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Gabrielle tends to elicit strong opinions-from her husband Carlos;her teenaged lover, John the gardener;her mother in law Juanita;and not least, her friends. A former runway model in New York, Gabrielle traded in her life in the fast lane for her marriage to a rich businessman, but after a few years on Wisteria Lane, she begun to realize that, as she puts it so movingly in the pilot episode "Turns out I wanted all the wrong things!"
Caught between a man who adores her (but isn't yet a man) and one who gives her everthing apart from the kind of love she wants, Gabrielle is sinking into despari. She is the woman who has all the material satisfactions anyone could hope for, and yet no real joy. Spoiled and provided for, she is lonely and it is this loneliness that makes her understand Mary-Alice's terrible desperation.
Her affair, illicet, sexy, and enviable, is the best thing she has going-but as with anything good, she soon finds herself in danger of having to end it. After Carlos insists the help of his Madame DeFarge-like mother, Junaita Solis, Gabrielle must connive to keep up her liaisons. As the young lovers become more devious, the emotionally distant Gabrielle learns that John is truly falling in love, making her wonder just what she feels for him in return.
But the hedge trimming grinds to a halt when Juanita photographs Gabrielle and John in the act. As Juanita runs out of the house with her camera, she gets hit by a car. Gabrielle isn't sure whether to feel repentant or relieved-but her selfish impulses win out and she takes the camera from Juanita's nearly lifeless body. With his mother in a coma, Carlos becomes eager to have children, and announces his desire for a family. No matter how guilty she feels about her mother-in-law, Gabrielle is too strong to change her view on parenthood: No kids, ever. As Carlos suggests they negotiate, Gabrielle shouts "Well, we're not negotiating my uterus!" Little does she know that he has been replacing her birth control pills with placebos. In the beginning, it was Gabrielle whose moral core seemed questionable, but now her husband's appears to be the one that's lacking.
Juanita's accident gets Gabrielle thinking about her own behaviour and the extent to which she has to put her needs and desires before anyone else's. As she wonders whether her mother-in-law may die in part due to her illicit affair, she comes cloase to confessing to a priest. When she is unable to, she instead decides to throw a charity fashion show. It is at the show that Susan discovers Gabrielle's affaijor and calls on her lack of ethnics. "You're beautiful, you have a husband who adores you and you have more money tha you can spend," Susan tells her, and for the first time Gabrielle wonders if maybe she is right.
Feeling her conscience stirred, Gabrielle confesses to John's mother, who intimates that there will be hell to pay. When the police come to the Solises' door, a terrified Gabrielle stars to tell Carlos the truth, but it turns out to be the FBI, who arrest Carlos for unfair business practices.
When the police freeze the family's assets, this pampered trophy wife is forced to get a job,. But she has faced hardship beofre-as a model, she pulled herself up from nothing and isn't afraid to do so again. She comforts Carlos saying "poor" is just a state of mind. "You're a strong woman Gaby," he says, and he is right.
It is at the end of the season that Gabrielle begins to come into her own, maturing from a sheltered prima donna into a brave and uncomprimising woman. When an unlikely benefactor, Bree, offers to lend them money, Gabrielle puts her pride aside and graciously accepts.
As it begins to look like Gabrielle and Carlos are getting on their feet again, she learns that she is pregnant-and that Carlos tampered with her birth control. Unsure who the father is, she elects to keep the baby, but tells Carlos-arrested once again because of his rage-aholism-that he will be responsible for raising it.
