George (Jeremy Sisto) and Dallas (Cheryl Hines) have had a tumultuous romance on "Suburgatory" thus far, and it sounds like things are only going to get more complicated as we approach the end of the season, with Dallas' insecurities starting to undermine their relationship.
HuffPost TV caught up with Jeremy Sisto to find out what's ahead for the unusual pair, whether George still has feelings for Alex (Malin Akerman) and what the end of the season holds for George and Tessa (Jane Levy). Spoilers ahead.
What can you preview about this week's episode?
It's my birthday episode and Dallas tries to get me a gift. She tries to really think about what I would like and get me something that I would appreciate, and I’m sure she had every desire to get me some kind of pastel outfit, but she restrained herself and she got me a guitar. But the problem is, it’s like the ugliest guitar in the world ... she just missed the mark.
It’s funny, George loves this about her; honestly, I think that’s the reason he sticks around. She’s always making him laugh just through the miscommunications and how different they are. She gets a little hurt because I’m much more emotional with my daughter’s gift. She frames this old blueprint I made when I was with her mom. So Dallas begins to feel like I don’t love her as much as I love Tessa’s mom or perhaps any of my exes and so I have to prove to her again that my love is real.
How does George react to Dallas' jealousy, since he's a pretty low maintenance, low drama kind of guy?
Yeah, he hasn’t been in a relationship in a long time and so I think he’s not used to that dynamic of the insecure nature of early relationships, wherein anybody can be ‘All right. I’m out. This isn’t working for me’ and there’s always some sense of their monitoring each other and monitoring themselves. I think her insecurity is frustrating at times, but it’s also opened up possibilities for them to actually explore and for him to say how he feels to her and I think that’s something that’s probably good in relationships.
Sometimes you need to have to fight for something, so he does -- he fights for it and he’s OK with that, but by the end of the season, it doesn’t add up. It’s like putting water into a bucket with a hole in it because no matter what he does, it’s gone. She always gets back to that same place and I think she’s tired of it too. I think there’s a side of him that thinks, ‘Maybe I don’t love her as much as I did these other people, but I’m OK with that.' So it’s pretty frustrating for him by the end -- none of these actions that he’s doing that should prove his commitment to the relationship are really doing what she wants.
SPOILER ALERT
How does George feel about Alex at this point, since he's always been resentful of her leaving him and Tessa?
I don't know how much I'm supposed to say, but I've been saying everything anyway! [Laughs.] So by the end of the season, I have chosen to get a place with Dallas and live with her and I didn’t really bring it up with Tessa until after the fact, so she is furious and says she will never live with Dalia [Carly Chaikin] -- who she is having a violent feud with at the time -- when she hears that she’ll be living with her. So she says, ‘No, I’m gone,’ and she takes off and she finds that her mom has moved into the area, just in case she wants to have a relationship with her which is kind of crazy and surprising.
We haven’t had to deal with that [yet], but we had to deal with [similar things] early in the season when she came back and that was some really good stuff. Nothing [about Alex being] back plays into his relationship with Dallas except for maybe on an internal level, that this relationship with Dallas is so different than his relationship with her. But I think more than anything with his feelings about Alex, she's a woman who completely screwed him and his daughter over and that overrides anything.
George has had some surprisingly great moments with Dalia this season, and we've seen her confiding in him more than her mom for much of the year. Is there more of that to come?
Yeah, that’s pretty interesting and actually, the season ends with a really sweet thing between Dalia and George. Her dad, Jay Mohr, comes back, and basically calls me out and says, ‘Stop trying to be a father to my kid!’ and I’m like, ‘Whoa, you haven’t been here. So if you’re not going to be here, then someone else has got to do it.’ George tries to show up with Dalia and be there and talk to her.
He doesn’t think he’s getting through to her at all or having any effect one way or the other because she seems so mean sometimes and so weird and kind of soulless. [Laughs.] But in the end, it’s clear that she really thinks he’s a good dad and it’s at a point when Tessa does not think he’s good a dad, so it’s really a sweet moment. At the end, it’s the only relationship I have with any of the women in the show that is positive. [Laughs.] I think Dalia’s character continues to [reveal] herself as being very lost. She's the product of an absent father and a mother that doesn’t know how to be a parent and she's basically been raised by nannies ... it’s almost like [she's] an alien trying to figure out how to be a human.
"Suburgatory" airs Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET on ABC.