On the surface, Bree Van de Kamp is the ideal wife and mother. Called “Martha Stewart on steroids,” her pineapple bran muffins, gourmet meals, sparklingly clean home and picture-perfect family are the envy of the neighborhood. She may reupholster her own furniture, sew clothes for her family and till her own garden, but as in life, things are not often what they seem. Her perfectionist (and, let’s be honest, completely neurotic) tendencies leave her home looking great, but drive her family insane. Her sometimes unfortunate attempts at motherhood take a turn for the worse when she tries to counsel her gay teenage son into being straight. Later, when instead of renouncing his sexual identity he flaunts it, she kicks him out of her car in the middle of nowhere — and out of her life. Then, in Season 4, she tricks everyone into believing she is pregnant so that she can raise her daughter’s illegitimate child as her own. When her daughter contemplates keeping the child to raise it herself, Bree and her husband Orson bribe her into giving up the baby by offering to pay for her college education and buy her a convertible.