Suburgatory: Pilot

Slowly but surely, ABC has been building up a strong comedy night. They started with Modern Family, Cougar Town and The Middle a couple years ago (The latter two shows have improved from their beginnings) and last midseason, found a bit of a surprise hit in Happy Endings. This season, they've got what looks to be another strong addition to their comedy line-up with Suburgatory, a show that I was expecting to watch tonight and review tomorrow (or Friday.), but found the pilot early and can post a review now! Thank you internet.

Suburgatory is a story about children and parents. It's also a fish-out-of-water story. But instead of the typical "small-town-girl in big city set-up", it's about a New York girl, Tessa (played cleverly by Jane Levy, whose new to the acting business, I do believe) who is forced by her protective single father, George to move to the suburbs after he discovers a box of condoms in her room (She insists they don't belong to her and that's probably true). So now they're in what Tessa calls Suburgatory, with lots of cheerful neighbors and plastic moms. The pilot follows Tessa and her dad through the first couple days or so, as they meet the neighbors, and of course have a bit of a falling out before patching things up. All throughout Tessa provides an internal monologue that gives her thoughts on the situation.

This is a solid pilot with a bunch of interesting characters. Besides Tessa and George, there's George's old college friend Noah (played by the great Alan Tudyk) who has embraced the suburban lifestyle, Dallas, one of their moms who takes a liking to George and who George thinks could be a good female figure for Tessa, Dalia, Dallas' mean girl daughter who is Tessa's "buddy" during her first day of school (like a guide. One of the best lines in the pilot is when she informs Tessa: "Buddies are not your friends".), and Lisa, a shy girl who lashes out at Tessa when she initially tries to befriend her, but later is shown to be more stuck in Suburgatory than Tessa (we also glimpse Lisa's ultra-cheery suburban mom and her popular brother). Jane Levvy gets the most to do in the pilot as Tessa and gives a great wit to all her sarcastic asides, and has a good moment at the end when we see her realize that maybe everything's not all bad.

The show of course draws comparisons to Mean Girls and also Juno. This is to be expected and the show has definitely given me enough confidence to think that this'll be more than Mean Girls but on TV (though that wouldn't be the worse thing. That movie was pretty good.). All in all, Suburgatory is off to a pretty good start. If you have the opportunity to check it out tonight, do it. I won't talk about it every week (it's usually harder for me to watch TV on Wednesdays) but I will keep watching and talk about it from time to time. ABC's Wednesday comedy block is just getting more and more promising and I'm excited.

Rating: Awesome! (Good)

Memorable Moments

-My favorite episode came during Tessa's tour when Dalia points out the one international student in school, Malik.
-Everyone in the suburbs thinks Tessa is a lesbian because of her combat boots.
-Good use of the smash-cut. Dallas tells George "Everyone loves Dalia", where we go to Tessa's narration saying "I hated Dalia".
-As far as the supporting cast goes, Noah and Dalia are probably my favorites. Noah is really enthusiastic and kind of over-the-top and Dalia sounds bored and disinterested all the time (plus she's always texting).