I LOVE TV! Part I: Bunheads

I love TV.  I've always loved TV.  The only people who might love TV more than me are Mike Teavee and my sister.*  Anyway, at one point, the focus of my ardor was Gilmore Girls.  I would not take any phone calls while it was on, no talking was allowed during the episode, etc, etc.**  So it's kind of surprising that I did not immediately jump on the Gilmore Girl's creator Amy Sherman-Palladino's latest show about ballet students, Bunheads.  It probably has something to do with the fact that I am no longer a 14 year old girl.  More on this after the jump.

*Seriously, my sister loves television to a scary degree.  She has a journal from elementary school where she only wrote about TV shows we would watch after school while my parents were at work and we were watched by my doting grandmother.  Who ALSO loves TV.

** The only other show I have ever been so serious about is Boy Meets World.   A sequel of which is now being made about their CHILDREN.  God, I am an old.

So the thing about Bunheads is, it's not an amazing show.  The writing is a little bit too contrived at times, and the delivery sometimes misses the mark.  Sherman-Palladino's characters kind of all have the same voice.  This works when we like all of the characters, but the denizens of Bunheads' town of Paradise feel less developed than those of GG's Star's Hollow.  (See also: Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing versus The Newsroom).

But I can't help liking it despite its flaws.  There's something about it that feels good at the end of the day.  Bunheads is on ABC family, so the problems are never that serious, and for the ones that are, we know that it'll all be okay somehow.  I'm obsessed with Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad as much as the next person (remember I LOVE TV and pretty much watch everything), but sometimes it's great to have something that is just feel-good fun (and there are only so many times I can re-watch Parks and Rec in one week).  It also is getting a lot better in its second season.

And of course, there's dancing!  The four teenagers of the show's core group all have strong ballet backgrounds.  Sherman-Palladino made a point of casting trained dancers because they carry themselves differently and because she didn't want to use body doubles.  This makes the dance scenes really natural and lovely.  (Like, I mostly liked Black Swan, but I hated when the editing and shots were driven by the fact that Natalie Portman was not en pointe.)

Below are some of my favorite dance scenes from Bunheads.  Also stay tuned for my write up about Enlightened for I LOVE TV! Part 2.

Sasha (Julia Goldani Telles) and So You Think You Can Dance alum Kent Boyd do Fred & Ginger:


Sasha dances to They Might Be Giants:


Cozette dances (SYTYCD winner Jeanine Mason)