Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The King In Yellow
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 07.23.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close....I mean...
...Okay. Okay, here's what happened on Bunheads, which is a real show that comes on TV. Michelle's friend Talia showed up with her car, which she drove down from Vegas, for a birthday road trip. However Fanny has vanished in order to force Michelle into teaching the girls and seeing how fun it is. So far, so good.
On the other side, Sasha's parents are going out of town so she invites the Bunheads to come stay with her for the weekend. They'll go to a movie -- which somehow is actually a carnival? -- and then cuddle up with a bunch of snacks produced by Ginny's gay boyfriend. Still, even with the movie turning into a carnival for no reason, we're on mostly firm ground.
Except then Talia falls in love with Sparkles, buys everything in the store with Michelle's last Vegas paycheck, and invites Truly along for their adventure. Which involves going to the movie that is somehow also a carnival, and drinking heavily throughout.
The Bunheads are a little thrown by a big fight between Sasha's awful mom and gay dad, but eventually make it to the movie. After some complex, fairly cute machinations, they end up sitting together... All except for Boo, who gets to sit with her crush, Melanie's brother. Did I mention she has one crazy chola eyebrow and that she wipes it off on a random baby? That was actually tremendous.
After the movie or carnival, Charlie writes a phone number on Boo, but it turns out to be just some girl's number he needs her to text him, because he wrote it with a pen that only works on pathetic girls, not paper. I hate when my crush writes information on me, don't you?
Truly wants to get cupcakes in LA, where there's a magical cupcake ATM that shoots out cupcakes, but Michelle and Talia are too drunk to drive. Thankfully, Truly has been spitting her liquor into the bottle the entire time, and offers to drive them there. Gratefully, they agree, since they're too drunk to notice that Truly deserves to be brutally beaten for being gross. In the end, Michelle decides that Paradise isn't so bad -- aka, the thing she decides in every fucking episode -- but after an entire episode without Kelly Bishop I'm guessing her ass is still drunk.
Back at Sasha's house, the girls are forced to sleep outside by some circumstances, and in the morning find her gay dad sitting on the couch, obviously having a mental breakdown. She leaves it in a funny, relatable way -- which is to say, very patently refuses to discuss his mental state or sexuality with him -- and heads upstairs. It's a neat moment, actually, and the perfect ending to the episode.
Which is what makes it all the more distressing that what happens next is, I'm saying the actual ending to the episode is, a three-minute dance routine out of nowhere that Sasha does in a black catsuit to "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by They Might Be Giants.
It's a lovely dance routine, and she's a wonderful dancer. You won't catch me saying anything else. But after an episode in which we're meant to contend with Boo's one crazy eyebrow, the fact that Michelle just drank liters of Truly's backwash, and there's an ATM in LA that shoots cupcakes (okay, I believe that one) ... this is how the episode ends. With neither a bang, nor a whimper, just a fantasy sequence of Sasha in Black Swan eye makeup, doing an interpretive dance to They Might Be Giants.
LIKE IT'S NO BIG DEAL.
Hats off to you, show. Hats off, Amy Sherman-Palladino. You've done it. You have really fucking done it. See you next week, when the girls raise a ghost from the dead or Hubbell's twin brother Schnubbell shows up, or Kelly Bishop is played by a man, or whatever else the hell is going to happen, because I GIVE.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Dancer Michelle is resistant to doing anything about her situation, which is currently living in a cottage on the land of a man who drunk-dialed her into matrimony and then died. The obvious solution -- become a teacher at the dance studio she already owns -- is unacceptable because of her self-esteem issues, so instead she prefers to meddle aimlessly in the activities of a crazy old lady named Fanny Flowers. In other news, Boo has many loves, but not a single clue, while Sasha's gay dad is an open secret.
STUDIO
Michelle: "I just wake up kooky! Why are you girls standing around the studio?"
Girls: "Because it's locked."
Michelle: "[Utter nonsense.]"
Girls: "Please don't ever bother us again. You were a fun toy at first, but it's starting to look like there's not an off switch."
BOOK CLUB
Ellen Greene: "I just don't see why I should have to sit through this book we've not yet mentioned by name. I'm not illiterate, I'm not a bored and boring person with too much time on my hands, and I don't hate myself. You know that old Capote adage about how a thing wasn't writing, just typing? What's the Fifty Shades equivalent?"
Gypsy: "It's not reading, it's masturbating. I just like dirty books. Because they're dirty!"
Truly: "Trenchant. But to be honest, I didn't finish the book. The story of how come is not that fascinating. Let me share it with you."
Ladies: "Truly is worse than almost anybody in this town."
Michelle: "Hey, guys!"
Ladies: "Here we go."
Michelle: "Where's that old lady you hang out with? And how come you're always hanging out with old ladies?"
Truly: "Because I do not function!"
(She shows the ladies a picture of her uncle's kidney stone, which is on her phone, because she does not function.)
Michelle: "Truly, because you're the only person with a worse personality than my own, I would like you to be my best friend."
Truly: "But I hate you. It's like my main trait. Besides knowing what's best for everybody but myself."
Michelle: "Yes! But that doesn't matter in this episode. Come hang out with regulars!"
Truly, verbatim: "You want me to be a slut, like you."
Michelle, to her credit: "Yes! I get a coupon to Sizzler for every convert. Now, come out with me and we can talk about random people Jacob doesn't know who they are."