Tom Scavo

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Tom Scavo
Doug Savant as Tom Scavo.
First appearance	Pilot (episode 1.01)
Created by	Marc Cherry
Portrayed by	Doug Savant
Information
Age	46 (Season 6)
Date of birth	1968
Occupation	Former Advertising executive, Pizzaria Owner
Family	Rodney Scavo (father) Allison Scavo (mother)
Spouse(s)	Lynette Scavo (wife)
Children	Kayla Huntington Scavo (daughter) Preston Scavo (son) Porter Scavo (son) Parker Scavo (son) Penny Scavo (daughter) Unamed Twins (currently expecting, with Lynette)
Relatives	Penny Scavo (aunt) Vito Scavo (uncle) Stella Wingfield (mother-in-law) Glen Wingfield (step-father-in-law; deceased) Lucy Lindquist (sister-in-law) Lydia Lindquist (sister-in-law)
Address	4355 Wisteria Lane Fairview, Eagle State

Thomas "Tom" Scavo (pronounced /ˈskɑːvoʊ/) is a fictional character on the ABC television series Desperate Housewives, played by actor Doug Savant.

Season 1

Tom Scavo was frequently out of town and seemed to be completely oblivious to Lynette's problems. Tom has been keeping a secret from his wife that only his father, Rodney Scavo, knew about. This is speculated to be his secret child, Kayla. Tom decided to become a house-husband after he lost his promotion to Annabel and subsequently quit his job. He seems to truly love Lynette, being prepared to discuss family matters with her if she feels that they need to.

Season 2

Midway through the second season, Tom returns to the workplace, sharing an employer with his wife for the second time. When Lynette's boss asks Lynette to send instant messages to his wife to help him heat up his sex life, his wife found out and threatened to leave him unless he fires the person who sent the IMs. Feeling he cannot fire Lynette, he tells his wife it was Tom and decides to fire Tom instead. Tom has a chat with Ed and via a 'forensic accountant', Ed discovered that Tom was falsifying expense reports. It ends with Tom punching Ed in the face. Since the necessary grounds of dismissal have been met, double grounds in fact, Tom is fired. Tom is found out to be meeting another woman after Lynette follows him to Atlantic City and sees first hand what she believes to be them embracing.

Season 3

It is later found out that this woman is Nora Huntington, a woman with whom he had a one night stand years before he had met Lynette. In the second season finale it is revealed that she had apparently conceived his child, a daughter named Kayla Huntington, from their one night stand. This is news to Tom as the one night stand took place about eleven years ago and Nora had never told him about her pregnancy. Tom later confesses to Lynette that he wishes to go into the business of pizza-making. Nora however consistently undermines him behind his back and tries to get Lynette to tell him to drop the idea. Her plan is to show support to Tom, to get him back from Lynette. Tom, however, does not fall for Nora and rejects her seduction. He tells Lynette about it, who threatens Nora never to speak to Tom again.

Tom and Lynette plan to battle for Kayla's custody, but before anything happens, Nora gets shot and dies during the hostage crisis in the local supermarket. Lynette promises the dying woman to take care of Kayla. He then goes on with his pizza place and together with Lynette's help get it ready for the grand opening although not without some troubles along the way. He then tries to celebrate his 9th wedding anniversary rant every night. Tom and the kids come to the pizzeria to surprise her, where Kayla sees chemistry between Lynette and Rick. Kayla tells Tom she thinks Lynette likes Rick, and Tom suggests to Lynette he should come back to work and fire Rick, only to receive objections from Lynette.

After Lynette getting stuck with him in a freezer as a result of the pizzeria being robbed, the two cuddle close together. Tom confronts Rick after seeing a surveillance tape, in which Lynette and Rick were having dinner together before the pizzeria was robbed. Tom makes a speech about how although his marriage to Lynette is shaky, it is rock solid and Rick would never break it up. Tom asks Rick to quit, and he says he won't leave unless Lynette fires him personally, because "she doesn't want him gone". Rick and Lynette are alone in the restaurant and Rick talks about his lunch with Tom. He said he had feelings for her. He told her it was obvious she has feelings for him. This enraged Lynette and she fired him. After finding out Tom was returning to work, Lynette sobbed in her bathroom, obviously distraught over the loss of Rick.

Lynette and Tom’s marriage continues to decline and Lynette doesn't speak to Tom for five days. In an attempt to rebuild their marriage, Tom gets his old college friend and marriage councillor to try and speak to them without Lynette knowing, but she clocks on to Tom’s actions and becomes even more frustrated with him over his 'ambush therapy'. With Tom’s doctor informing him on his back recovery, Tom suggests to Lynette they have sex as it's the only way they can communicate unless they talk instead. Lynette agrees to sex and refuses to talk but becomes violent with Tom. In a moment of anger, Tom seizes Lynette and asks why she's mad at him, and she reveals it's because he had lunch with Rick and because she had to fire him. Lynette then shoves Tom back onto the bed, hurting his back. Tom then has back spasms and he moves suddenly causing Lynette to fall off the bed, banging her head on the side table. She goes to hospital for her injury and Tom finds out Lynette fell for Rick and misses him. The doctor performs a CAT scan on Lynette and finds swollen lymph nodes and suggests they do a biopsy as it could be lymphoma (a form of cancer).

Season 4

In the third episode "The Game" Tom attends Susan's small games party however Lynette remains at home because she is sick, Lynette's mother Stella secretly gets marijuana from Andrew and bakes it in some brownies she makes for Lynette so that it would ease Lynette's pain. It works and Lynette attends Susan's party high and she had brought the drugged brownies with her for everyone else to have. Stella arrives over and tells Tom why no one can have a brownie and Tom takes them off everyone's plate before they can eat them and ends up accidentally pushing Gabrielle into new resident Adam Mayfair spilling wine on him, sparking a feud between Gabrielle and Adam's wife Katherine Mayfair. Tom later appears at the end of the episode when Lynette discovers the truth from him about what Stella did. A tornado hits Wisteria Lane and the Scavos take shelter in Karen McClusky's basement with Ida Greenbberg. Tom and the children were left in the basement while Lynette and Mrs. McClusky went out looking for Ida's cat. When Lynette and Mrs. McClusky hid from the tornado in a bathtub, Tom was knocked out with asthma from the cat. After the tornado hits, Tom and his children are okay and so are Lynette and Mrs. McClusky. Ida Greenberg did not make it. She saved Lynette's and Tom's children from the Tornado.

Rick returns announcing that he is opening a new restaurant near Scavo's pizzeria. Tom lied to the police when they investigate the vandalism happening to the restaurant, but later admitted to Lynette that he did vandalize Rick's restaurant out of jealousy. Tom came under investigation again when a fire took place Rick's restaurant. He was confronted by Lynette, to whom he swears he left the founders ball to listen to the game on the cart radio, and again by Rick after he found a matchbook from Scavo's. The incident broke out into a fight and Tom was brought in by the police and later released after Lynette lies to them to provide him an alibi.

Tom and Lynette are constantly arguing about the kids: the twins started the fire and he suggested taking them to therapy; Lynette discovers the boys got the idea from Kayla and she took Kayla to therapy behind Tom's back. Tom's denial about the problems Kayla causes for Lynette lead to her lying to the therapist and getting Lynette arrested for child abuse. In the season's penultimate episode, Tom sends Kayla to live with her maternal grandparents after she told Tom she lied about everything and she wouldn't stop if Lynette came back.

In the season finale, Tom and Lynette help with catering Bob and Lee's wedding. Tom's advise to Lee about standing up for himself (for wanting the ice sculpture be castle rather than a cherub) escalated to Bob and Lee arguing then canceling the wedding. Lynette and Tom get the two in the same room and Tom tells them that if they cannot decide over small decisions that they might as well not marry at all; that they should ask themselves whether they love each other enough that no problem can possibly tear them apart. His speech gets Bob and Lee to reconcile and to reaffirm to Lynette that their marriage is stronger than she thought.

Season 5

In the first episode of season 5, Tom is going through a midlife crisis and he buys a Ford Mustang. It's shown he has difficulty disciplining his teenage sons as they treat him far more cool than Tom was used to when he was their age. Lynette uses that against him by tricking Tom into letting the twins borrow his Mustang for a dance. When they come back a half hour late, Tom angrily grounds them. When they claim he's more worried about the car than them, he kicks a mirror off it but confesses to Lynette that it was already broken and he had ordered a replacement, impressing her. In "Mirror, Mirror," flashbacks show that Tom was electrocuted in an accident and nearly died, which pushed him to enjoy life as much as he could. In the present, he tells Lynette his plan to sell the restaurant, buy an RV and spend a year traveling the country with his family. Lynette is not happy about this and tensions have risen over it. When Tom contacted one of his son's friends' mothers, Ann Shilling, who is a real estate agent, she found him a rehearsal space for the garage band he and some of the other Wisteria Lane men have started. He has been spending a lot of time there, and Lynnette confronted him about him sleeping with the Mrs. Shilling, who has 'dropped by' with some items for the rehearsal space, among them a futon. Tom denied it—then stepped on a condom wrapper on the floor to hide from Lynnette. He deduced that Porter is sleeping with some girl there—but Lynette sees Mrs. Shilling leaving from the rehearsal space when Tom is there, so Lynette thinks Tom is cheating. In the next episode, Tom and Lynette realize that Porter is, in fact who is sleeping with the realtor. After much deliberation, Lynette decides to pay Mrs. Shilling off, but this backfires when Porter disappears, claiming that he wants to be with her. In the last episode we find out that because of the bad economy Scavo's Pizzeria lost its business to low sales, and Tom was forced to throw a Going Out of Business sale to raise the money to repay his loans and pay Bree her money.

Tom sinks into some depression being out of work with Lynette getting a new job and in the fifth season finale, decides to go to college as a Chinese language major. Thinking this is part of his middle-age syndrome, Lynette attempts to sabotage Tom by getting him drunk the night before his entrance exam. It's only afterward that Tom says he was taking Chinese in hopes of getting a new job in that market. Incredibly, Tom managed to score in the top five with the exam despite being hung over. However, his college plans are jarred when Lynette reveals she's 3.5 months pregnant with twins.

Season 6

Tom is excited about becoming a dad again but Lynette tells him that she is not sure if she loves her unborn children. Tom then tells her that when she will hold them in her arms, she will love them with all her heart. These twins are Tom's sixth and seventh children. Tom was cheating in school because he was afraid of failing but he as since stopped. Lynette references that Tom had to drop out of college because Lynette was fired.

Trivia

• Doug Savant was originally credited as a guest star, although he appeared in 17 out of 23 episodes in the first season. He became a regular starting in Season 2.
• To date, Tom and Lynette are the only married couple who have not divorced each other. They are also the only couple who have remained married since the series premiere.
• Tom is the only member of the band 'Blue Odyssey' who has not been incarcerated.
• Tom has a recurring back problem.

References