Felicity Huffman had a weekly presence on the small screen for years as one of the co-leads of Desperate Housewives, which ran for eight seasons and 180 episodes on ABC from 2004-2012. Now, more than a decade after she wrapped her time as Lynette Scavo, Huffman is set to take on her first network TV series regular role since Desperate Housewives, and her new character on Doc in the 2025 TV schedule looks about as different from Lynette as can be.
The actress will debut her new series regular role on September 30 in the second episode of Doc Season 2, following a hostage situation premiere that may have ended the show’s central love triangle for a bit. She has starred on a multi-season show since the end of Desperate Housewives with USA's American Crime, as well as made one-off guest appearances on network shows like The Good Doctor and Accused, but Doc is her first regular network TV role since 2012.
Speaking with Deadline ahead of her Doc debut, Felicity Huffman said this about the second season’s expanded episode count:
The fact that we get 22 is certainly rare, and it just means you get 22 shots at doing it a little better and working on a little more and seeing what you did wrong and how you could improve.
Huffman knows what she’s talking about when it comes to seasons running for 20+ episodes. Other than the shortened fourth season that was affected by the 2007-2008 WGA writers strike, no season of Desperate Housewives ran for fewer than 23 episodes. Shows with such high episode counts are much rarer nowadays than when she was playing Lynette on ABC, and even Doc only had ten episodes in its first season. (That first season is available streaming with a Netflix subscription now.)
Her new character definitely isn’t Lynette 2.0, just as Doc is a far cry from Desperate Housewives. Felicity Huffman plays Dr. Joan Ridley, the new chief of internal medicine at Westside as the replacement for Dr. Richard Miller after he was outed as a bad guy at the end of Season 1. She’s also the former mentor of Amy, who may need all the help she can get in her Season 2 journey of trying to regain memories that she lost due to her car crash and TBI. Huffman shed some light on what to expect from her new character:
What she saw in Amy was really David Beckham of the medical field, and [she] wanted to champion her. So they’ve been friends and colleagues for a long time. Then there’s an opportunity for her to step into the chief of internal medicine role at Westside, and she picks up the gauntlet because she wants to make that hospital one of the best in the state or in the country, or possibly even in the world.
I’m very curious to see what Joan and Amy’s relationship is like, considering that she wasn’t seen or mentioned in Season 1 despite the two being “friends and colleagues for a long time.” Amy might really need somebody objective coming in without any connections to the love triangle. Then again, that may depend on whether she and Amy were socially close enough for her to also know Michael. Check out a first look at the new character:
See Felicity Huffman back on network TV as part of Doc Season 2 with new episodes on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox, directly after new episodes of Murder in a Small Town Season 2. You can also stream the newest episodes next day with a Hulu subscription, while the first season is now exclusively streaming on Netflix.
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