UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Mom put a bullet through her brain. Dad
bludgeoned the nosy neighbor lady with a blender. And their psycho
son may or may not have killed his baby sister. Could the Young
family of TV's Desperate Housewives get any more dangerous?
Oh, yes. The evil insanity has only just begun, as we'll begin to
see Sunday night in the first of Housewives' only two new episodes
this month (9 ET/PT, ABC).

On a recent evening outing to the Young family home on Wisteria
Lane, the actors who portray TV's most dysfunctional family — Brenda
Strong (Mary Alice), Mark Moses (Paul) and Cody Kasch(Zach) — found
it a little unsettling to be grouped together.

Aside from a brief scene in the pilot showing Mary Alice bringing
Paul and Zach their breakfast, the family has not been depicted as a
unit.

(After her mysterious suicide, Mary Alice has been heard only as the
show's narrator, shown in brief flashbacks and, once, envisioned as
a haunting presence by Felicity Huffman's Lynette.)

"Usually it's just Zach and I sitting at the dinner table with the
ghost of Mom," says Moses, 44, a happily married father of two sons,
who is in a particularly good mood this evening. He just shot his
first kissing scene — the genesis of a possible romance set to hatch
in early March.

Around the holidays, Housewives creator Marc Cherry took each of
these three actors aside to let him or her in on what the rest of
America is dying to know: what horrible secret occurred 12 years ago
involving Zach's little sister, Dana.

"We got into a situation where the scenes weren't making much sense
to us because our characters knew the secret and we didn't," says
Kasch, 17, who lives with his parents, two brothers and sister, all
actors. When Cherry revealed the big secret to him, Kasch was
dumbfounded. "It's the least likely thing you can think of. So
incredibly random — but so great!"

Cherry pulled Strong aside at a Christmas party and, as she recalls,
told her, "I think it's time I told you about Mary Alice." The
actress says part of her didn't want to know. But at the same time,
she was relieved to finally "make peace" with her character's
past. "It deepened my sense of compassion for Mary Alice. It was
really hard for her to live with what she did."

Says Strong, the real-life married mom of a 10-year-old son who goes
by his middle name, Zak: "The beauty of the Young family is this
terrible secret binds us and tears us apart."

The 44-year-old actress survived her own personal family crisis when
her brother, Steve, after a painfully drawn-out 20-year illness,
succumbed to a brain tumor when Strong was 29.

"His progressive illness brought our family together," she
says, "and when he died it sort of healed the family. I know it
sounds trite, but I think we all have people who are looking out for
us."

Kasch remembers his hippie-like family being considered the town
oddballs when they lived in Ojai, Calif., before relocating to
L.A. "We endured a lot of segregation," Kasch says. Kasch and his
siblings were not welcomed into certain schools or social functions,
but that, he says, "made our family stronger."

But there seems little hope of a happy ending for the oddball
Youngs. And the same might be true for at least one of their
portrayers. Considering Paul's violent streak, how long can Moses
remain part of the cast before his character is stopped? Cherry says
he expects to bring all three Youngs back next season — and Strong
is contracted to be both heard and seen throughout the series'
anticipated seven-year run.

"I've been led to believe by our creator that Mary Alice will
continue to live on through Zach," Strong says. "Mary Alice will not
die with the mystery."

This Sunday, more pieces of the puzzle come together. And beginning
this spring, flashbacks of Mary Alice will begin airing as the
mystery reaches its shocking season-ending climax.

No one is looking forward to those scenes more than Strong, who
acknowledges some frustration over playing a rarely seen character.

"There is an element of restriction that comes inherently with being
dead," she says in that melodic Mary Alice tone. "But I have to say
it's a really great gig."

(Moderator's comment: I'm afraid I'm not too happy about this.
Sounds like Mary Alice is going to become just another Julia Brown.
And if we are seeing so little of her this season, we'll probably
see even less when the mistery is over.)