Surviving Suburbia
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Since this is a sitcom blog, I thought it would be a good idea for me to watch a sitcom once in a while.
So this week ABC premiered a new show, Surviving Suburbia, staring Bob Saget and Cynthia Stevenson and co-starring Jere Burns. Watching a show like this makes me remember why I never really watch sitcoms. They can’t all be as good as The Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother.
Surviving Suburbia is probably just as good as any other show of this type, your average suburban family just trying to make it through the day. The episode was about, in short, what an amazing jerk the sitcom father, Steve Patterson, played by Bob Saget, really is. First he fights with his wife about taking a neighbor’s house key because he doesn’t want the responsibility, then he and his friend Jim (Jere Burns) go into the house to look around and end up starting a fire. When they calls the authorities Steve makes it seem like they saw the fire and ran in to save the guy’s house (and his goldfish). Then the neighbor is so happy about it that he throws him a surprise thank you party and offers him the use of a beach house.
Steve’s daughter re-writes her story about her “hero,” changing it from Zac Efron to her dad. But then Steve’s teenage son tells him he saw what happened and knows the truth. The kid is clearly more adult than the dad as he explains to his father why he should tell the truth. Steve finally comes clean to his wife, Anne, and she’s angry that he lied. But then they all make up in the end and everyone is happy.
Boring and predictable, with just one or two mildy funny lines. Exactly why I don’t watch too many sitcoms.
