How long is this going to take?
Three episodes in and I still don't have a coherent thing to say about Bunheads.
I have to qualify this with the admission that Gilmore Girls is one of my all time favorite shows, and Lorelai/Luke is one of my formative OTPs. Hell, I still have the main GG fic archive in the links list of my journal, even though it's almost completely dead now. Gilmore Girls is one of those shows I can rewatch over and over again, like West Wing, or Stargate.
I also have to admit that Gilmore Girls is one of my biggest fannish disappointments to date; things started to go off the rails when [Spoiler (click to open)]Rory slept with her married ex at the end of season 4 and were just completely fucked when [Spoiler (click to open)]Lorelai cheated on Luke at the end of season 6, one of my most rage inducing moments in TV history, which was Amy Sherman-Palladino's "Fuck you" to the network after a contact dispute, not a valid character choice. (She cannot be blamed for the clusterfuck that was season seven, because she wasn't involved. If she was I would not be watching Bunheads, or anything else she had a hand in, ever.)
So I had mixed emotions about watching Bunheads. And those mixed emotions haven't changed one way or the other over the last three weeks.
I like Michelle, and Sutton Foster who plays her, but they're hitting the "world weary" thing a little hard. I know her cynicism is supposed to differentiate her from Lorelai (whose ghost will always loom large over ASP's female protagonists), but it grates.
It's a little hard to see Fanny, instead of Emily Gilmore, but Kelly Bishop is selling the hell out of, especially in how she plays her grief - which brings me to Hubble.
Hubble was my favorite part of the pilot. Alan Ruck managed to make a character that could have come off as a creepy stalker into a charming, sweet guy. By the second half-hour I had my fingers crossed that Michelle/Hubble was the long term OTP, though I couldn't see how they'd pull that off, with them already being married. I assumed they'd have Michelle have a change of heart and want to stay in Paradise (so twee, but that's one of ASP's hallmarks) at the dance studio, but not with Hubble. I wasn't expecting him to be killed off.
Which brings us to the second episode. It was okay, but I had problems with it, namely the four main girls. Now, I never was all that interested when Gilmore Girls focused on Rory and her dramas. I loved her, I loved her and Lorelai together, and I not only understood but wholeheartedly supported that the fact that the entire conceit of the series hinged on her going to Chilton and eventually Yale. Her friendships with Paris and Lane were some of my favorite scenes of the show, but was bored out of my mind by the Dean/Jess/Logan debate. Anytime Rory was with a boy I lost interest completely (while being utterly invested in who Lorelai was going to end up with; if it hadn't been Luke I would have lost my shit.) And every single one of the four girls' scenes in Bunheads are reminding me of that. They're boring. They take up fifty percent of every episode and I only remember two of their names, and the other two don't seem to have personalities beyond "the other blond who isn't Boo" (which is a name even more twee than Paradise) and "the taller brunette that isn't as bitchy as Sasha" (who is so stereotypically driven/bitchy she's a walking cliche). The scenes where Michelle tries to bond with them seem like they're trying to be lynchpin moments, but they're so awkward and stilted they're painful to watch. That need to change quick, before I start fastforwarding the moment they appear on the screen, or just stop watching all together.
They other characters might be interesting of given a chance to develop beyond "quirky". I want more of Fanny's circle of friends, and I want Truly and Michelle to become friends. Not right away, Truly's "I blame you" was one of the best moments of the second episode, but ultimately I think they could be awesome together. Graham, on the other hand, better be a one-off character. If he's Michelle's guy I'm gone. I can't stand smarmy rich guys, especially Amy Sherman-Palladino's smarmy rich guys.
Also, I really didn't like that both of the first two episodes ended with a big "Oh shit" reveal. It felt like a cheat, a cheap ploy to make you come back next week. The third episode technically did too, but it was gentler, less "WTF?!" and more "So that's how things are going to work." It felt like the end of the setup, like it was one long three-hour first episode, and now the pilot's over and we can see what the series is really going to be like.
Final verdict: watchable, I think. It definitely feels like one of those shows that's better to wait and marathon at the end of the season; I always want to know what happens next, not in a "MUST WATCH NOW" way, like The Good Wife or Justified, but in a "If I know where this is going I might know how I feel about it" way. (And really, ABCFamily? You're going to put a new show on a two week hiatus after the third episode? You must be really confident people are still going to remember it exists in two weeks.) So, if you like interesting female characters and complicated family dynamics, and can stomach almost fatal doses of quirk and twee, go ahead and try it out.
I have to qualify this with the admission that Gilmore Girls is one of my all time favorite shows, and Lorelai/Luke is one of my formative OTPs. Hell, I still have the main GG fic archive in the links list of my journal, even though it's almost completely dead now. Gilmore Girls is one of those shows I can rewatch over and over again, like West Wing, or Stargate.
I also have to admit that Gilmore Girls is one of my biggest fannish disappointments to date; things started to go off the rails when [Spoiler (click to open)]Rory slept with her married ex at the end of season 4 and were just completely fucked when [Spoiler (click to open)]Lorelai cheated on Luke at the end of season 6, one of my most rage inducing moments in TV history, which was Amy Sherman-Palladino's "Fuck you" to the network after a contact dispute, not a valid character choice. (She cannot be blamed for the clusterfuck that was season seven, because she wasn't involved. If she was I would not be watching Bunheads, or anything else she had a hand in, ever.)
So I had mixed emotions about watching Bunheads. And those mixed emotions haven't changed one way or the other over the last three weeks.
I like Michelle, and Sutton Foster who plays her, but they're hitting the "world weary" thing a little hard. I know her cynicism is supposed to differentiate her from Lorelai (whose ghost will always loom large over ASP's female protagonists), but it grates.
It's a little hard to see Fanny, instead of Emily Gilmore, but Kelly Bishop is selling the hell out of, especially in how she plays her grief - which brings me to Hubble.
Hubble was my favorite part of the pilot. Alan Ruck managed to make a character that could have come off as a creepy stalker into a charming, sweet guy. By the second half-hour I had my fingers crossed that Michelle/Hubble was the long term OTP, though I couldn't see how they'd pull that off, with them already being married. I assumed they'd have Michelle have a change of heart and want to stay in Paradise (so twee, but that's one of ASP's hallmarks) at the dance studio, but not with Hubble. I wasn't expecting him to be killed off.
Which brings us to the second episode. It was okay, but I had problems with it, namely the four main girls. Now, I never was all that interested when Gilmore Girls focused on Rory and her dramas. I loved her, I loved her and Lorelai together, and I not only understood but wholeheartedly supported that the fact that the entire conceit of the series hinged on her going to Chilton and eventually Yale. Her friendships with Paris and Lane were some of my favorite scenes of the show, but was bored out of my mind by the Dean/Jess/Logan debate. Anytime Rory was with a boy I lost interest completely (while being utterly invested in who Lorelai was going to end up with; if it hadn't been Luke I would have lost my shit.) And every single one of the four girls' scenes in Bunheads are reminding me of that. They're boring. They take up fifty percent of every episode and I only remember two of their names, and the other two don't seem to have personalities beyond "the other blond who isn't Boo" (which is a name even more twee than Paradise) and "the taller brunette that isn't as bitchy as Sasha" (who is so stereotypically driven/bitchy she's a walking cliche). The scenes where Michelle tries to bond with them seem like they're trying to be lynchpin moments, but they're so awkward and stilted they're painful to watch. That need to change quick, before I start fastforwarding the moment they appear on the screen, or just stop watching all together.
They other characters might be interesting of given a chance to develop beyond "quirky". I want more of Fanny's circle of friends, and I want Truly and Michelle to become friends. Not right away, Truly's "I blame you" was one of the best moments of the second episode, but ultimately I think they could be awesome together. Graham, on the other hand, better be a one-off character. If he's Michelle's guy I'm gone. I can't stand smarmy rich guys, especially Amy Sherman-Palladino's smarmy rich guys.
Also, I really didn't like that both of the first two episodes ended with a big "Oh shit" reveal. It felt like a cheat, a cheap ploy to make you come back next week. The third episode technically did too, but it was gentler, less "WTF?!" and more "So that's how things are going to work." It felt like the end of the setup, like it was one long three-hour first episode, and now the pilot's over and we can see what the series is really going to be like.
Final verdict: watchable, I think. It definitely feels like one of those shows that's better to wait and marathon at the end of the season; I always want to know what happens next, not in a "MUST WATCH NOW" way, like The Good Wife or Justified, but in a "If I know where this is going I might know how I feel about it" way. (And really, ABCFamily? You're going to put a new show on a two week hiatus after the third episode? You must be really confident people are still going to remember it exists in two weeks.) So, if you like interesting female characters and complicated family dynamics, and can stomach almost fatal doses of quirk and twee, go ahead and try it out.