Susan Delfino

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Susan Delfino

Name

Susan Delfino

Age

46

Marital Status

Married

First seen

Pilot

Status

Alive

Occupation

Elementary School Teacher
Children's Book Illustrator

Portrayed by

Teri Hatcher

"It was common knowledge on Wisteria Lane that where Susan went, bad luck was sure to follow. Her misfortunes ranged from the commonplace, to the unusual, to the truly bizarre."

Susan Delfino (née Bremmer, previously Mayer) is the main protaganist of the series.

Susan's best quality is also the one that gets her into the most trouble: her huge, open heart. Vivacious, smart, and warm, Susan has a habit of opening herself too easily and seeing the best in everyone, even when her judgement tells her otherwise.

[edit] Early Life

Susan, born in December 8 1968, grew up believing her father died at war and was raised by her mother, Sophie. Her mother's erratic love life led to some distance between the two of them but they have always remained close. Susan was a high school gym master and graduated as valedictorian. She later married Karl Mayer and had a daughter together but their marriage was a very difficult one due to Karl's infidelity. He finally left her for his secretary Brandi and filed for divorce. Julie was then her only shoulder to cry on and their relationship has strengthened ever since but both of them still have issues about being sometime in a role reversal with Julie playing the adult and Susan making many mistakes. Mary Alice also supported her which brought her to question how she could have committed suicide. She is also a mentally challenged person, she acts really frantic all the time.

[edit] Season One

Susan is naturally inquisitive and is the driving force behind the housewives' efforts to discover the truth about Mary Alice Young's suicide. She is particularly suspicious of Paul Young, and also dislikes , Zach who is obsessed with her daughter. Susan and Mike eventually do start a relationship, which has its ups and downs due to his mysteriousness, and his real agenda for moving onto Wisteria Lane. In the season finale, Susan is held hostage by Zach, waiting for Mike to come home.

[edit] Season Two

Mike is not killed by Zach, who has fled, and Susan is happy that she and Mike can continue their relationship.

Susan begs Mike not leave

However, when Mike reveals that Zach is his biological son, Susan is shocked and tells him that she does not want Zach around Julie. Susan finds Zach at a park and wants to convince him to go to Mike to learn the truth because she knows how much it means to Mike to be close with his son. Zach, however, tells Susan he still loves Julie, and she instead tells him he should search for his "father" Paul, and gives him money so he can go to Utah to look for him there. When Mike learns that Susan sent Zach to Utah, he breaks up with her. Susan is shocked to learn that her ex-husband, Karl is dating Edie Britt. Later on, in desperate need of health insurance for a surgery, she secretly marries Karl. Edie is outraged when she finds out but manages to forgive them. Susan also dates her doctor, Dr Ron McCredie who carries out her operation, but this soon ends on discovering Susan marrying Karl for insurance and finding out she still loved Mike on hearing her semi-conscious after surgery. Mike also fights with Dr. McCredie when the break-up gets ugly. Karl tells Susan that he has broken up with Edie, and they sleep together. Edie hires a private detective who takes photographic evidence of Karl and Susan together. However Mike pays off the detective, but Susan, not knowing this, ends up confessing to Edie about the affair. That night, Susan goes over to Mikes to thank him for paying off the detective, and thinks he still loves her, and tells him that if he doesn't want to get back with her then they could at least be friends, however they are interuppted when Edie sets fire to Susan's house in revenge for the affair. After this Mike asks Susan to move in with her, but she declines, and she and her daughter move into a trailer. However Karl surprises them with a new house, Susan is tempted to accept but doesn't due to Karl's lies and that he needs to let her go, deciding to stay at the trailer until Season 3 when her house is rebuilt.

In the season finale, it is discovered that Mike bought a ring and wanted to propose to Susan. However before he can do this, he is run over by an unknown person.

[edit] Season Three

Susan finds herself looking after Mike who has been in a coma for six months after his accident. At the hospital, Susan meets Ian whose wife is also in a coma. Realizing that Mike may not ever wake up, she decides to let go, and begins a relationship with Ian. When Mike does wake up, he has amnesia and has forgotten the past two years of his life, including that he was in love with Susan and about to propose to her before he was struck down. Edie tells Mike her own version of history, and convinces him that Susan was a bad woman. Susan leaves Ian to be with Mike when she learns he is out of his coma, but he rejects her due to Edie's lies. Susan goes back to Ian. Julie, now an older teenager has started a relationship with the new bad-boy Austin McCain, and Susan is against this. Mike eventually sees through Edie's lies, after she breaks up with him on thinking he is a murderer. Mike also remembers that Susan was his girlfriend when the hospital returns a ring which was found on him when he was run over, the inscription about Susan. However by this point, Susan is torn between lovers, which leads to Mike and Ian using a poker game to determine who will get Susan, but Ian wins who proposes to Susan. When Susan gets wind of the poker game, she feels insulted and snaps at both Mike and Ian, breaking up with Ian and also is angry at Mike.

When Austin cheats on Julie and gets her friend Danielle Van De Kamp pregnant, Susan is there to support Julie. Ian and Susan become engaged, she forgives him over the poker game, but when the question of whether Susan still loves Mike comes up, she finds that she still does, and she and Ian break off the engagement and their relationship. Mike and Susan are privately married at a small ceremony.

[edit] Season Four

Early in the season, Susan and Mike learn they are expecting a baby. Mike is very happy about being a father but worries about providing for his family. This leads him to work very long hours, despite being injured. He is prescribed painkillers but becomes addicted to them. Susan finds out and confronts him but he denies being addicted and even throws away the pills to convince her. Susan, however, finds out that Mike is indeed addicted, and their friend/neighbor Orson Hodge is prescribing them illegally. After Susan is accidentally injured when Mike confronts her for taking his pills away, she demands he go to rehab or she and the baby will leave. Mike agrees and goes, leaving her alone.

When a tornado destroys their house, Bree, Orson and baby Benjamin move in with Susan, and she enjoys having them around. Julie sees Orson talking in his sleep about his guilt for running over Mike two years before. Susan is devastated and not only blames Orson for what he has done, but also hates him. Mike, back from rehab, is now clean and ready for the baby. Susan has a son, and after some debate, they name him Maynard James Delfino.

[edit] Five Year Jump

"It goes by so quickly. In a flash, the life we knew is gone forever. Of course, there are some people who understand how quickly time passes. That's why they're so determined to get what they want...before it's too late."

During the five year jump, Susan and Mike got divorced. Susan and Mike were involved in a car crash which resulted in the death of the other driver, a young mother named Lila, and her daughter, Paige. Although Susan and Mike were not to blame for the accident as the other car pulled out on them, Susan blamed herself and her husband for not getting the brakes checked on their car and her guilty feelings took its toll on their marriage, as Susan felt responsible for the deaths of Lila and Paige Dash.

Susan also began a secretive love affair with Jackson, but refuses to go public.

[edit] Season Five

At the beginning of Season Five, it is later revealed that Lila is the late wife of Dave, a new neighbor and Edie's new husband. Dave has implied that he intends to exact revenge by murdering Susan and their son, M.J.. It was revealed that Susan was driving the night that Lila and Paige died, but Mike took the blame to protect his wife.

   Jackson returns and proposes marriage because his student visa has expired and he believes he will be deported to Canada, but Dave tips off immigration services and Jackson is deported. Dave convinces Susan and M.J. to go fishing with him, so he can get revenge. On the way to marry Katherine, Mike sees the tape Dave made confessing to the crime; and leaves Katherine at the airport to save M.J. and Susan. Dave's plan then becomes tying up Susan's hands and barefeet and making her watch as Dave and Mike, with M.J. unbuckled in the back, are involved in a collision. This would kill M.J., and Susan would feel Dave's pain. When Susan tells Dave, "What if your daughter (Paige) could see you now? Is this how you want her to see you...as a monster who could murder an innocent child?!". Dave looks in the rear-view mirror and sees his daughter Paige, knowing that he should never make a child suffer like his daughter did. Dave rethinks his plan and lets M.J. go, but crashes into Mike. Mike and Dave survive. After the collision, Mike and Susan share a passionate kiss.

Finally in the season finale, Mike is shown to be marrying an unrevealed woman. Did he go ahead and marry Katherine? Or did he go back to Susan?

Susan and Mike re-marrying in Season 6

[edit] Season Six

The season begins with Susan preparing to marry Mike for the second time. She feels guilt for what Katherine must be going through, but knows she and Mike belong together. It is revealed through flashbacks that Susan's daughter, Julie, has moved back in and that Susan has been avoiding Katherine. She eventually finds Katherine wearing her wedding dress and chooses to ignore Katherine's downward spiral because she is tired of being seen as "the other woman". She attempts to publicly apologize to Katherine at the wedding, but is unsuccessful, for war has been declared against her by Katherine.

That night, Julie is strangled and left unconscious in her yard by an unknown attacker. Susan is in utter shock when Julie is found. She is hurt and alarmed when Lynette tells her that Julie might be pregnant. Susan is hurt that Lynette did not tell her what Julie said to her.

Susan finding Julie unconscious after her attack the day after Susan's wedding

They later reconcile and, the doctors reveal that Julie is not pregnant. When Danny Bolen is taken away as a suspect in Julie's attack Susan and Angie exchange an awkward glare, indicating that Susan isn't finished with the Bolens just yet. She then wages war on the family and spreads the word that Danny was the attacker with no proof. People then begin to terrorize the Bolens and Susan confronts the boy and nearly kills him, but is stopped by Angie. It is proven that Danny couldn't have attacked Julie as he was at a liquor store. Susan, guilt ridden, then goes to help Angie clean up the trash and graffiti that was placed on her home. She is then shocked to learn from Andrew, that Julie had quit Medical School and spent the last six months waitressing as well as the fact she was seeing a married man. When Julie awakens, Susan argues with her about it, Julie refusing to explain her actions, driving a wedge between them. Susan was convinced that Katherine was the person who strangled Julie after a conversation with Angie Bolen. Susan and Mike go to the police station where Susan met a woman from her past. It turns out that Detective Denise LaPara went to Susan's high school and was the only person to hate her in high school. This is because Susan accidentally got the entire school to call her "Moose" whenever she walked by. Before Susan remembered who it was, she sent Dt. LaPara over to Katherine's house. After trying to get Dt. LaPara kicked off the case, Susan is thrown in jail because she didn't report the gun incident.

Susan is later sentenced to community service, but after Katherine taunts her, Susan reports her.

While doing community service, Katherine tells Susan that her and Mike had sex five times in one day. This annoys Susan who then confronts Mike. Mike explains that sex is all that he and Katherine had. They never talked or had good times. Mike then tells Susan: that they are much better together and have lots to it, which means that there never really was a relationship with Katherine and Mike.

Susan is distraught when she discovers that another woman, like Julie, named Emily, was strangled and died as a result. She presses Julie to reveal the man she was seeing as he could be responsilble, but Julie declines. To ensure her safety, Karl lets Julie use his car and he uses hers. Susan sees Julie's car outside a sleazy motel. Thinking that Julie is taking up with her married lover again, she sneaks in to stop the affair, but gets a bigger shock herself when she discovers Bree and Karl are having an affair and is outraged. She confronts Bree about it while they are at a self-defense class, each nearly choking the other with their arguement. Susan gets the two together to tell Bree of the long list of misdeeds Karl had while the two were married. Bree insists she knows about Karl but is convinced he can change, admitting she loves him. Realizing she can't talk Bree out of this, Susan decides to give Karl the benefit of the doubt and bless their relationship.

[edit] Trivia

Susan was originally planned to be named 'Susan Meyer' (stated in the book, "Behind Closed Doors").
Both Courteney Cox and Heather Locklear turned down the role, Cox because she was pregnant (but she was Marc Cherry's first choice for the role) and Locklear because she was starring in LAX. Michelle Rodriguez, Calista Flockhart and Mary-Louise Parker were also considered before the part went to Teri Hatcher.
Susan drives 5 cars on the show- 1983 Volvo 240 Wagon (1x01), 2003 Volvo XC70 (1x02-3x18), 2007 Volvo XC70 (3x19-4x17), 2002 Cadillac Escalade (5x01) and a 2009 Volvo XC60 (5x02-Present