See Also: James Denton (Mike Delfino) People Guide

Getting tired of the many Desperate Housewives pre-emptions and reruns? According to James Denton (Mike Delfino), next year the show will be around more often.

"They're bringing us back early because they want to do more episdes," Denton told the Chicago-based Northwest Herald, when asked about the length of his summer hiatus. In addition, he said the stars of the show are going to use the break in filming to "do international press."

This season, Desperate Housewives originally started out with a 13-episode order, which was extended to a full 22 when the show proved to be a success. Since then, ABC has asked the producers to film one additional episode of the show, bringing the total for this year to 23, similar to other hit shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Very few shows produce more than 23 episodes in a single year, primarily due to the strain it places on the cast and production crew.

But Denton said he doesn't mind the extra work. "Because we're not kids, we get how lucky we are. It gives me a little bit of security because I could get killed off, but somebody may want me now that I've been on Desperate Housewives."

For ABC, having a longer season means it wouldn't have to pre-empt the show as often as it has been doing so far. The network has been faced with the problem of simply not having enough installments of the show to air only first-run episodes between September and May. Usually, TV network solve this problem by airing reruns instead, but as Desperate Housewives has a strong continuing storyline, and shows like that don't tend to repeat as well as shows with mostly standalone episodes, ABC has been forced to instead air different programs in the DH timeslot. Most recently, they used the Sunday 9:00pm slot to launch their new comedy Jake in Progress (story).

Although Denton did not mention by how many episodes the second season will be extended, it will likely be only a few more episodes. Thanks go out to Seth Forbes for transcribing the original article from the Northwest Herald!

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