Nose jobs, neighbors that are a little too friendly, and fluffy white dogs named after sports drinks define the new hit-TV show where all characters live in ‘a bubble of ignorance’, except for teenager Tessa Altman. The show follows the adventures of Tessa after she and her father, George, move from Manhattan to a suburban neighborhood that is too quiet for Tessa.
“In the show she has both feet solidly planted on the ground, but she is surrounded by these idiots and I feel sorry for her,” Spanish teacher Lorrie Button-Edelson said.
Both Tessa and her father suffer from the move. Neither understands the rituals of suburban life and the relationships with their new enviornment.
“In order to be a successful TV show, the show must have grains of truth,” Button-Edelson said. “The show has grains of truth, but it blows everything out of proportion.”
According to Button-Edelson, Katy is sprinkled in these grains of truth, which is evident through social class differences and cliques in the community. Although for some students, the truth of suburban life is exaggerated too often.
“People like to stereotype our part of suburbia,” sophomore Erika Reid said. “Like that we are all preppy little rich kids or that we all do drugs.”
But for Button-Edelson, there are flaws with Suburgatory. Althought he show points out realities of the suburban high school experiences, like football, other stereotypes like the majority of girls having nose jobs is untrue.
“When my family and I moved here [from Egypt] where we did not have major chain restaurants and everything, I felt like it was a bunch of repeating block of the same stores over and over,” senior Rachel Stepanek said. “It is much bigger here but a lot less diverse.”
Despite any untrue portrayals of suburban life, the students of the high school in the show as well as the students in Katy follow the same social hierarchy patterns.
“Every character type I see on that show, there are [real] people like that too,” Button- Edelson said. “A lot of those kids are [in Katy] in one shape or another.”
The show may be exaggerated, but many of the similarities between the suburbs and Suburgatory are sometimes unnerving. Some student viewers disagree with each exaggeration of teenage angst and misery.
“I don’t mind living here, but I feel like there are a bunch of negative stereotypes living in suburbia,” Stepanek said. “But as far as places to live, we have it pretty good here.”
