Yet another amusing episode of Bunheads aired last night, and it was heartwarming as always. It wasn’t as great as last episode which honestly made me WEEP, but it was good enough to keep me entertained and invested with the characters – something the show does very well.
The episode picks up directly after last week’s, Fanny and Michelle are both confused by Hubbell’s decision to make Michelle the sole inheritor of his assets – the house, the land, the dance studio…everything. However, there’s one provision, Fanny can teach in the dance studio until she doesn’t want to anymore. Of course, that freaks Fanny out. It’s not like she ever owned anything before, but her son did. It’s not that way anymore, and Michelle can kick her out anytime she wants.
Now, we’ve watched enough episodes (two) to know that Michelle would never do that, but Fanny isn’t so sure. So she starts acting as if she were in fact homeless searching for ways to live her life without illegally using Michelle’s property – like making tea in a rusty tea kettle that came with the house so she won’t use the new and shiny tea kettle that Michelle now owns.
Things go even more downhill when Claire, a real-estate agent, pays Michelle a visit and tells her about all the responsibilities she now has an owner, of course she’s doing so to freak Michelle out and let her sell the estate. But the only one freaking out is Fanny who accuses Michelle of wanting to sell the house. They bicker – as always – so Michelle takes Hubbell’s vintage car and drives to nowhere.
The car breaks down, though, and she has to call someone to tow it. But it turns out she can’t tow the car because she and the car are on a private road. After arguing with the sheriff about the fact that there are no signs that indicate that the road is private and refusing to get off it, Michelle gets arrested. And Fanny comes to the rescue.
Michelle being Michelle decides to walk (it’s a really really long walk) to the owner of the road to get his permission so she can return Hubbell’s car home. And then we meet him, the gray fox that is Grant. He’s old-ish but smokin’ hot. Anyway, he and Michelle have a heart to heart that convinces Michelle she should stay in town because she doesn’t have anywhere else to call home. (He’s gonna become Michelle’s will-they-won’t-they love interest, isn’t he?)
To make things easier for Fanny, Michelle decides to live in the guest-house and leaves Fanny to live in the big one.
As for the kids, (besides the fact that they won an ugly feet competition – apparently, the worse your legs are, the better the dance studio you’re in.) we learn that Boo has a crush on Melanie’s brother, Charlie, who is forced to stay in the dance studio until Melanie finishes because he has to drive her anywhere she wants. (His parents caught him with beer and this is his punishment.) She tries to get his attention in any way she can so Melanie convinces her to dance in the front this time. But then Sasha acts as the mean girlfriend and tells Boo (in a really loud voice) that she’s so close to Charlie that she could give him a lap dance. Embarrassed, Boo ends up messing up her routine.
After class, the girls talk about how mean Sasha has become. One day she’s nice and the other she’s horrible. And it’s like they took the words out of my mouth. In the last episode, ‘For Fanny’, I loved Sasha, A LOT. She was amazing. She was the one who wanted to SOMETHING for Fanny and hence the heartbreaking memorial. And in this episode, I wanted to punch her for humiliating Boo like that.
Boo ends up defending Sasha and tells the girls not to talk behind Sasha’s back. She’s going through a lot and that’s why she’s so screwed up. Little does she know that Sasha is hearing everything. She gets pissed at Boo and tells her not to defend her or psychoanalyze her; she’s the one who’s too self-conscious to dance in the front.
And then we learn exactly what Boo said about Sasha: she has every right to be screwed up. Her mother is too tired to cook; she has a massage appointment. So she tells her to hang out with her friends or something. She doesn’t even ask her how her day was. The writers make us sympathize with Sasha even more when they show us the relationship between Boo and her mother. She cooked her the food she wanted, she’s convincing her to sleepover at her friend’s not because she wants to get rid of her but because you’re only young once, and they’re laughing their asses off in the car together. And Sasha sees that; and we can see the jealousy in her eyes.
And now we get to a dynamic the show is trying to focus on besides the Fanny/Michelle one, and it’s Sasha/Michelle. Michelle finds her dancing in the middle of the night in the dance studio and instead of taking her home or ratting her out to Fanny, they just share stories of how they sneak from their homes without their parents ever noticing. Little by little, those two are becoming friends and little by little, Sasha will look to Michelle as the person whose should she’ll cry on. And I’m looking forward to seeing that, to be honest, because those too are by far my favorite characters on the show.
But the show’s being very slow in that department. At a certain point, the storylines of both Michelle and the girls will have to intertwine. And besides the last few minutes we’ve been getting in the last three episodes, there’s none. The premise of the show per ABC Family’s press release, “Bunheads is the tale of a Las Vegas showgirl who impulsively marries a man, moves to his sleepy coastal town, and takes an uneasy role at her new mother-in-law’s dance school.” Till now, we’ve seen all of that except that last part. I honestly hope they won’t leave that until the end of the season because it’s one of the things I’ve been really excite about.
Plus, I’m going to repeat something I said in my review of the pilot: the show is only shedding light on Sasha and Boo when it comes to the girls. Ginny (or as I like to call her, the Megan-Hilty-lookalike) and Melanie don’t have any traits that identify them or make them different than the other characters on the show. And if the series intends on making the show about the girls and Michelle, at some point, it will have to somehow make those two characters unique and different because right now they are very thinly written.
There will be no new episodes until July 9, so we’re gonna go through Bunheads withdrawal – at least I will. If you haven’t watched the show yet, trust me and catch on these last three episodes before the new one airs, the show’s really great.
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It wasn't as good as the first 2 but they're still setting up. Too much talking by one person at one time or in general. I don't find Sasha sympathetic. Sasha was angrier at Boo than Melanie and Ginny at the studio which makes sense. Michelle/Sasha will be a storyline. Grant will be a Will They or Won't They. Ginny and Melanie will be developed more in time. Melanie can't read signals, is funny, and reads the newspaper for a family member. Ginny looks like Megan Hilty but that's it. I like that Claire was conning Michelle into selling.
"Coupon for a straight-away" like coupon for an aircraft carrier.