Doug Savant as Tom Scavo

Tom Scavo is portrayed by Doug Savant on the show Desperate Housewives. Tom is a former ad executive who, after quitting his job, decided to become a stay-at-home dad in order to spend more quality time with his children. However, he would have never come to this decision that he was away from home too much had his wife, Lynette, not caused him the promotion that he had been working so hard for. His current source of income is his own pizza restaurant, Pizzeria Scavo.

Before Tom quit his job, he devoted much of his time out of town, leaving Lynette to deal with the children and her own personal problems. He also tried hard to protect a secret that only his father, Rodney Scavo, knew about (the secret would later be revealed as Tom’s illegitimate child, Kayla Huntington), but his suspicious behavior led Lynette to think that Tom was having an affair. Lynette’s paranoia was fueled by the fact that Tom had actually left a former girlfriend, Annabel, for her. The tension between Lynette and Tom worsened when Annabel started working in the same company as Tom. Lynette, in a jealous haste, convinced an old-worker to pirate Annabel, but her plan backfired when Tom’s company, not wanting to lose Annabel, offered her the promotion instead.

Angry and frustrated, Tom confronted his boss and quit his job, only to find out that Lynette had talked to his boss’ wife and asked that Tom be passed up for the promotion. Dazed and confused, Tom spent the rest of the day in the arcade, and when Lynette fetched him and took him home, he announced that he would be willing to give up his career and let Lynette go back to hers.

This set-up worked well-enough initially, but when a position opened at Lynette’s company, Tom seized the opportunity and asked Lynette to let him apply for the job. Tom was able to convince Lynette, especially when he reminded her of how she lost him his promotion. He lost the job later on when Lynette’s boss, in an attempt to save his own marriage, blamed Tom for a sexually explicit conversation he (the boss) instructed Lynette to have with his wife.



(Photo courtesy of ABC)