Tessa and Dalia are taking the SATs and when they get out of the exam room, Tessa finds out that Dalia received a car for her PSAT score while she got an ice cream, even though she made it into the top 10% nationally. This being Suburgatory, this makes her a little bitter toward Dalia, who only races to finish each exam, and Tessa ends up making her feel bad for getting a reward for no reason. However, Dalia takes solace in one thing; although Tessa gets better grades and has a brighter future, she’s a better dancer.
To flaunt that fact, Dalia invites a reluctant Tessa to one of her hip hop dance classes, where she challenges her to a dance battle. Dalia has years of lessons under her belt and a pretty smooth crew to back her, while Tessa’s alone, not dressed for the part, and void of rhythm, but the major beef ends up being between George and Dallas. Dallas accuses George of being cheap, George calls Dallas an enabler, and they have their own dance battle on the sidelines, complete with randomly appearing cardboard and Dallas doing the robot.
This makes Tessa understand that she has to grow up and be able to tolerate Dalia and she helps George and Dallas make up, as well.
It’s Ryan
Ryan has been living with Malik’s family for a little while and in her pain over the situation, Sheila prays and makes venison (Ryan’s favorite meal) every night in hopes he’ll come home. However, the Shay family decides to take action to get him back, using the prospect of Lisa getting back together with Malik to distract the latter long enough to where they can kidnap him. After bringing him to their home, where he instantly identified his captors by the chicken salad they gave him and the fact that Lisa didn’t have a mask on earlier.
The Shays plan on making a “hostage exchange” later that night and getting Ryan back for Malik, but that all goes to pot once Sheila faints upon hearing about Ryan’s new identity and Ryan makes clear he has no intentions of coming home. The dinner party itself quickly devolves, as well, with Malik’s parents trying to emulate the Obama family in playing “roses and thorns,” a conversational game where you mention one good thing and one bad thing about your day. Fred has a rose of a spring roll and a thorn of a sprinkler experience, while Ryan hit a home run in baseball practice and found out that his entire life had been a lie.
Later, dessert comes and the Shays are defeated and decide to go home without their boy in tow. That night, Ryan mentions to Malik that he wants skin on his chocolate pudding from now on, something that his “old mom” made for him a lot, but when Malik mentions how that won’t be possible here, Ryan goes home, shedding his Eugene Goldfarb identity as a result.
Mr. Wolfe’s Opus
Opus has been rejected from one of the top day cares in Chatswin and Jill and Noah decide to go see someone to help their child get into a quality place: Mr. Wolfe. Although he’s got a full client list, Mr. Wolfe agrees to help the Werners after seeing a picture of Opus. That evening, he comes over to the house to run a series of tests to assess the child’s intelligence, including a grab-and-release exercise and a cup stacking activity. However, it turns out that Opus isn’t a genius – he’s an average 6-month-old. Noah and Jill accept that, since he (accidentally) spells Noah’s degree (DDS) with his blocks.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“He doesn’t even wear any special cause bracelets.”
-“I don’t care if he has 15 jillion jillions!”
-“Is she hip hop homeschooled?”
-“Oh yeah? You gonna oil my robot, daddy?”
-For anyone wondering, I got a 174 on my PSATs. That was a million years ago, though.
-Ryan Shay = Patrick Star. Discuss.
-Next week on Suburgatory: Tessa has her wisdom teeth removed, while George takes care of Fred, who has had a career setback and fled his home following a fight with Sheila.
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