By CHRIS SURPRENANT
Arts Editor
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 3, 2011
ABC could use a little hellfire every once in a while. Between the network’s two heavenly sitcoms, The Middle and Modern Family, lies Suburgatory, a new show that teeters between laughable truths and insulting misconceptions.
Meant to be a biting satire of suburban America, Suburgatory picks apart and inflates every suburban cliché and stereotype. From soccer moms and minivans to plentiful breast augmentations, Suburgatory wants to make you laugh at what you’ve witnessed every single day of your middleclass life, and it manages to do so on a few occasions.
The basic premise is a standard fish-out-of-water tale. Wise-cracking teenage Tessa (Jane Levy) and her single father George (Jeremy Sisto) move from the mean streets of New York to the picket fences of suburbia, all because of a huge misunderstanding.
“It’s funny how a box full of rubbers landed me in a land full of plastics,” Tessa quips, referring to a box of condoms George found in her nightstand. Right away, George packs up Tessa and heads for the apparently abstinent land of green grass and high hairdos—also known as the suburbs.
Suburgatory wastes no time in introducing viewers to the myth of the suburbs. Every house is picture-perfect, every lawn green and lush, and every middle-aged woman is a bleached-blonde adulteress. Here, we meet Dallas Royce, played to a tee by Cheryl Hines. With a drawl that is right out of Toddlers and Tiaras, Hines’ Dallas has her eye on George and makes it known immediately, but she also a soft spot in her heart for the motherless outcast Tessa.
Tessa however, is not making friends as easily as her father. On her first day of school, she is rudely questioned by a Paris Hilton-type if she is a lesbian because she is not dressed in a mini-skirt and tube-top like all the other valley girls, but rather in jeans and boots. Here is where the satire becomes offensive. In reality, cracks like that cause real damage for teenagers in this day and age. I can take a joke, but not when it deals with something as sensitive as a person’s identity.
However, Suburgatory does manage to do a fine job at spoofing the idea of suburban life. In one of many similar scenes, all of Tessa’s neighbors are seen outside watering their picture-perfect lawns, viciously, creepily happy. There’s even that really annoying neighbor who is always offering pot roasts or desserts, no matter how many times you refuse and make known that you’re a diabetic vegetarian.
Dallas’ typical mean girl daughter, Dalia too is brilliantly executed by Carly Chaikin. She too has bleached blonde hair and wears clothes entirely too short and tight for a teenage girl. We’ve all encountered her before. Chaikin conveys typical teenage indifference expertly, answering every question with short, one word responses, and is always reading or writing a text message. She’s the girl everyone hated in high school, and now that she’s on TV, we love to hate her even more.
For all the wit and snark Suburgatory delivers, it does have its flaws. Aside from being borderline offensive at times, it over-generalizes the suburban population. Though the show is trying to riff on the “myth” of suburbia, it seems to forget that not every house is two stories high with a perfect lawn. The people inside these houses are not always scatterbrained nincompoops, and quite often, suburban life is quite ordinary. If the Stepford Wives aspect was toned down a bit to portray more realistic characters, Suburgatory might actually be able to offer a poignant comment on the vision of suburbia, rather than toss around only what suburbia is in popular culture.
If anything, Suburgatory has to make the choice of whether or not it wants to continue with clichéd stereotypes, or move beyond those boundaries to become a little more original. The characters are great, and the satire is razor-sharp at times, but something just feels off. Hopefully with time, those in Suburgatory will get a little closer to TV heaven.
___________________________
