It’s Christmastime on Suburgatory and George has procured a pretty great gift for Tessa. He’s sending her to New York to spend the holiday with her mother and has paid for a hotel and plenty of activities for the two to do together, while he’ll be rolling with Yakult and Dallas. However, when Alex comes by to pick Tessa up, he gets noticeably sad, so while he’s okay with his daughter getting closer to her mother, he’s still missing having her around for the holiday. Part of that could be that he doesn’t trust Alex not to hurt Tessa after being away for so long, as well.
But the two make it to the city and hang out in the hotel room in their robes, where Tessa gets to almost literally watch how she interacts with people when Alex goes on an anti-consumerism rant. Tessa came into the show much more like Alex than she is now and I think that seeing herself from a distance in the form of her mother really got to her. Alex then tries to give Tessa a hug, which is 50 shades of awkward for both sides, before they head downstairs to the lobby. Once there, Alex tells Tessa about the folklore creature Krampus, who is said to carry away the bad children at Christmas, before putting red lipstick on her. Though this is what Tessa thought she wanted, to be in a beautiful New York hotel listening to stories from Berlin, all that she really wants right now is to be home with her father.
In the middle of the night, she slips out, leaving Alex a stocking of presents, and surprises George the next morning, appearing on their doorstep. The two then share a hug.
Eugene Goldfarb
While picking up the Shay family holiday portrait, Ryan is told that he’s adopted…by the photographer, who pried Lisa with rum balls at the recent shoot and got her to spill the dirt. He then hulks out, climbing on top of the car, pressing his face to the windows, and stripping off his jacket and shirt while calling out the family for lying to him. Terrified, Fred speeds off, leaving his son to have an existential crisis in the middle of town. Ryan begins to wonder if anything’s real now that he found out he’s “not really” Ryan/a Shay, though punching and kicking a light pole was a good way to be reminded that yes, everything’s real.
Later that night, Malik’s riding in the car with his family when they see a shirtless boy running alongside the road, which turns out to be Ryan, having gone even more feral. After trying to eat a leaf and crouching like an animal on top of a rock, Malik lures him to the car with a yellow Starburst and gets him to go in the trunk to be transported to their home. The family gives Ryan a place to stay for the night, but they insist that his parents be called.
The next morning, Tessa stops by Lisa’s, who is still worried about Ryan and tells Tessa to go talk to Ryan for her because he’ll listen to her; he’s nuts over Tessa and has been for quite some time, but it took hearing it from somebody else for her to get it. Once she finds Ryan, she talks to him about the issues he has with his parents and insists that your parents are who raise you, not simply who conceived you. She relates to him in feeling lost about their identity after major parental trauma and tells him that she might have a crush on him, too. The two kiss (open mouth!), which Ryan has a huge reaction to.
All I Want for Christmas is You
Dalia is missing Carmen now that the holidays are upon us and she admits that getting her back is the only thing on her Christmas list. I mean, she’d take a set of rims, of course, but Carmen coming to work for her family again is the most important thing right now. As Santa doesn’t leave housekeepers under the tree on Christmas morning, Dalia will have to do the only thing guaranteed to win over her – create a song and subsequent music video about how much she misses her, which will drum up a ton of Youtube comments. Hey, it worked for Yeezy.
The music video, set to a very poppy song titled “You Missed a Spot,” is all pink, confetti (courtesy of Chef Alan), and looks to be shot in Dalia’s closet – until she throws it to Wan’Er for a K-Pop inspired bridge and dance breakdown on an airplane. Unfortunately, George thinks that it won’t make a difference and that Carmen has made her choice to continue working for Jill and Noah, but he’s wrong. Now that Jill is home from her book tour, she’s clashing with Carmen over how best to care for Opus; Jill can’t understand the infant and thinks he’s developing a Mexican accent, while Carmen thinks Jill should raise her own child.
However, once Carmen sees the video that Dalia produced, she makes the decision to come back to the Royces to work and ends up in a present on Christmas morning. Dalia then grabs her by the end and goes off to play with her in her room.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-You can watch Dalia’s music video here, if you can’t get enough of it (like I can’t).
-Let’s hear it for shirtless Ryan doing feats of athleticism, huh?
-Lisa’s southern accent after having a rum ball was just the best.
-The song playing when Tessa and Ryan kissed was “Delicate” from Damien Rice, which you should love.
-I’m glad that Jill is back, if only for her line about wanting her baby to respect her as an author.
-Tessa got George a pen for Christmas. Thoughtful.
-Ryan decides that he’s the opposite of Ryan Shay – he’s Eugene Goldfarb and he made business cards to prove it.
-Dallas couldn’t chop Carmen up and put her in separate boxes for Dalia to open on Christmas. That’d be messy.
-See you guys in 2013!
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