Standing Up “Suburgatory”

Once I’d turned 18 it seemed I couldn’t come within an arm’s distance of a bank cashier without being badgered about “upgrading” my account. Whereas before they’d smiled tenderly, almost paternally, at my kiddies’ savings card, they now plugged credit ratings, overdrafts and honeyed incentives; “it’s the natural next step,” I remember one fervent young assistant telling me, smuggling leaflets into my hands and grinning frenziedly. A fortnight ago I relented, somewhat reluctant to ditch the bright yellow plastic I’d picked up when I was 12, and made an appointment with one of the bank’s advisors. Gratefully, Wendy was noticeably more placid than her juniors out front, managing even to utter the words “current account” without petrifying avidity. As I skimmed a list of rewards (available for just £20 each month), one stuck out as particularly coaxing: phone insurance. Wendy explained that by signing up for an “Ultimate Rewards” package, I’d bag myself the insurance plus a whole host more perks. Redundant, irrelevant perks. There was the unlimited travel insurance (for all the lavish holidays I take as a destitute student...), the home cover (when all my costliest possessions fit, with room to spare, in a rucksack) and the indispensable AA Breakdown Service (the furthest I travel at university being the edge of its pedestrianized campus). Momentarily tempted though I was by the phone cover (my iPhone’s “reinforced” screen proving to be about as sturdy as soggy toilet-tissue), I knew that taking the entire package for its one merit would be moronic. 

So I guess I am, as much as Wendy protested, rather good at knowing when the cons outweigh the pros of a set up, and when to walk away. True to form, after I had to abandon a planned triple-date with brand new E4 sitcom “Suburgatory” this week, I now know the series is a lost cause. The show trails Tessa Altman, a born and bred New Yorker-teen who finds herself hauled to the city’s suburbs when her lone-parent dad, George, uncovers a brand new pack of condoms in her top drawer. Untenable and irrational as his reasoning sounds, I was willing to give the show a go; it’s just been picked up for a second season by American network ABC and performed blazingly with its opening-run ratings.

Just Wanna Have Fun: Dalia and Tessa failed to bond

The pilot was, granted, more than passable. Once you’d gotten past the moth-eaten premise of city-girl going green it was plain to see that someone on the “Suburgatory” writing team had their head screwed on, at least for some of the time. Tessa prevailed as a particular highlight, scoffing cynically at the Stepford Wives of her new neighborhood and raising her shapeless eyebrows at the superficiality of her schoolmates. “Its pretty ironic that a box full of rubbers landed me in a town full of plastic,” she spoofed, before showing her own acid tongue far outstripped her bitchy peers: “I hated Dalia- her personality was as flat as her hair.” Quite the city-cat. George, too, drove the episode on despite showcasing youth and good-looks questionable for a harassed single-parent with a full-time job in architecture. His uneasy easing into suburban life, beginning with a country club breakfast and rounding off with a strained visit to his frisky middle-aged neighbors’, proffered a couple of laughs while Tessa was elsewhere. The pilot’s brightest scripting, as well as its most poster-worthy visuals, came when the pair found themselves on a shopping date with mother-daughter duo Dallas and Dalia Royce. “It’s so lame your mom died, biatch”, Dalia purred as she sized up to a bemused Tessa in the changing rooms, before her equally diplomatic mother gave her say-so on her underwear: “like something a burn victim would wear!” The sequence had its sketchy areas (some trash about “girl 101” only serving to recall the show’s cliched roots), but did fairly well in elevating a watchable pilot into an almost unmissable series. Thus far, the pros were on top.

Proud Parent? George's character survived Episode Two: Tessa's didn't

Perhaps my expectations for episode two were too soaring, but it just didn’t measure up. The show opened with farce, as a slow-mo Tessa and George tried and failed to dodge a dinner invitation from the Shays over the road street. The soiree finished with Tessa being roped into a spot of truth-or-dare (at high school, really?) smooching with Ryan, the elder son of the family and jock dunce of the school corridor, and being struck by her attraction to him. In a heartbeat, every inch of Tessa’s credibility, of her sole aloofness in a suburban hell, was butchered. Five minutes on from Ryan-gate, the formerly cool Tessa was waving obtusely and blushingly from her window as she watched him hose down his car, locking lips with him by the sports field like some bimbo cheerleader and bending the school guidance counsellor’s ear off about how dreamy he was. With Tessa’s fall from grace, the series quickly wound up lacking a chunk of what had set it apart from its similarly-plotted predecessors. Yes, the writing was still smart (“Have you ever seen a foreign film?” “Avatar?”) and Tessa’s reluctance to fall for Ryan’s charms (“An intellectual, neurotic, self-loathing Jew? Much more my type) went someway in mitigating the situation, but her shameful regression was, in the end, beyond salvation. However many nimble one-liners they were interspersed with, the cons just weren’t worth it.

Meanwhile, the episode saw George tied up holding for his new neighbors what he was sagely advised would be the making or breaking of his acceptance into the hum-drum of suburbia: “the barbecue”. Despite his character remaining dependably giggle-worthy, this side story failed pitifully to recompense for Ryan; George’s perma-tanned buddy’s grill, “Sally”, running out of propane was the plot’s most momentous point, and not even George’s comical New York inexperience playing host could make up for that.

What was most maddening for me, as I stood up “Suburgatory” on date number three, was that the series had survived adopting one threadbare formula so well; Tessa and George’s relocation from the city was bedecked with such slick writing that you’d be a fool to hold it against them. Why, having taken such a gamble with the premise, would “Suburgatory’s” producers opt to haul out the timeworn city-girl/small-town boy blueprint so early on? “Suburgatory”: I won’t be calling.