Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Keeping It "Real" In Paradise
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 9 | Aired on 08.13.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Fanny abuses the girls and boys of Paradise Dance to the point of criminality, giving one a black eye and another a gender disorder, and possibly breaking Ray-Ray's leg, in her mad quest to win against Sasha. It's all very scary and harsh, but ameliorated somewhat by the fact that 90 percent of the way through the season, she still has no discernible or consistent personality characteristics.
Sasha's still not happy as a cheerleader, because she is a miserable person, but the complexities of sorority-style intimacy have the other Bunheads seething with jealousy and a yearning they cannot name. Once Michelle is done irritating everybody else in town and making herself look like a fool in every time zone, she does a drive-by guilting to make sure that Sasha knows she's on the road to becoming someone as horrible as Michelle herself unless she submits to Fanny's will. Persuasive, I'll admit.
Sasha's mental breakdown aside, Michelle is mostly concerned with running small business out of Paradise on a rail after a horrible barista manages to finally make the point that her nonstop misbehavior wouldn't be cute on a woman a third her age, and that she needs to be embarrassed at the way she conducts herself. In response, Michelle attempts to rally the town around an encroaching big-box retailer, and is soundly ignored by the townspeople, who already -- and rightly -- hate her almost the full amount possible. In the end, she is lynched by the town for her militaristic attack on the environment, baby ducks, and young children.
This, in the middle of realizing that she is washed up and will never become a Broadway star. A thing she has now realized in nine out of nine episodes of this show. The sting is taken out, however, by a sudden approach by Shirtless Bartender Godot, who hits on her for no reason and eventually buys her a coffeepot since she doesn't apparently know what those are. A more undeserving and equally unappealing partnership I couldn't imagine for you, so here's hoping those two crazy kids make it.
Ripe for freaking out about a possible Godot/Michelle hookup would seem to be Boo, who spends the whole episode chasing after Carl, the dork she dissed last week, until he finally kisses her -- in a weirdly violent face-clenching way -- at which point she literally breaks the kiss to yell at Ginny for crushing on Melanie's brother Charlie, whom she still loves deeply despite his lack of a personality and generally poor citizenship skills. Along the way Ginny acts like a mental patient, which we're assured again and again is what self-respecting young women should do -- when not engaging in body dysmorphia and front-loading food shame into every single conversation -- to be adorable.
Next week: Nutcracker comes and goes, the next in several implausible and untelegraphed romantic developments for Michelle, and I write my last recap of this show, ever. It is turning me into a real asshole.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Michelle drank coffee from a gas station, because she is incapable of making coffee and because Fanny can only drink her tea from a rusty watering can she found on the ground. Michelle and Fanny both got boyfriends, about whom I'm guessing we'll hear nothing this episode, as is the fashion these days. Bunheads-wise, Sasha is losing her mind, Boo has a new fella every episode, Ginny broke up with her gay boyfriend for no reason, and we never did get to see the Ginger Rogers dance.
NOW
Everybody in the new Paradise Coffee Shoppe is reading Fifty Shades Of Grey, even little kids. Effortless, timely and raucous, the comedy in this comedy.
Michelle: "I hate waiting for coffee, don't you? Too bad I am incompetent and cannot make my own."
Lady: "Everyone gets their coffee from this coffee shop you have never heard of because the barista is so good. His name is Bash, short for Sebastian, and I bet you one million fucking dollars that he is played by Sean Gunn. Please stop talking to me."
Michelle: "So he's been away from town at a coffee-making competition this whole show and now he's back, huh? That is a very Bunheads explanation."
Teen: "Please don't talk to me. People these days don't want to hear a crazy drunk lady talking, they just want to read and have their coffee."
Michelle pulls out a book, one of the trade papers, and immediately starts yelling at everybody about whatever she read in there. Sean Effing Gunn appears, as I suppose we all knew he would eventually. Dressed as someone from the Emerald City, of course, because when you're ripping off a single one-note joke about baristas that wasn't even true twenty years ago when people started making the joke, a fedora is a must. And the chinstrap beard, of course. Creating the illusion of a chin.
Sean Gunn makes a peace sign in the lady's foam, got it. Sean Gunn is not amused by Michelle's disdain for the names of the sizes of coffee you can get at Starbucks, although by all rights -- as a time-traveler from the film Singles, which came out in theatres when you and me and most of the people watching this were children, and in which this joke would not have been out of place -- he should probably fall down shitting himself with laughter, got it. Sean Gunn doesn't want to take Michelle's order because he is pretentious about coffee, got it. Got it, got it, got it.