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.