Bunheads: First Impressions

A show on ABC Family by Amy Sherman-Palladino (of Gilmore Girls) about dancing?? Yeah, of course I need to watch Bunheads! Kelly Bishop (from Gilmore Girls) is in it and fantastic, per usual. Additionally, I'm amused by the fact that Kelly Bishop's character is named Fanny and think it's fitting she's playing this character as she was a trained American Ballet Theatre dancer. (Fanny owns and runs a ballet studio.)

There's a lot going for the show to make it a perfect Mira-formula show: the dialogue is quick (typical Amy S-P), the characters are quirky (typical Amy S-P), and the show is set in a quaint town (à la Gilmore Girls)... Bunheads is a show about a former trained ballet dancer, Michelle (played by Sutton Foster, of Broadway fame). Michelle is a Vegas showgirl who feels her life has hit a dead end and impulsively decides to accept a marriage proposal by an ardent admirer, played by Alan Ruck, and moves to Paradise, Oregon. Landing in a sleepy town with no movie theater, she learns that her new husband still lives with his mother, Fanny, who is conveniently the owner and teacher of the town's ballet studio. She quickly establishes a rapport with the girls in the advanced level ballet class, starts to build a relationship with a mother-in-law who had no warning of her arrival, and well, becomes a widow.

For the three reasons highlighted earlier (dialogue, quirky characters, quaint town), I will probably continue to watch the show. Two things that disappoint me about the show right off the bat, though: 1) I really was prepared to like Alan Ruck's character, Hubbell, and am really sad that he was killed off like that! 2) I'm not fully sold on Sutton Foster. There's something about her that's very stilted to me and not natural, maybe it's the Broadway thing. And when she dances (and so far it's been non-ballet), she's just so skinny and gangly that it really doesn't look like good dancing... The moves she had the girls doing looked so awkward and dorky, and actually looked way better when the high school girls were dancing it!

Regardless, I'll watch Bunheads, cuz, well, I'll watch almost anything on ABC Family. I just hope that Sutton Foster grows on me because she is the main character and all.  

Summer of ABCFamily

Burkie did his roundup of the summer USA and TNT shows that Mira and I don't watch so I figured it's my turn to summarize a network I do watch: ABCFamily!

First, a qualification. I would consider myself a fan of ABCFamily...they used to have really cute original movies back in the day and I've enjoyed many of their series throughout the years including Kyle XY, Greek, The Middleman, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Huge, but their latest offerings (and biggest hits, which is worrisome) have majorly turned me off. The Secret Life of the American Teenager makes me want to puke, Pretty Little Liars is just insane, and we all know how Mira and I fell out of love with Make it or Break it. But I still decided to check out their three new series this summer and I was happy to see that they're not exactly following in those footsteps.

Switched at Birth: As clear from the title of the show, this show is about two teenage girls who discover that they were switched in the hospital as babies. And of course, their families are complete opposites: Bay grew up with the Kennishes, a wealthy white family, while Daphne went home with Regina, a Hispanic single mother. The Kennishes are pretty entitled and conceited (Mr. and Mrs. are played by D.W. Moffett, who perfected the asshole dad routine as J.D. McCoy's dad on Friday Night Lights, and Lea Thompson, whose acting style I find really grating), while Regina is defensive and a little hot-headed (but supported by her wise, voice-of-reason mother).

A lot of the plot details are really obvious: Bay finds out that she's artistic and rebellious like Regina, Daphne is athletic like the Kennishes. They even immediately kind of swap love interests: Bay's ex-boyfriend Liam pursues Daphne, while Bay finds herself attracted to Ty, a boy from Daphne's neighborhood.

But there is one really different thing about this show, and it's kind of a big one that's keeping me interested: Daphne is deaf. While she speaks relatively well and can read lips, most people don't understand her world. The actress who plays her, Katie Leclerc, is really great. Daphne could have come off as insufferably saint-like but I found myself really liking her. Bay is actually the annoying one (it doesn't help that she's played by Vanessa Marano, who was Luke's long-lost daughter on Gilmore Girls, one of the worst characters ever) as kind of a brat who finally finds a reason to feel sorry for herself.

It's probably likely that I'll tire of this show and its ABCFamily-ness, especially if they renew the show and it airs during the regular TV season when I have less time, but for now I'll keep watching.

The Nine Lives of Chloe King: This is definitely my favorite of the three...in a way it's kind of like the ABCFamily version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's not as edgy or dark or witty as Buffy, but the lead, Skyler Samuels as Chloe, is really likable as a teenage girl who discovers that she has cat-like powers (and nine lives) and is part of an ancient tribe of some sort called the Mai, and she has two sidekicks, Amy and Paul, who are kind of Willow/Cordelia and Xander-like. They're brought into the secret right away, which I like, and they're also a couple right away too. Two other kids at school, Alek and Jasmine, are also Mai and believe that she is the "Uniter" and the key to saving the race. But this also means that she's being hunted by an assassin who has connections to the father of her love interest, Brian (played by Grey Damon who prettied up the final season of Friday Night Lights as Hastings but didn't get anything to do much else), whom she can't kiss because it'll probably kill him.

On the surface it all sounds somewhat ridiculous but it's actually kind of fun. I like all the characters and hope that the mythology doesn't get too crazy or dumb. Kyle XY started off kind of similarly but then eventually got really good (as good as ABCFamily gets anyway) so I'm hopeful about this one.

State of Georgia: Only one episode of this has aired and there were a lot of things I didn't like about it but I'll probably stick with it for a few weeks because of one reason: Majandra Delfino! She's been completely off the radar since her days as Maria on Roswell which is definitely a shame because she's so likable and has great comic timing here. She plays Jo, the nerdy best friend of Georgia (Raven-Symone, overacting as usual) who moves with her to New York to start their careers. Georgia wants to be an actress, and Jo is supposed to join a physics graduate program. The humor is really broad and in-your-face so I hope that gets toned down a little. We shall see...