Tracing the History of the Suburbs to Suburgatory

Note: I don't start talking about Suburgatory until the bottom of the blog entry:

Two sharp satires of suburbia that have stuck with me the most are the Oscar-winning film American Beauty and the Showtime series Weeds. The degree to which both are considered edgy is related to the degree to which they paint a bleak picture of the suburb. The “suburb as hell” view is essential to both plots. Both Weeds and American Beauty condemn the suburb as some circle of Hell where people are imprisoned by a communal desire for conformity that is an artificial substitute for real problems.  In both cases, it’s the circumstances around them which push the protagonists to sin and for us to either root for them or at least empathize with them.

Since the creation of Brooklyn Bridge in 1875 allowed Manhattanites the option of escaping the evils of the city, the suburb has long been both one of America’s defining inventions. and its great paradoxes. The suburb came about when the grandiosity of the city was being overtaken by filth, crime, substandard living conditions, and an unwanted inflow of immigrants. Suburbia allowed Americans to own a piece of the countryside—what has long been considered the American dream—while retaining a closeness to the city. It allowed America the opportunity to remake the city in its own image. The balance between the contradicting desire of isolation and community; the arrogance in believing that the long-established urban ideal can be improved upon; the false premise of owning a piece of the countryside are all ripe for satire because they so intrinsically tie into the American Dream.

The theme of conformity in the landscape is referenced in the opening theme of Weeds which speaks of “Little boxes” made of “Ticky tacky” (implying fragility) that “All look the same” despite the fact that they are different colors (an implication of a failure of the community to accept diversity). Similarly,the memorable closing shot of “American Beauty” zooms away from a dead Lester Burnham to show a community of entirely identical houses that’s downright frightening in how far it stretches out.

 To examine why the suburb invokes such a powerful image, it might be helpful to go back to Levittown. Built in Long Island in the late 1940’s, Levittown was a mass-produced housing development that has long been considered by urban planners to be a prototype of suburbia. With the Baby Boom, the 1948 Housing Bill (which loosened lending restrictions) and the GI bill, Leavittown came along at the optimal time for suburbia to take off.

Leavittown was heavily marketed to the city dwellers and the concept of a rosier escape from the city was intrinsic to the idea of the suburb. The names of suburbs and housing developments often employed geopomorphic features, images of the country, or positive associations with place (Heaven, Eden, Paradise, Sunny, etc.). For example, take a look at the list of suburbs of Minneapolis: Golden Valley, Edinah, Eden Prairie, Maple Grove (as if you’d realistically find an orchard of maple trees there), St. Louis Park, Rosemont. This was satirized appropriately enough on “Arrested Development” when Michael Bluth picked a name for a housing development that his son, George Michael, said sounded like salad dressing.

Meanwhile, “Suburgatory,” a new show this past season that flew relatively low on the cultural radar (but fortunately, got renewed), shows you don’t have to condemn every element to effectively satirize it.

The show follows teenage daughter Tessa Altman (Jane Levy) and her single dad George (Jeremy Sisto) as they move from Manhattan to a suburb where communal pressure to fit in is particularly heavy. Like someone who watched American Beauty or Weeds, Tessa has a preset expectation that suburbia will be like Hell. George is on the opposite end of the spectrum. As the dramatic tension unwinds between the duo over whether this new town and subsequent lifestyle is good or bad, the show allows for an even-sided exploration.

In the closing credits of Suburgatory’s pilot, we see George out and about alongside all of his neighbors as they all water their law. George smiles while receiving a compliment from his intrusive neighbor from across the street, Sheila Shay (Ana Gasteyer), on the niceness of his lawn. It’s an empty compliment: the lawns (long considered to be the most frivolous vestiges of suburbia) are all identical. Whereas Tessa would take the compliment with cynicism, George has no such pretensions and that's the basic yin and yang of the show

            The irony of the situation is Tessa's process of growing up is to throw all the snark out the window and accept her new environment. While many of the characters (Ana Gasteyer's Sheila Shay, her school nemesis Dalia Royce, etc.) are fairly constant (though no less hilarious, the show has a GREAT supporting cast), Tessa slowly realizes that there are some hidden depths behind her initial assumptions. Cheryl Hines (deserving of an Emmy nod), in particular, shines as perky Southern belle Dallas Royce whose evolving relationship with Tessa is an often-underlooked source of pathos for the show.

American Horror Story from a cultural vacuum

There’s nothing like watching a TV show in a vacuum, by which I mean not having read a single review, critical analysis or piece of press before digging into a program so you’re free to form your own opinions. I suspect that there would be a lot less groupthink (deemed by myself to be measured by critical agreement) on shows if critics didn’t spend good chunks of their time philosophizing together about what makes shows like Community or Parks and Recreation (I like one of those two) so great.

Catching up on the series several months after the fact, I had little choice but to watch American Horror Story in a vacuum in order to avoid spoilers. It was precisely because of that solitude that the experience was so exhilarating. I couldn’t afford the luxury of complaining about maladjusted plot twists or nonsensical plots because I was too distracted trying to piece together what I was seeing. Other critics, in the meantime, enjoyed a think-tank effect: Comments on the A.V. Club message boards, reading of press material, or talking about the show on the twittersphere allow for the combined efforts of hundreds of people to decipher together clues. The experience of deciphering what you’re seeing becomes so much easier that you don’t get the full experience.

The end result is this jaded review from the highly-respected (and not necessarily wrong) critic James Poniewozik of Time Magazine. Poniewozik is a self-admitted heavy twitter user as well:

“A silly assault of whatever crazy ideas Murphy and Falchuk wanted to throw in there (Ghosts in gimp suits! Naked Dylan McDermott! Shape-changing maids!) mixed in with some performances that at least got the joke (Jessica Lange, mostly) and others that unfortunately didn't (Connie Britton), all of it so fast and relentless and loud that little of it had the intended impact on me.”

I don’t disagree with Poniewozik’s “fast and relentless” assessment. I found the experience of watching the show’s first couple episodes jarring, but it was a disorientation that grabbed my attention. Sticking with the show paid off primarily because of the rather artful way in which the pieces of the puzzle fit together. It’s not unusual for a show these days to follow in the footsteps of "Lost" and arc its episodes in complex ways, but for a Ryan Murphy show, I found a surprising amount of internal consistency in all the plot threads. Combined with Murphy’s strengths (yes, he has them, or why else would we be watching Glee?), particularly his ability to juggle a large number of eye-popping flashy characters within a 42-minute frame, I’d call this show novel in a unique way. Equally good is that the show’s episodes work very well as stand-alone episodes. I particularly was fascinated by all the faux mythology that the 2^nd episode, “Home Invasion”, was built around. In a vaccum, I’m restricting myself from looking up if it was based on anything historical, but that’s certainly more than enough to spark curiosity.

I will, however, concede to the haters that Ben and Vivian don’t make an engaging center for the story and that the show deserved better leads for its inaugural season. In my admittedly limited experience with Connie Britton and Dylan McDermott, neither has ever worked for me. Britton is most closely linked in TV land with Friday Night Lights which I have not seen. I remember her more for her role in the erosion of the character of Mike Flaherty by playing the transformation of Nikki from pining subordinate to demanding girlfriend so poorly.

I also strongly question why some of the characters are so nonchalantly evil. Echoing the growing sentiment that Murphy (and his two co- execs) didn’t always have a handle on how dislikeable characters like Kurt or Mr. Schu could be on Glee, I found Tate to be a more disturbing, dark, and unpleasant personality and I get the sense that he was written more sympathetically. Ghost or not, Tate is the equivalent of a serial killer and has done some awful things: Deflowering Ben’s daughter, tormenting Ben, sleeping with Ben’s wife under false pretenses, and killing the gay couple. He should have inspired Sylar-like levels of in-universe dread and had his own Vaderish evil theme by episode six. Instead, the daughter hangs around him and the dad just has a casual attitude of “I can’t treat you anymore here, but maybe around the corner in the coffee shop.”

Similarly, the character of Larry Harvey (Dennis O’Hare) added to the mix as a sometimes useful juxtaposition with the rest of the gang who all sport faces that aren’t disgusting. Of all the puzzle pieces that came together, Harvey’s story never had me invested to figure out the truth to his story and, somehow, he didn’t feel satisfying. Logistically, I also question why he would nonchalantly kill Hayden.

On the whole, though, I think story dominated over any weak links in the characters, and except for the leads, no one was unengaging.

Playing GM of television: 2010-2011 Season

I saw this post by Andy Daglas the other day, in which he plays out a hypothetical scenario wherein he can trade TV characters from show to show as if he were a sports GM.
http://www.chicagonow.com/the-vast-wasteland/2011/12/hot-stove-tv/

1.    Sheila Shay (Ana Gasteyer) from Suburgatory to Revenge in exchange for Nolan Ross

Ana Gasteyer will fit right into the Hamptons and imbue the melodrama with a little bit of humor. Nolan Ross will move across the street in Sheila's place and give Tessa a more competent partner-in-crime than the overly affable Malick. Against the monotoned Dahlia and the Dahlia-like girls at her new school, Tessa needs all the help she can get.

2.      Tate (Evan Peters) from American Horror Story gets sent to In Treatment in exchange for Adele (Amy Ryan). Constance (Jessica Lange) gets loaned out.

Tate needs someone effective to help cure his problems. Ben (Dylan McDermott) clearly can’t do the trick and is secretly enabling Tate’s ghost-murdering ways. On Dr. Paul’s (Gabriel Bryne's) turf, Tate will finally get fixed and if you throw Constance in for a few guest spots, it’ll be a fun family session. 

In the meantime, Dr. Ben needs some help himself. The striking Adele will jump in and fix the damage and, yes, the two will probably either bang or have an emotional affair, but that's the best thing that can happen to him. His marriage to his wife is clearly in trouble. His first thought when his wife wanted to move because of possible ghost sightings was to throw her in an institutionalize her. 

 3.      Annie, Senor Chang, and Pierce get sent from Community to Glee in exchange for Sue Sylvester and Quinn Fabray (pre-wheelchair)

Abed and Troy need a more superficial and acerbic girl (possibly one who they might have more sexual tension with) to pal around with. With the temptation of Annie out of the way, Jeff doesn’t get the scarlett letter for bedding a barely legal coed, and Annie, as a peppy student assistant to Mr. Schu, gets better storylines to people closer her age. Plus, most of the guys will have crushes on her and the potential shipping combinations will be mind-boggling.

Meanwhile, Sue is getting tiring with her redundancy in trying to destroy the Glee club. As a pregnant P.E. teacher, she becomes the gang’s new nemesis, while Pierce boasts an attribute even deadlier than what Sue had: Crankiness. He won't even let Mr. Schu get through half a song without telling him to shut up, throwing some old-timey racist insult at one of his students, and boring them with stories. 

Lastly, Sr. Chang will be Michael’s crazy uncle who will have a Holly-Holliday-like 3-episode arc as Mr. Schu’s substitute upon a bad case of food poisoning. Chang gets fired once it’s discovered that he doesn’t have substitute teacher credentials but it will have been a fun ride.

4. 3-Way Trade: Jonothan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) of Bored to Death goes to Community, the rights to  John Goodman go to The Office, and Ryan Howard and Kevin Malone go to Bored to Death

Community needs a nerdy intellectual guy like Ames for a foil. A professor a few years younger then Jeff Winger who thinks he's six times smarter than him will irk Jeff. He'll also majorly crush on Britta and never ever get anywhere close to winning over her affections.

I don't want whatever character John Goodman plays to go over to The Office but just John Goodman and his comedic gifts and allow the Office writing staff the opportunity to mold a good character for him. I've never been in love with Goodman but I think with his bellowing, hefty frame, he could be a tough guy akin to Idris Elba's character and I could trust him to restrain the manic unpredictable energy that the writers have tried to infuse every manager with post-Michael Scott (Will Ferrell is an unusually bad example).

Lastly, maybe the only guy in the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin with a master's degree needs to figure out what to do with himself since he can't be a temp forever and still is too fearful of going to Thailand. So he moves to this hipster enclave of Brooklyn where people get him and works on writing a tell-all novel about his rise and fall from temp to CEO to temp again of the world's zaniest paper company. And the show goes all meta- because he will meet Steve Carell and Greg Daniels and try to persuade them to star in a TV show based on his book. Kevin Malone will also, by some coincidence too crazy for me to even come up with a plausible explanation for (although the Office writer's room will know how to handle this perfectly, transitions of power that make no sense seem to be their specialty lately), end up in Brooklyn too where he will reunite with long-lost brother Zach Galifianakis.

5. Twofer from 30 Rock gets traded to New Girl in exchange for Winston, Frank from 30 Rock gets traded to Don't Trust the B--- in Apartment 23 in exchange for Eli

I'd hate to see Winston leave the gang, but realistically, the chemistry between the other three is strongest, and the fussy Twofer might bring in a little more of a clash with the other roommates. Can you imagine the hidden resentment a law school dropout like Nick would have for a guy with the command of the English language that Twofer has? Winston wouldn't be the complete antithesis of Tracy Jordan that Twofer was designed to be. He wouldn't be the polar opposite of Tracy, but he'd add a lot of life and personality to the 30 Rock writers room

Meanwhile, Frank was born to play the combination  tambourine-playing health-inspecting simultaneously-creepy-and-non-threatening guy next door that Eli currently inhabits and Eli is the perfect compliment to Jenna who needs a stalker on top of his game.

6. Free agent Josh (Lonny Ross) from 30 Rock gets picked up by Up All Night

I've only seen two episodes of Up All Night, but it's a show about a TV show and Josh and his sex addict of an agent need another crack at a television show, so Josh becomes faux-Oprah's sidekick

7. Howard and Raj get traded from Big Bang Theory to 2 Broke Girls in exchange for Oleg and Han Lee. Stuart will be signed to a full-season contract.

Two Broke Girls has two strong leads with two appalling secondary characters while Big Bang Theory has...er, well, basically the same thing, but what if we could take Howard and Raj and exchange them for walking stereotypes Oleg and Han-Lee. As Daglas pointed out when he made an almost idential trade, said, we need a Lenny and Squiggy for this Laverne and Shirley. I don't think Oleg, Han Lee, Howard or Raj combined could equal one Squiggy in terms of mating desirability, but Raj and Howard would be a massive improvement over Oleg and Han Lee. Raj would keep his mouth shut a lot more than Oleg, and Howard would come onto the girls plenty, but at least Max will know how to handle him. She'll probably punch his lights out, which is what Howard would need. The caveat, Howard has to break up with Bernadette (maybe temporarily).

In the meantime, Han Lee will put a face on the restaurant that the guys and Penny order their Chinese food every other night, while Oleg will serve as the pervy landlord super.

Because you'll need to round out the gang, comic book geek Stuart will return to school to get a higher degree and become a lab assistant and fill out the three's lunch table conversations.




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Wilfred and the Beauty of Miserable People

Wilfred reminds me of how the TV industry only feels it can present shows to an audience as a comedy, a fantasy, a procedural, or a serialized arc. Wilfred was marketed as a comedy and like many comedies today, it included a gimmick to help the show get greenlit and help sell it to audiences: Lonely boy has an abnormal relationship with dog of beautiful girl next door wherein he sees him as man in a dog suit and can have conversations with him.

However, other than the occasional situational humor that arises from seeing a dog with anthropomorphic  (Disclaimer: I'm about 75% sure I correctly used that word in context) qualities do dog things (covering some of the same territory as Family Guy, no less), this isn't really a comedy. At least, I don't see it as such. I see the gimmick as a dramatic one.

We tend to think of a gimmick as something more prevalent in comedies, but biopics and biopic-like character pieces like to present themselves as a story about someone with a certain type of disability (e.g. Sam I Am, Beautiful Mind, My Left Foot), someone with an unusual delusion (e.g. Melvin and Howard, Informant, also Beautiful Mind)  or someone who's just plain miserable (e.g. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia, Rachel Getting Married, Julia).

The third class, unusually miserable people, presents somewhat of a challenge for entertainment purposes.

Let's look at the above examples: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is presented as a societal deconstruction of the happy American family image a la Douglas Sirk. It also was made interesting because it featured the two most glamorous stars of its day "uglying it up" so to speak. Sylvia (a Gwyneth Paltrow biopic of suicidal author Sylvia Plath) is historical fiction and so it has value in its authenticity. Lastly Julia (a little-seen 2009 Tilda Swinton film often confused with the 2009 release Julie & Julia) or Rachel Getting Married take a clinical approach and analyze the why of the person's despair.

Wilfred has his comic moments, sure, and some of them hit better than others. His love of Matt Damon is one of those running gags that definitely works for me. The ease with which he can get to second base with women and the enjoyment he gets from it, on the other hand, feels kind of awkward. Other times, the pacing of gags is so far apart that you're not sure if it's a comedy at all.

In those cases, I don't think it really is. It's a sad story and I'd argue is that Wilfred is what keeps the show ingestible. He's a narrative balancing force in what otherwise would be a very depressing story. Sometimes, dialogue forces you to put a positive spin on depressive tendency and by talking through his problems with Wilfred, Ryan is creating a positive spin.

With that in mind, I very much enjoyed Wilfred from the point of view of a drama. It speaks a lot of truth about the nature of depression and the power of defense mechanisms to help us cope. Ryan is very unique in the sense that there might not be a character on television who starts out from such a hopeless place. Even better, the writers aren't in a hurry to move him out of that sense of hopelessness*. There's a typical girl-next-door setup, but the usual will-they won't-they tension that's become cliched at this point, doesn't even seem like a plausible direction for Ryan. Ryan has his occasional triumphs, but his depression is somewhat of a constant with the character and that's wonderful because it aligns closer with real life

*Ed. Note: I'm only up to episode 11 of the 13 episodes that have aired so far, so in the event that by the 12th episode, he's singing and dancing and has turned his life around, I am ill-informed

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Season Premiere Catch-Up: Random Thoughts on Glee's "Purple Piano Project"

Some random thoughts on Glee after waching the season opener:
-I did not expect Schuster or anyone in the New Directions to confront Santana's dual alleigance because it's already the white elephant in the room. In other words, it was already implausible that Santana would still be in the Glee club after sabatoging them at regionals the first season. Sue's 3-year long vendetta against the Glee club isn't really plausible either, so at this point, it probably would have been better to run with it rather than call attention to it.

-I thought the only real good part of the episode was the change to Quinn. Very interesting and intriguing things going on with her, although who knew such wierdos existed at that school. Weren't Tina and Mercedes the absolute biggest outliars in the school season 1? And if the "skanks" existed in the Glee Universe that early, they were the same kinds of people Tina and Mercedes (and Zicsees) would have befriended. Plus they looked like Zizes and Mercedes.

-Sam (Chord Overstreet) really balanced out the cast as the most normal kid. I hope that's not the last we see of him.

-I think the main problem is the reset button is going on too much, which is somewhat similar to complaints I've heard before. There's only so many times the resolve of the Glee club and Will's patience against Sue can be put to the test and have the drama hold up.

-Blaine transferring is really troubling to me. Does he even have parents? No person, gay or straight, would or should ever succeed in convincing their parents to let them go through the trouble of transferring schools just so they could be wth their significant other, given how volatile high school romances are. Or ESPECIALLY NOT to be in a different glee club, there are 7 periods a day of actual school, that parents would also base that decision on.

-As for the girl who wasn't good enough to sing, isn't there an entire music department with a choir class at the school to accomodate her? Just like any other school? I also don't think it's as morally interesting of a case as Mr. Schuster makes it out to be: If you have auditions and you're not cutting people, than what's the point of the auditions? That's what they call sign-ups and that means anyone can join. To have a program where anyone who meets a certain bar is admitted is already a pretty generous policy, anyways.

Premiere Week: Sunny's first two episodes

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's opening two episodes both highlighted different ways the show can succeed.

The opening episode took a familiar plot (the "Pretty Woman" prototype) and gave it the Sunny treatment.
In the Sunny version, Frank wants to propose to his whore and the guys think she'd bring down the standards of the gang (not particularly easy to do, mind you). In classic Sunny style, there's no real charitable purpose other than the image problem.

Rather than try to make the whore into a lady, Dennis gets distracted by Mac's weight and Dee decides midway through that perhaps the life of a whore has its upsides.

I've praised the show in the past for being written so well that each scene could stand alone as a textbook great scene. One of the B-plots, involving Charlie trying an elaborate scheme to get Frank a better woman, didn't get enough time to get off the ground, but we got one knockout scene out of it that made my whole night. Similarly, the other B-plot (or maybe we'll call it a C-plot) had little to offer other than that one hysterical scene at the doctor's office. While the show does great comedy set pieces, the fact that both B-plots were essentially excuses to lead into one awesome scene shortcutted any sense of narrative.

As for the second episode, the Jersey Shore narrative had all the makings of a winner. Unlike the first episode, this one had a sense of hope to it. The first episode was about depraved characters seeking to bring someone into their depraved world (under the pretense of improving her) while this episode began with two characters attempting to recapture their childhood nostalgia. In both real life and on TV, attempting to go back to some earlier time in your life is usually a bittersweet experience that hits some somber tones when it's more bitter than sweet.

The twist here is that while some characters do indeed have a magical time in Jersey Shore, it turns out to be the other three guys. Charlie bumps into the waitress and she's actually nice to him for once. He has the night of his life with her. Wery wisely, the reset button is pressed on that subplot. Sunny's strength is that the characters are too far entrenched into their own purgatory for happy endings to occur. Mac and Frank have a great time with a rum ham and a ship of guidos. I can't imagine any other series on TV being able to work a rum ham so well into an episode: the ram ham is the comedic version of a Hitchcockian McGuffin.

Dennis and Dee make some new friends only to find out that they're pretty decrepit and this evening soon morphs into what seems to be the most terrifying night of their lives. There's a slight problem here: Because Dennis and Dee usually associate with people at the bottom of the barrel, this experience doesn't seem too atypical. Fortunately, the night of terror is glossed over in montage and intercut with the great night the other
guys are having.

For such an optimistic outing (consider this the Sunny equivalent of the "Disneyworld" or "Hawaii" episode on most family sitcoms), I was pleased to see it wasn't an episode that ended with a crowning moment of misery for all characters involved. Three of the five characters had the time of their lives, the twist being that it wasn't the characters who you expected.

Catching up on premiere week: The boss situation on "The Office"

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The Office
My main problem with the new season (as gleamed from the first episode) is that James Spader's new boss isn't too different than D'Angelo Vickers or Michael Scott: Uniquely weird and unorthodox. In the first season and a half, Michael Scott being the boss of the branch was an "informed ability" (thanks TV tropes!): The viewer was told that he was worthy of being a boss but there was little evidence of him being a good leader. In fact, the story arcs of many episodes (Diversity Day or
The Fire) were reliant on a 3rd act that culminated in Michael Scott screwing everything else.

Spader's character, Robert California, is being played this way. His skills are being talked up heavily: He apparently talked the CEO of the company into an early retirement and he talked himself up in his own interview. At the same time, he only seems good in a so-offbeat-it-just-might-work kind of way. His idea of making a list of who's a winner or a loser is something that I would give 90/10 odds on failing horrifically if a boss tried it in the real world. I theorize it's that 10% room for doubt that has historically made the Michael Scott era work: The Office relies heavily on realism and while we thought the shenanigans of Michael Scott were most likely unrealistic, they were very plausible schemes that didn't require that much suspension of disbelief.

Getting back to the problem at hand, my beef with this season is that James Spader is seeming to play out the same way. Why remind the audience that Steve Carrell is gone by putting in someone even remotely comparable to him? Also, if the show's main asset is realism, I think it's kind of stretching it that the employees of Dunder-Mifflin-Sabre have suffered three of the weirdest bosses ever.

The Office had a great tonal change for the better when authority figures like Charles (Idis Ebra) and Jan (before she became a bit nutty in the 4th season) were there to contrast Michael Scott's antics. I understand that if you have a straight-laced boss and no crazy Michael-Scott-like element, you don't have anything remotely resembling what the show was in the first seven seasons.

However, I'd like to suggest that Michael Scott rubbed off on some of the characters: Oscar's a little less uptight, Pam's let loose a little more and has more confidence, Jim embraced wildness and fun (stemming from the "Murder" episode), and Ryan went from being a straight-laced business student to being supremely lazy and having an inflated ego. The new show could've work with a relatively straight-laced boss and the Dunder-Mifflin crew (in the form of Andy or Jim) wanting to preserve the don't-let-work-get-in-the-way-of-goofiness attitude that Michael Scott pioneered in the face of that nemesis.