gabrielle, the outwardly happy but desperately unsatisfied trophy wife of the neighborhood. She’s married to Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira), an uber-successful husband who drops diamond watches and new cars on his wife like the rest of us might drop $4.95 on a box of Tide. Diamonds aside, Gabrielle prefers the affection of her 17-year-old gardener to that of her husband, to the point of sneaking into said teenager’s bedroom when he gets home from high school for a little afternoon delight.

What exactly is it? It is secrets. Picture perfect wife and mother Bree (played by Marcia Cross, who gained popularity in the 90s as Kimberly Shaw on “Melrose Place”) is best described as part June Cleaver with a serious dash of Stepford Wife thrown in for good measure. She’s got perfect hair, makes a mean potpourri, and has mastered the art of small talk. She’s also trying desperately hard to hide the fact that she and her husband are in marriage counseling and considering a divorce. Because when it comes to relating to her family, Bree has a lot of work to do. She’d rather mend a loose button and pack a stellar lunch before she’ll talk about her feelings.

Wisteria Lane is also home to Susan (Teri Hatcher), a divorced mom and part-time arsonist trying to raise a teenage daughter, all the while competing with the lust-driven Edie (Nicollette Sheridan of “Knots Landing” fame) for the attention of the latest widower to move onto the street.  Last but not least, Lynette (played to perfection by Felicity Huffman) is a business woman and mother of four who leaves her high-powered, high-paying job in order to devote more time to her family. She soon finds that her three sons have become unsightly monsters during her tenure as a business executive.

To it’s credit, the show has its moments. At times it can be laugh-out-loud funny, thanks in large part to the subtle yet undeniable comedic expertise of Felicity Huffman.

The show also has moments of universalism – scenes of everyday life that most wives and moms can relate to.  From arguments with an ex over child support to utter frustration when the kids just won’t sit still in the car, Housewives indeed has drop-dead moments of realism.

But therein lays the show’s fundamental problem. Throw in a dash of realism, even the smallest particle, and audiences will expect more. Unfortunately, the “more” we get with “Desperate Housewives” is a dubious more: more affairs, more secrets, and more situations better suited to late-night TV than prime-time viewing.

Gabrielle is the show’s biggest violator. She’s a housewife with a very relatable problem - she’s unhappy that her husband isn’t around as much as he used to be. She’s concerned that the excitement has gone out of their marriage.

Pretty realistic, right?

So what does she do? She has sex with her teenage lawn boy. Over and over and over again.  During the second episode, boy-du-jour John (played by Jesse Metcalfe in an any-opportunity-to-take-his-shirt-off role) asks Gabrielle why she’s having an affair with him if she still loves her husband. Gabrielle responds “because I don’t want to wake up one morning with a sudden urge to blow my brains out.”

Still seem realistic?

Let me get this straight.  The key to fixing an unhappy marriage can be found in the arms of the lawn boy. Because that’s what most people would do - right?

Wrong. But it’s a delicate line to walk, because the situation starts out quite normal. Gabrielle’s marital crisis is so highly relatable yet the solution she comes up with makes our head spin.

Give us pure fiction or pure reality and we understand the difference. But combine the two and you have a ready-made mess on your hands.

This delicate line is made even clearer by Lynette.  She’s struggling to work herself back into a mom role after many years as a business woman. Her kids act up at every moment imaginable, and her frustration at her own parental ineffectiveness is apparent. Yet after watching her out-of-control kids for mere seconds, it doesn’t take a modern-day Einstein to realize that if perhaps Lynette had just stayed home with the kids in the first place, they might not have turned into such holy terrors on two legs.

The danger of throwing these real-life snippets into an otherwise fantasy show is that people run the risk of falling for them. They want to see more real-life. And ABC promptly steps in and shifts that reality severely.

And not to leave them out, but what about the husbands? An admitted fan of the show, Masiello concedes: “What husbands? I mean, I know they exist, but we don’t know anything about them. From my experience, no dads or husbands are anywhere near as absent as the men on that show.”

So what can we do with this new show that is one part reality for every three parts fiction, and tawdry fiction at that? We can be careful.  For starters, we can make sure our kids don’t see it – that part seems obvious. We can also make our best attempt to suspend reality when watching it. Good luck with that.

And, if all else fails, we can turn it off.