'Bunheads' Still Isn't 'Gilmore Girls'

In a few years, I will be very interested to read an oral history of Bunheads that lays out how the development and production of this show diverged from that of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino's hit WB/CW dramedy Gilmore Girls. Sherman-Palladino cut her teeth on Roseanne, which would make a great training ground both for the humour she injected into GG and the heart. She then jumped (or was pushed) from that show before its series finale, and went on to create The Return Of Jezebel James, which Fox swiftly cancelled. Bunheads came to ABC Family, so savvy TV fans (hi) would hope that, coming from the showrunner of a legendary teen girl-targeted series, it would give the network a chance to redeem itself after Winnie "My So-Called Life" Holzman's Huge, cancelled after just one short season the summer before. Bunheads has hung in for more episodes than Huge did, but as its first season ended last night, it was also on the bubble.

Bunheads is not as good as Huge, which boasted a raft of fully realized characters; revolved around a topic that kind of implicitly underlies all culture -- weight -- but that is rarely dealt with; and felt assured and carefully thought through right from the start. When asked whether Bunheads was going to address the issue of eating disorders (something many dancers struggle with in real life), Sherman-Palladino stated that she didn't give a "flying fuck" about them. Not that there's anything wrong with keeping a show fizzy and superficial -- it's not like we ever expected Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) to have a drug problem or a pregnancy scare -- but the denial of real life is not Bunheads's only problem. What grounded Gilmore Girls was the strong relationship between the titular girls: thirtysomething teen mom Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and her daughter Rory who, as the series began, was the same age Lorelai was when she became a mother. The very effective premise was that Lorelai and Rory had pretty much grown up together and were one another's best friends, but that as Rory came into her own as a young adult, the two of them would necessarily start to fight and grow apart; the closeness between them gave such clashes real impact. On Bunheads, the closest bonds are among the four main ballet students Sasha (Julia Goldani Telles), Ginny (Bailey Buntain), Melanie (Emma Dumont), and Boo (Kaitlyn Jenkins), but since they're all peers, their scraps don't have the same heft. And while Michelle (Sutton Foster) and Fanny (Gilmore alumna Kelly Bishop) have a quasi-mother/daughter relationship, but since nothing really binds them together, their fights don't have real stakes.

In fact, the Michelle/Fanny nexus is the weakest element of Bunheads. The two originally met when Michelle impetuously married Fanny's son Hubbell (Alan Ruck) to escape her life as a Las Vegas showgirl, a job she had ended up in after washing out as a Broadway dancer -- due, it seems as we've gotten to know her better, to a lack of ambition and perseverance. Michelle's quickie marriage to a man she barely likes or even knows is typical of her tendency to drift through life seeing where events will take her. But just in time for her to realize that she and Hubbell could, luckily for her, really be happy together, he gets killed in a car accident. This leaves Michelle stuck in his cute, quirky hometown of Paradise, trying to figure out what to do next. But really, that premise can only remain credible for an episode or two before there was no longer any good reason for Michelle not to move on. At first, it was that Hubbell left his property to Fanny and Michelle, but this has turned out to be less a windfall than a huge hassle, as the two women have struggled with (boring) money problems ever since.

So, periodically, Michelle gets the urge to return to some version of her old life: after accidentally macing the whole ballet school's student body in the midseason finale, she returned to Nevada to work as the second assistant to a very crappy magician in Henderson; last night, she had a doomed audition for a Broadway musical. And not only that, but the audition came right after Sasha imposed on Michelle's image as a surrogate "cool aunt," asking her for a one-on-one practical sex consultation. In a lesser show, this would lead Michelle to an epiphany about the role she fulfills in Fanny's students' lives, and cause her to abandon her Broadway dreams and fully commit to teaching and mentoring the girls. I'm not saying that's what should have happened, but...what does Michelle really want?

Part of Michelle's ambivalence can be attributed to the show's underdog status; as long as Michelle keeps the Broadway door open -- and what last night's audition taught us (even if it was all a sham) was that she really may have what it takes to be successful, if she commits to pursuing it -- then the show can always stay on the verge of wrapping up by having Michelle leave Paradise for good. But it's not good for a show if the viewer is constantly asking herself why these people keep hanging out together.

All of this is making it seem like I don't like the show, but the thing is, Foster is so likable playing Michelle that, despite Bunheads's structural problems, she actually puts it over. Her dynamic with the girls is very reminiscent of Rory and Lorelai, with the fast talking and the snappy pop culture references and so on. And the girls are believable together, acting as the queen bees of the dance studio while occasionally falling out with one another for very believable boy-related reasons; if the show does come back, I will be very interested to see the fallout from Ginny's hookup with Frankie (Niko Pepaj) -- and by the way, I appreciated Ginny's explanation that she did it because he was "just so beautiful." Girls make dumb decisions out of horniness, too.

There are so many aspects of Bunheads I like that I hope some of these story issues can be ironed out. For instance: though it pains me to suggest that the show might work better without Fanny...I think it kind of would. Already there are lots of episodes Kelly Bishop sits out, and I don't feel her absence that much. If Michelle becomes more than Fanny's sometime substitute, it would force her to make a decision about her life.

But above all, it would give her more reasons to get into dance numbers with them, which I think we can all agree are the real reason this show even exists.