What I’m Watching: Suburgatory

Suburgatory: Season 1, Episode 18 “Down Time” (B+)

It’s been almost a month since this show last aired, and it’s always a delight when it returns. This episode actually wasn’t so Tessa-focused, but that’s quite alright since this show has some seriously entertaining supporting characters. Lisa and Malik’s relationship meant that, advances from Evan aside, Tessa was pretty much on her own. The best part of that was that Ryan got curious and came over after spying on Tessa and noting that was eating an alarming amount of butter. His comments about the food on her pajamas were appropriately inane, and entirely hilarious. I liked that Tessa actually seemed to have a nice time and even let Ryan feel her up after he so kindly requested to do so following their evening together. Noah’s broken bed provided the perfect opportunity for him to be featured and for Dallas to tag along on the men’s outing. Her bed-top meltdown in front of annoyed salesman Jonathan Slavin from “Better Off Ted” led to an instance of one of my favorite things on TV shows: when characters that never interact get the chance to do so. Noah consoling Dalia and buying her Kangaroo Jack rather than the “Hangover” monkey she wanted was great. Meanwhile, George did a good job convincing Dallas that sometimes it’s important to pull it together for the sake of your kids, and Dallas’ homecoming demonstrated that she was ready to be there for her daughter, while simultaneously getting excited about being able to create an entirely new wardrobe.