Adam Ruins The Suburbs Response

In the suburbs episode of Adam Ruins Everything his research debunks a lot of ideas that are generally considered common knowledge. In the same way that old wives tales and superstition can get in our heads, the concept of the suburbs as a bubble of safety and security is widely regarded as true. I like that Adam Conover doesn’t just disprove these ideas, he points out that they are very much there on purpose. We didn’t just all wake up one day and think “I think I want a lawn and a golden retriever today” it was a wave of systematic oppression and unfair rules and regulations that set the stage for the suburbs. The addition of a well meaning but very naive father character did two things. One it set up an opportunity for Adam to educate the audience by showing how all of his statistics affected a “real” family. Two, it showed that ignorance truly is bliss. Every fact about why the suburbs are actually a hellscape is met with contention. The show being called Adam Ruins Everything is a tell of course, but I think the way Ron (the suburban father Adam terrorized) reacts to finding out the hidden truths about suburbia is also very telling. This episode highlights the abundance of privilege that you need to have in order to make the cut for suburban life, and Ron goes through denial and anger about it. This may not have been done on purpose but it sends the clear message that people within that bubble would much rather not know how the sausage gets made. This points out that a huge part of the problem is the contributors unwillingness to acknowledge that for every white picket fence, there’s a house lined with barbed wire due to the unfair circumstances. No matter what point in history or what culture, every utopia is built on the backs of people who have to live in a dystopia.