Review: ABC’s Suburgatory

As far as new comedies this fall go, Suburgatory isn’t the worst of the bunch. There’s even a certain charm to the father/daughter combination of Jane Levy (Shameless) and Jeremy Sisto (Six Feet Under) at the heart of the show. However, that charm is largely buried underneath a barrage of stereotypes, cliched jokes, and an unshakable feeling that you’ve heard every line on this show somewhere else.

One of the shows problems is the premise its built on: After finding condoms in teenage Tessa’s room, her father George uproots her from Manhattan and moves her into suburbia – which is, for all cinematic purposes, the representation of all that is intellectually and morally void in American culture. It’s a fish out of water story we’ve seen play out a million different ways, and as this kind of show, Suburgatory certainly doesn’t do anything original here. The constant jokes about the PTA, moms listening to rap music and using slang…. its tiresome, and through four episodes, the show hasn’t attempted to grasp onto anything original (although the idea of selling rich white women ‘panic rooms’ is quite funny).

Suburgatory also fails as a high school sitcom, for the same reasons it doesn’t work as a suburban satire: you’ve heard every single joke before. Turning the school paper into a gossip rag, jokes about texting and being popular – it basically rips off anything and everything it can from Mean Girls and Clueless in blatant fashion. The only highlight of the high school stories is the presence of one of my all time favorite The Wire actors, Maestro Harrell (good old Randy Wagstaff). Seeing his smile light up the screen is one of the things that keeps me from tuning out Suburgatory for good.

Probably the show’s strongest point is the relationship between father and daughter, although again, there hasn’t been much to distinguish this storyline from any we’ve seen before (i.e. she refuses to call her father ‘Dad’, instead using his first name). George’s character is particularly strong, considering its been four episodes, and they haven’t thrown him into some romantic (or overtly sexual) situation with any of the psychotic housewives in the neighborhood – a big plus for a show hanging onto its credibility by a thread. Suburgatory is simply a show trying too hard to be funny, and much of the time, comes off as a half-assed mess of a show. But if the show can shed some of the inane (and quite offensive) stereotypes of the white, economically dependent woman, Suburgatory could become a good story of father and daughter looking out for each other. I will note, though, the first two episodes were much stronger than this week and last week’s episodes, which is never a good sign (although it did recently get picked up for a full season by ABC, so there is still time).

Overall Grade: D

Couple other thoughts:

– one question: Cheryl Hines, what were you thinking?

– can we just admit at this point Rex Lee isn’t funny? Here he plays the same kind of gay, trying to be cool little asian man he played in Entourage. Wasn’t funny then (although Entourage was never funny), it’s not funny now.

– I despise this techno/pop mashup bullshit they call ‘popular music’ today, and Suburgatory does no favors, loading on the high fructose corn syrup with uptempo beats and stupid, pointless, shallow lyrics (Katy Perry, I’m looking at you). This is not music, and I should not have to be subjected to these shit piles of over produced noise when I’m trying to watch television.

What did you think of Suburgatory? Will you keep watching?