Suburgatory's Horrifying Christmas

I've been catching up on Suburgatory recently, and I like it quite a lot in general, but I thought last night's Christmas episode was almost a total misfire. The whole thing was tonally weird and felt like some sort of bizarre fever dream, from Ryan's freak-out to Dalia's music video.

But it was the Carmen plotline that made me go from "bemused and perplexed" to "staring at my screen in horror." They wrapped up a person and gave her as a gift. AFFLUENT WHITE PEOPLE LITERALLY WRAPPED UP A LATINA DOMESTIC WORKER AND GAVE HER AS A GIFT. I mean, I know they made clear that where she worked was her choice, but I still cannot get past the optics of it. And her choice was not exactly good: Did she want to work for the mean racist or the clueless racist who claimed to love her?

Now, the show has done similar things in the past in order to skewer the characters' oblivious white privilege, but when they've worked, it's because Tessa or George or Lisa or SOMEONE objects or at least looks like they're aware of how completely awful the other characters are being. But in this case, George was an active participant and enabler - GEORGE! - and no one else was there to be horrified. I'd like to give the writers the benefit of the doubt here, because they have made this sort of device work in the past, but whatever self-awareness presumably existed in the framing of this story did not come across in the episode itself at all.

I'm certainly not writing off the show as hopelessly racist or anything; every show has its missteps. But this episode did not leave me with warm fuzzy Christmas feelings toward the Chatswin crew.

Morning Coffee (10/18/12)

I'm sick. The cat's sick. I'm working from home while we wait for test results from the vet. It's basically a barrel of laughs around here today.

Make sure you see today's Google Doodle. So cute. I really need to read that book.

Newsweek is going all-digital. It had definitely gone downhill recently, but it's still a little sad. The end of an era.

Showrunner Diary: A Day in the Life of Suburgatory Creator Emily Kapnek

Texas Monthly has amazing crime journalism. Here's The Innocent Man, Part One.

Pilot Thoughts: Suburgatory

I'm not even calling this a review because I'm a little too braindead for that at this point, but wow, I loved this pilot. Tessa, the teenaged narrator, was snarky and precocious without being obnoxious or two unrealistic, and I love the dynamic they're setting up between her and her single dad (Jeremy Sisto, who still always terrifies me a little because of Six Feet Under). He's the "cool dad" type but also fairly strict, and they clearly love each other a lot, whatever current problems they're having.

I expected to like those characters (and Alan Tudyk!) but I was delightfully surprised to discover that some of the supporting characters were fairly nuanced already. The client/love interest/suburban supermom Dallas Royce seemed initially set up to be superficial and awful, but she almost immediately gave George some really decent parenting advice. And sure, maybe her primary motivation is trying to sleep with George, but she also honestly seems to want to help Tessa, and there's an argument to be made that it is helpful for a girl to have someone in her life who makes it clear that she's open to discussing things like bras. (We don't know yet whether Tessa already has someone playing that role in her life.)

Of course, a lot of the suburb stuff is a caricature, but this episode suggested that it's not an unthinking one, and that - as on Community - there might be enough heart to back it up. I'm very hopeful.