Suburgatory Broke the Bank With ‘Krampus’

From 2011 to 2014, Suburgatory was unlike anything else on TV. Creator Emily Kapnek took the experience of spending her formative years with her mother in Larchmont, New York, and applied a dizzying absurdity to the story of George and Tessa Altman (Jeremy Sisto and Jane Levy), who relocate from NYC to the suburban community of Chatswin and quickly discover that the mean streets of Manhattan ain’t got nothin’ on the surreality of the suburbs. They soon warm to their cadre of increasingly eccentric neighbors: mother and daughter Dallas and Dalia Royce (Cheryl Hines and Carly Chaikin), rich and completely out of touch with reality; husband and wife Noah and Jill Werner (Alan Tudyk and Gillian Vigman), who are attempting to raise their child while trying to avoid actual parenting; and outsize personalities Sheila and Fred Shay (Ana Gasteyer and Chris Parnell) and their dumb-jock son Ryan (Parker Young) and neurotic daughter Lisa (Allie Grant), who’s spent her life in Ryan’s shadow … to the point where her parents frequently forget she’s even in the room. The ensemble comedy garnered critical praise for its steady stream of zaniness and quickly gained a reputation for deftly skewering suburban life while still maintaining a general sweetness of tone.

ABC canceled Suburgatory after three seasons, and the series wasn’t available on any streaming service, which meant it was forgotten far more quickly than it should’ve been. Now, however, Tubi and the Roku Channel spinoff known as Howdy have added all three seasons of the series to their streaming libraries, which provided the perfect opportunity for Kapnek and some of the show’s cast to reflect on the series through the prism of a particular episode: the budget-busting season-two holiday episode, “Krampus.”

It’s staggering just how much story is packed into this 22-minute installment: George selflessly sends Tessa to Manhattan to spend the holiday with her mom (guest star Malin Akerman), whom she barely knows; Ryan discovers he’s adopted and absconds into the woods like a wounded animal; and Dalia, mourning the absence of her former housekeeper, Carmen (Bunnie Rivera), decides to woo her back with the help of a sure-to-go-viral video. For Kapnek, the episode was most noteworthy “because it was very much the brand the show was known for: a collision of surreal comedy and heart.”

First of all, I was psyched you were all immediately down to take a look back at this episode.Emily Kapnek (series creator): We broke the fucking bank on this episode. It was the most expensive episode of the series, I think.

Carly Chaikin (Dalia Royce): Why?

EK: Oh, because we had your music video — we had to rent sets and bring in the airplane, and choreography, and we had snow, and it was Burbank. We had tons of guest cast. It was a really ambitious episode.

Jane Levy (Tessa Altman): That’s what I was thinking when I was rewatching it: “Wow, the show is made really well.” It’s a high production!

EK: For the holiday episodes, we knew we always wanted to do special, big-production-value episodes that have a lot of heart and a lot of comedy. And Malin was such a win, casting-wise. How did you think she looked next to you, Jane, in those scenes in the hotel when she’s in her red wig?

JL: I look so young. Malin is only 12 years older than me, so I probably could play the Brittany Snow character in The Hunting Wives, Malin’s love interest! But she did play my mom, and it works. Kudos to Malin for wanting to play that part, because now I’m 35, and I have conversations with my agents — right now, somebody wants me to play a 17-year-old’s mom, and they’re like, “We don’t want you to do this because we don’t want you to age up.”

When Suburgatory came out in 2011, I was new to acting and the industry, and a lot of the conversations and press was about me being the lead of the show as a woman and Emily being the creator of the show as a woman. Now, much later, I’m realizing how rare and special that was. Seeing Tessa, this character Emily created, on network television, and this heightened, wacky world with all these amazing comedians, is so cool. We had this character that’s not just the sardonic straight man — she’s also complex. She loves this.

EK: There’s such a danger of the snarky New Yorkers coming into the suburbs and looking down at everyone. The fact that Tessa had this huge emotional deficit, which is that she doesn’t have a mom in her life, and she lands in the land of moms, everyone wants to mother her, and everyone wants to make her lunch, even though it’s misguided and some of it is inappropriate — it’s endearing. She’s open to it, and so is George, and that makes them likable. They find a home there. The jumping-off place of “This is not where I want to be, this is not who I am” to the understanding of “Oh, home is wherever my dad and I are, and there is a place for us here, as crazy as it is” — that’s the crux of the show.

In the scene where Dalia and Carmen are reunited, there’s a small but great moment where you see the emotion move across George’s face as he realizes how much he misses Tessa.EK: Their relationship is so well drawn that, even in these short moments, you can sense so much history between them. He’s trying to do the parenting thing and be that responsive dad, and there’s gonna be issues that are over his head. He’s trying to figure it out alongside her. That’s one of the things I loved about Malin’s performance. She was so awkward with her daughter. Obviously, they didn’t have history. In that scene where she’s like, “I want to give you a hug!” and then the wide cut of them both in their bathrobes — they’re two strangers that happen to share DNA.

When Tessa gets back to Chatswin and George, you understand even more what’s waiting for her there. She learns everything she needed to know, and without George having to say much, she appreciates who he is as a parent.

Parker really had a chance to shine in this episode. In addition to the scene where Ryan loses his mind when he finds out he’s adopted, there’s the bit where Malik’s family sees Ryan running alongside the road. Malik convinces him to come home with them by getting Ryan to eat a Starburst out of his hand.EK: That scene was really hard to justify. [Laughs] Jane and Jeremy were always grounded at the center of the stories, and then we got to do that sort of satirical, heightened comedy. The shot of Malik’s entire family in the car — we’ve never met them before, but everyone’s extremely well drawn in that one moment. Those great actors, Tim Meadows and Paula Newsome — it was an incredible little glimpse into another family that we haven’t gotten to explore at all. We did that all the time.

There were so many people that started off with a single line that wound up being main characters, including Parker and Ana Gasteyer and Maestro Harrell’s character, Malik. Everyone had almost nothing to do in the pilot or even the second episode. Ana, I think her single line in the pilot was, “Yoo-hoo! Hi, neighbor!” Even Maestro only said “Hello” when Carly was giving the tour of the school, and then that turned into him marrying Lisa and having a huge ongoing arc.

Parker Young (Ryan Shay): I don’t even think I had a line in the pilot.

EK: You were dancing, right?

PY: Yeah, as soon as I got out of the car, I was dancing.

JL: Parker, I feel like you could give a talk in an acting workshop on how to go from being featured in a pilot to having a big part. Take your shirt off, hump a car, make a big splash, and that’s how you’ll keep coming back!

EK: There was always going to be this bigger thing beyond him just being Lisa’s brother. In the episode, where he’s like, “If I’m not real, then what’s real?” and his physical comedy — Parker was so willing. He’s taking his shirt off as frequently as anyone will tolerate. We had entire episodes that were built around it! “The Body,” where his family was so smitten with his perfect body — when you find out that he’s adopted, it made perfect sense that everyone was so enamored. It wasn’t their gene pool!

In the scene where Ryan meets up with Malik’s family, I described him as being like a wounded animal having run off into the night.CC: I was wondering if, in the script, the “I’m adopted” was actually the dialogue, or did you just keep going with it?

EK: I think it was. We were all convinced that the more you said the words, the less it sounded like a word. The number of times you would repeat it would be imperative, that suddenly we don’t even know what we’re talking about here!

The one thing I don’t think was in the script was I don’t think anybody asked him to eat those leaves off the tree. Malik was going to feed him this Starburst from his hand, which we talked about — it had to be unwrapped if we wanted him to eat it like a horse, right out of his hand. But then there were shots of Parker just eating leaves from a tree, and I remember being in Video Village like, “Well, just let him do it. We’ll get a few takes of him eating leaves off a tree for no reason.”

PY: We were given the reins to explore and have fun. I feel so stifled nowadays. You can’t offend anybody, you’ve gotta keep everything within the lines, and nothing about that show felt like we were painting within the lines!

EK: We did battle a lot. In the writers’ room, we had a revolving door to take the call with Standards and Practices, because there was so much feedback about what we couldn’t do, and we were always trying to find another show that we felt was equal, that we could go, “Well, what about this reference on this show?” It was like, how far can we push it? Our show moved around a couple of times, and we tried to seize those opportunities when it was airing behind The Middle or whatever and we’d get to do a more adult joke.

Carly, your story line provided the episode’s big viral moment, which — appropriately — was a music video Dalia made with the specific intent of having it go viral.CC: That song is one of my pride and joys. I still know every word, and it still gets stuck in my head.

EK: That sequence was really massive. Suburgatory was big on pop culture, so we had the Britney Spears “Toxic” references with the stewardesses and the airplane. Obviously, not a lot rhymes with “Carmen,” so you get her “hot tea with larmon.” [Laughs] Then we had a “Gangnam Style” breakdown in the middle, with her dancing. Susan Rovner, at the time at Warner Bros., had sent me this music video of Rebecca Black —

EK: And Susan was just like, “This is so Dalia. Her mom bought her this opportunity to have this music career.” And I was like, “Well, we’ve gotta do that.” Jared Faber, who did the music for this and is a composer I’ve worked with on many shows for many years, when I sent him the lyrics to this, he was like, “Can we talk for a sec?” And I was like, “Sure!” He was like, “It’s really — it’s not — it’s not good. Why is it so repetitive?” I was like, “No, but that’s it. That’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s not good!” [Laughs.]

CC: I mean, the lyrics are just genius. “The tag said to dry-clean it / But without you, I couldn’t read it.”

EK: And when you unwrap Carmen and the bubble wrap goes everywhere, you go, “Come on, Carmen! She’ll clean all this up later.” She jumps right back into her usual self.

JL: It made me feel sad that TV shows like this aren’t being made anymore. I was like, “Is it possible that somebody would give Suburgatory the budget that they gave us and 22 episodes to really do whatever? What’s being made that’s this creative and that you get to spend this much time with these characters?”

PY: Especially on network. Rewatching that episode, that was not a bunch of executives picking and choosing and throwing their two cents in. It would’ve been way more watered-down. That was a clear vision and a tone navigating incredibly comedic moments, but then it’s super grounded.

EK: We were very lucky that the network let us be what we were. And there were many, many moments — this episode included — with pushback creatively, where it was like, “What exactly is this?” And even with critics, the thing they loved about it was also the thing they hated about it. It was that it wasn’t on the rails. They were like, “Oh, it’s tonally inconsistent!” And I’m like, “It’s actually not inconsistent. It’s consistently what it is. This just isn’t familiar to you.”

I think you’re right, Jane. It’s weird, because I have development now in other places, and people are always so complimentary of Suburgatory. They’re like, “Oh, we would love a Suburgatory!” And I’m like, “Wouldja, though?” Because at the time, it was hard. We faced a lot of criticism for the tone of the show. I remember that Larry Salz, my agent at UTA, said to me, “Do something a little more conceptually grounded, something that’s a little more down the middle, but then in the execution? Your voice.” And that was what convinced me to dig in on Suburgatory. It was a really fun exercise, and I don’t know that you get to do something like that anymore, especially for network television.

Emily, do you have a Back to Suburgatory pitch if someone were to provide you with the opportunity to make it?Emily: Yeah, I have a good one. It involves a return to Chatswin. Remember that the very last time we saw our characters, when the show ended, Tessa and Ryan were just wildly making out in the street. That ended up being the end of our series, which we didn’t know. But the aftermath of that? One can only guess. The idea of Tessa coming back to Chatswin with one of her own — there’s a lot of fun opportunities there. And weirdly, a lot of people in our cast have hit me up about this. I’m not sure if network TV is ready for Suburgatory Pt. 2, but it would be delightful!

CC: If we had a reboot, Cheryl and I were talking about the idea of Dalia having a baby and still living at home and being like, “It’s not talking to me. Why is it not answering?”

PY: Do you think we can get RFK Jr. in the revival? Could he pop in for a cameo?

JL: That’s a really good question, Parker!

CC: If we could, would you do it, Emily?

Correction: This article has been updated to correct a misattribution.

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