HI, I’M MIKE TV

Television for the week of June 17th. 

BUNHEADS

(EPISODE 1-** ½ /EPISODE 2-** OUT OF ****)

            Let’s be up front right away. That is the whole meaning behind the phrase up front, right? To say the main point of whatever you’re going to talk about immediately, so whoever it is you’re speaking to isn’t wondering the whole time your chattering on, screaming internally about whether your just going to get to the fucking point or not already?! So that’s what being up front means to me. It means I’m going to tell you what I thought of Bunheads right away first, and then get into the nitty gritty details. I’m not trying to do some secret reveal where I meander throughout this whole article vaguely discussing its flaws and triumphs. I realize in defining being up front I’ve been redundant. There’s no reason to say up front right away, they mean the same thing. It’s almost as if they’ve grammatically cancelled each other out, forcing me to write an asinine introductory paragraph that’s doing less than nothing. It’s actually stopping from talking about the show; so far all I’ve said is the title, with exactly no other information. I’ve neglected to tell you that it’s on ABC Family, this week was it’s 2^nd episode, or that it was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino (the driving force behind Gilmore Girls). I haven’t mentioned that it’s set in Paradise, a sleepy little beach town and follows a Vegas showgirl who married one of her admirers (Alan Ruck) on a drunken and depressed whim and moved to town with him, where she discovers he lives with his wacky dance teacher mother. I should’ve gotten all of that out immediately, and it’s taken me this long already. Ridiculous!

The pilot and the second episode don’t earn equal ratings. Normally, that would mean the pilot was flawed and they’ve begun to figure it out, but Bunheads did the opposite. The pilot shows the strong voice of Sherman-Palladino, the rapid-fire quirky dialogue that she’s been well known for since Gilmore Girls. It depicts the town of Paradise not as po-dunk, but arty and eccentric (I’m trying to not over-use the word quirky). We meet just a couple of the inhabitants, the love-struck shop owner who hates the protagonist Michelle Sims (Sutton Foster) because she’s in love with Ruck, as well as 4 of the ballet students of the new mother-in-law who all have their own rhythms and idiosyncrasies. That of course brings us to the mother-in-law, Fanny Flowers (Kelly Bishop- a Gilmore Girls alum), we immediately see she’s controlling, dramatic and…shit, what’s another synonym for quirky. Let’s go with unorthodox. The obvious irony is that both Fanny and Michelle are strong, quirky women, which is going to constantly cause them to butt buns. I mean they’re ballerina buns of course, and not some ABC Family ass to ass scene. At some point over the course of the show, I’m sure 30 different people are going to tell the two how similar they are to each other. Oh the tangled webs….

If the pilot showed a strong voice, and deft move by slowly introducing a couple of characters, the second episode shat all over that progress. We meet more of the town’s crazy citizens, but they’re even more one-note, two-dimensional types. Hippie/surfer beach bums that own a bar, that’s just bonkers! The characters that we met in the first episode get less human and more flat as well. Fanny and Michelle ignore the tiny amount of friendly progress they made in the pilot, and the ballet girls either fade to useless or hold on tight to their static personalities. I’m assuming each episode we’ll meet a couple more characters as Michelle explores the town, and that her and Fanny will consistently fight and learn more about one another, but forget that lesson by the beginning of the next episode.

Sims is a pretty good stand in for Lauren Graham’s Lorelai Gilmore. Different small town, different middle aged-woman with a slightly troubled past giving advice to different younger women, but the comparisons to Sherman-Palladino’s most famous creation are going to be hard for Bunheads to live down. GG has such a strong following of avid fans; they’ll be divided by this show. Some will cling to it for the similarities, and others will denounce it as a cheap knock off.  It’s possible the second episode dip is just a fluke, and that the show will carve another cult following with that Sherman-Palladino flair. If she’s smart (and lucky), she’ll ignore the fans for awhile, ignore the studios if possible, and ignore her previous work as she creates a new world to play in.

Don’t avoid this show because you’re afraid it’s going to be all about dancing, and you hate/don’t know anything about dancing. That’s like avoiding the League because it’s about fantasy football and you don’t know anything about football, fantasy or otherwise. I’m not claiming the shows are on equal footing by any means, just letting you know the plot isn’t overly dance heavy. Yet. -MG