A review of last night’s “Suburgatory” coming up just as soon as I start shopping in the craft store of my mind…
I often have mixed feelings about the cartoonishness of Chatswin and its citizens, but Halloween is a time of year where it feels right for everyone’s behavior to be slightly askew, whether it’s a lynch mob (including Mr. Wolf, excited to be on the other side of such a gathering) gathering to attack one of the town’s few feminists (played in amusingly low-key fashion by Rachel Dratch) or the country club staff treating Noah-as-George like a homeless person who had the audacity to wander in.
Halloween episodes where sitcom characters dress up as each other is a pretty familiar trope (“Cougar Town” did it with Ellie and Laurie a year or two back, for instance), but one that almost always works. I don’t have much use for Noah as a character, but I enjoyed the hell out of Alan Tudyk attempting impressions of both George (whose voice is “like Kathleen Turner after drinking a milkshake”) and Jill. Jeremy Sisto is a tremendous sport for denuding himself of all his facial and body hair, and Tessa’s horrified reaction to what her father has become was hilarious.
There’s a lot going on in “The Witch of East Chatswin,” including George and Dallas finally agreeing to date, and as a result not everything got to pay off. (Emily Kapnek posted a deleted scene that shows Malik changing into the Shaggy costume, but not an explanation for it, and ABC’s press site also has photos of another deleted scene that shows how Kimantha and friends reacted to Tessa’s Halloween costume rant.) But this felt like a more cohesive, and funnier, episode overall than the premiere.
What did everybody else think?