Suburgatory – Does Tessa finally figure out how to get out of Chatswin?

It’s Mother’s Day in Chatswin, which means that its residents go more overboard than they do in their daily lives in order to honor the cult of mother. Sometimes, Suburgatory sometimes makes Chatswin is a bit to cartoonish for my taste, but all the gags centered around the holiday, like Sheila getting the Cinderella treatment, work because they come from a sweet place. The big deal over Mother’s Day also reveals a few things about our characters. Dallas misses Dalia when she decides to spend the holdiay in Israel with her father. Tessa misses her mother now that she sees so many mothers around. Dallas and Tessa kind of fill those voids in each other’s lives — making  the episode from a few weeks ago when Tessa tries to hard to be like Dallas make much more sense in retrospect — but can’t quite achieve it. Presumably, the “cliffhanger” of Tessa using her grandmother to get out of Chatswin either won’t happen or won’t stick, but with all this foreshadowing, we can probably assume we will  meet the mother next season, unlike on some other  show I could name. All in all, though Eden is still around, I am glad the show focused on Tess again after largely ignoring her last week.

This episode also displays the Chatswin that I find to be too cartoonish, in the guise of Noah and Jill’s over-the-top nursery with its endangered animal theme. The Chatswin characters need to retain a lovable core for them to work, and things like animal pelts and an ivory tusk crib are just needlessly cruel — and clearly just designed to upset Eden so that she goes into false labor. Eden is like the anti-Chatswin, which makes it  bit surprising  that Tessa doesn’t like her more, really. I think the writers could have dialed this down a few notches and still made it believable when Alicia Silverstone inevitably leaves next season. She is at least perceptive enough to realize that Tessa really does wonder about her mother, so I found her less pointless this episode.

The Shays have especially crazy Mother’s Day plans, which involve Sheila’s frozen blood and reenacting a James Ingram song. I am not really sure what the purpose of the James Ingram cameo was — so what if he and Sheila dated back in the day? More interesting is the reveal that Ryan, not Lisa, is adopted, but we will have to wait till next season to see how that plays out.

Notes and Quotes:

• George is the first person Dallas wants to call once she is hurt. I hope the writers revisit this relationship sooner than later, since I am tired of such things getting dragged out on, like, every TV show ever.
• Jane Levy crying in the car was ver well done. She will be ignored come Emmy season most likely, but it’s a shame.
• Noah and Jill’s daughter is back in town, and it seems like she would get along with Tessa. Her deadpan is great: “You know what would be funnier? If you and mom raised your own kid. That’d be hilarous.”
• Tessa’s v.o.: “Once upon a time, somewhere between the Lower East Side and the fiery pits of hell, lived a little town called Chatswin.”
• Jill: “I’m so glad we went with an endangered animals theme for the nursery. The pelts feel great underfoot.”
  Noah: “Forget about the pelts — I cannot  believe you found an ivory tusk crib!”
  Jill: “The interior decortaor had some of the animals murdered ust for this room.” And the guns on the walls are all live … Checkov’s nursery?
• Noah on why he wants to hire Carmen back  from the Royces: “Because Carmen can do things that easily exasperate most white people.” Like clean up kangaroo poo?
• George, when he can’t “perform” with Eden: “I can’t stop thinking about what Noah said … about how I was gonna give the kid an accidental tracheotomy.”
• Dallas on her usual Mother’s Day ritual: “Every person should make the pilgrimage to Israel. Not just for the Dead Sea wraps, but also for the fusion cuisine.”
• Lisa, when Malik dares to suggest her parents love her as she is: “Do you have any idea how ignorant you sound right now?”
• Jill’s picture of Eden once she gives birth: “She’s just going to shrivel up into a big pile of ash.” But not before the Coen brothers film the birth!
• Eden’s horror at the nursery: “There’s a club over by that stuffed seal!”
• The voice of Yakult in Dallas’ hopped-up brain is apparently that of Whoopi Goldberg.
• See you next season!

Clacked by Christina Furtado
on May 17, 2012 @ 10:15 EST5EDT