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Dear Marc Cherry,

I can suspend disbelief on a lot of things that happen in “Desperate Housewives.” The annual disaster right before the season takes a break between Christmas and New Year’s, for example. But there’s one thing that eats at me more and more as time goes on.

Time.

This show has messed with time more than “Lost,” “Quantum Leap” and “Back To The Future” combined. Except those shows acknowledged they messed with time. I just would at one point to have a character acknowledge that Parker used to be a year or two older than the twins, not five years younger. But I digress.

Last night’s episode pegs MJ as being 9. MJ was born right before “Desperate Housewives” jumped ahead five years. Thus, if he was born at the end of season 4, which ended with the five-year jump, he was 5 years old at the beginning of season 5, right? And if it’s season 7 now, and he’s 9, then did the last two seasons take four years?

It couldn’t have been last year that took that much time, because Lynette was pregnant with Paige from the end of the fifth season to the end of the sixth. And Paige is still a baby, hence the Susan-as-nanny plotline.

Which leads me, Mr. Cherry, to believe that season 5 took three years. Thus, the only logical explanation for MJ not aging to look like a 9-year-old is that he must be like Gary Coleman.

Of course, if MJ is 9, we have yet another problem, Marc Cherry. At the beginning of this season, Bree confessed that “10 years ago,” Andrew ran over Mama Solis. That was before the five-year jump, which MJ’s age establishes as 9 years ago. But that was also one of the first things in “Desperate Housewives.” Thus, we’d be led to believe that all of the first four seasons happened in one year? Danielle’s pregnancy? The Chinese housekeeper’s pregnancy? The poor boy locked in the basement?

And what about Tom having an affair with Renee 20 years ago? Wouldn’t that be when he would have impregnated Nora, before he knew Lynette?

This is just redonkulous. More redonkulous that the supermarket shoot-out, the tornado, the nightclub fire, the Christmas plane crash and the felon riot combined.

I’m worried that this is setting us up for the eventual “Desperate Housewives” finale, when we learn it was all in Mary Alice’s head right before she shoots herself, and that the series was a sham. It was done by “Dallas,” though. But then again, so was the “Who shot the bastard that no one likes” plotline currently unfolding on Wisteria Lane.

But don’t worry, Marc Cherry. This does not mean I won’t watch. Clearly, I’m watching. So, if your gimmick is to mess with our heads and have us checking calendars, we’ll keep watching.
–PMG.