No shortage of mysteries on ‘Desperate Housewives’

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 the only two new “Housewives” episodes this month (9 p.m. on ABC, KXLY-4 in Spokane).

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 character, 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. 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.”

Strong 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,” she says. “It was really hard for her to live with what she did. … The beauty of the Young family is this terrible secret binds us and tears us apart.”

There’s not a lot series creator Marc Cherry is willing to reveal publicly about the family’s Utah origins, except that the Youngs were the first of the familiar families to move to Wisteria Lane, when Zach was only 4.

“They were escaping something,” Cherry teases. “I can’t go into details because that’s part of the big reveal at the end of the season.”

He will say Paul loves Zach “deeply” but also resents his son for the role he played in Mary Alice’s suicide.

Cherry refuses to answer whether nosy Mrs. Huber was Paul’s first victim, or whether Paul’s shocking revelation to Zach that Dana is still alive was the truth or a lie. (Actor Mark Moses says Paul knows exactly where Dana is.)

But we can expect Paul to continue framing Mike Delfino for Mrs. Huber’s murder, and to attempt another murder before season’s end.

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.”