TV Review: Suburgatory 1.01

Tessa: It was presumptuous. It was inappropriate. And it was by far...the prettiest thing I owned. So maybe these moms weren't all bad. And maybe, sometimes, underneath a pair of giant synthetic breasts, you can find a giant non-synthetic heart.

TV Show: Suburgatory (ABC)
Episode: 1.01 Pilot and 1.02 Bound

IMDb summary: A teenage girl moves from the city to the suburbs.

One of the most promising pilots of this fall has been Suburgatory which follows the life of single dad George Altman (Jeremy Sisto) and his daughter Tessa (Jane Levy). George uproots their lives in Manhattan and moves them out into the Suburbs of New Jersey for a better life. The two immediately encounter a different lifestyle than they are used to such as the Stepford-like but scantily clad mothers and sugarless-red-bull addicted teens on pretty much every corner.

What's refreshing about the show is that Tessa and George might be the most charming father-daughter duo on television at the moment. Also, Tessa reminds me a bit of Jaye Tyler of Wonderfalls - at least how I would imagine Jaye to be when she was in high school. That's always a plus.

Suburgatory plays on a lot of the negative stereotypes of the suburbs for laughs but it also presents the positive. Like Tessa and George, I imagine the audience discovering the suburbs is made out of a lot more heart than we think.

It's not laugh-out-loud funny but it does have a lot of charm.



[Screencaps from rawr-caps.tumblr.com and edited by me.]