Bunheads - Season 1 Episode 12 - Recap and Review - Channing Tatum Is a Fine Actor
Recap and review of Bunheads - Season 1 Episode 12 - Channing Tatum Is a Fine Actor
Bunheads is a show that often deals with the hardships of youth, both big and small. Yet even though it airs on ABC Family, a network that specializes in telling such stories, I've never really thought of Bunheads as a high school show. And I suppose it's not, really. At least not in the way some of the other teen dramas on the network are. However, with episodes like tonight's "Channing Tatum Is a Fine Actor", the show puts forth a case for how it nails high school drama better than many of its contemporaries. Such drama often relies on a certain verisimilitude, the sense that these are real kids in real situations. While aspects of the episode follow the adults, as the series tends to do far more often than not, the show soars when it focuses on the titular "bunheads", Sasha (Julia Goldani Telles), Ginny (Bailey Buntain), Mel (Emma Dumont) and Boo (Kaitlyn Jenkins). Their issues vary from the big (in Sasha's case) to the small (in Boo's case), yet it spans the full breadth of high school experience, of teenage experience. These are real problems that teenagers have, which likely makes it among the more relatable shows to the viewers that have made it such a success, even if they are out of high school and well out of their teen years.
Credit: ABC Family
The big development of the episode is the show-closing reveal that Sasha is being forced to move from Paradise. Her mother, whom Sasha has been trying to avoid since returning from Joffrey, tracks her daughter down and explains that her father is leaving to be with another man. Sasha's mother than gives her daughter a choice between moving upstate with her father or to Los Angeles with her. It's not much of a choice at all to Sasha, as it removes her from her school, her friends, her dance academy, and her new boyfriend, Roman (Garrett Coffey). But it's a choice she'll have to make. Unless she finds some way around it, maybe by moving in with Michelle (Sutton Foster), the most positive adult influence in her life. The Sasha-Michelle friendship is among the best aspects of the series, and it binds Michelle to Paradise more substantially than her own friendship/familial bond with Fanny (Kelly Bishop) does, if you ask me. Michelle not only finds a kindred spirit in Sasha, but someone she can help, someone in whom she sees a lot of her own youthful self. It wouldn't surprise me if Michelle took Sasha in, as unbelievable as it would be for any parents to leave their child behind with an adult who infamously maced the entire ballet roster. I'm actually hoping that this is what happens, as Sasha and Michelle's friendship could serve as one of those anchors that keep the series grounded. However, it runs the risk of being derivative of Amy Sherman-Palladino's best-known series, Gilmore Girls. But I fail to see how this would really be a negative.
Credit: ABC Family
Speaking of Gilmore Girls, former GG-alum Liza Weil guest starred tonight as the landlord that is evicting Truly (Stacey Oristano) from Sparkles, her boutique on the avenue. In an interesting reveal, we learn that the landlord, Millie, is Truly's sister, which heightens Truly's already over-the-top neuroses. Enter Michelle, who takes Truly in, in an act that unwittingly transforms her guest house into the new Sparkles. It seems that Michelle hasn't been back in Paradise a week, and she's already had her life entirely subsumed by the quirkiness of Paradise. All the better, as I feel like there's real mileage in pairing Michelle with the eccentric Truly, particularly because Truly lacks so many of the typical Amy Sherman-Palladino quirks, such as an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, and a somewhat wry, cynical worldview - qualities which are reflected in the new bad boy in Ginny's life, though that particular plotline, introduced tonight, is in too early a stage to get a good sense about. I'm looking forward to its development though.
Credit: ABC Family
As for the rest of the girls, Boo finally meets Carl's parents, yet her desperation to impress his mother (Alex Borstein) ends up making a mess of their dinner at a fancy restaurant. Boo retreats, but sticks around long enough to hear Carl admonishing his mother for grilling Boo about her family and background, saying that this is a girl he not only likes, but a girl he could marry. Boo takes Carl literally and goes overboard trying to determine whether she's ready for marriage, and if Carl is even the one for her. She invites him over to dinner to meet her family, and after he whips them up some bananas foster for dessert, Boo accepts his proposal...except Carl has no idea what she's talking about. Boo tries to explain herself, and Carl sets her mind at ease by saying he wasn't being literal. Their relationship is adorable in that chaste way that you rarely see on TV these days. Neither Boo nor Carl is overtly sexual (Boo even goes so far as to act aghast when her friends ask if she's slept with him), and it's such a small, yet down-to-Earth romance that it counts among the stronger aspects of the series. It's arguably the cutest part of a show that's already insurmountably adorable.
Credit: ABC Family
Which brings us to the other big development of the episode, the arrival of new students Frankie (Niko Pepaj), Ginny's potential new love interest, and his sister Cozette (Jeanine Mason). The teens are shrouded in mystery, being versed in several different languages and possessing a wide array of artistic talents, to say nothing of how they seem immune to underage drinking laws. Yet the most significant aspect of their arrival is in Cozette's raw, sensational ability as a dancer. Cozette, as played by So You Think You Can Dance winner Jeanine Mason, is as talented as she is nice, and though none of the girls will admit to it, there seems to be a resentment brewing beneath the surface. This isn't like the girl Fanny brought in to take the lead in The Nutcracker. This is an entirely different force of nature, as evidenced by the bravura closing dance number. It's someone who belongs in Paradise every bit as much as the girls, and whose presence presents a shake-up to the established hierarchy of the Paradise Dance Academy. It's one of the most interesting aspects of the episode, and so much so for what isn't stated outright, but what remains as subtext.
"Channing Tatum Is a Fine Actor" continues the remarkable first season this show is having, and I don't doubt that it portends better episodes to come, particularly now that Michelle is firmly ensconced in the world of Paradise, and Sasha is being threatened with being removed from it. This should create considerable drama in a series that has frequently taken a lighter touch to overt drama, at least where the girls are concerned. Yet what the show does so well is illustrate the relatively mundane, yet very real nature of young problems. A divorce is nothing to laugh at, nor is having to move away from your friends when you're a sixteen year-old girl who's only ever lived in one place. That's kind of the beauty of this show, to wring so much out of life's simplicities.
