Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT An Act Too Often Neglected
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 06.25.2012
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Well, Fanny does not take the news that Michelle inherited everything very well, and puts on quite the operatic show of passive aggression (and aggressive aggression) to make sure everybody knows it... Especially after Ginny's psychotic mother, Claire the real estate agent, shows up to cough on the petri dish. Terrified by the stresses of home ownership -- and the underlying concept of putting down roots anywhere, ever -- Michelle takes Hubbell's Mustang out for a ride, runs afoul of more quirky-as-fuck small-town nonsense, and eventually meets a rich dude with the tackiest faux-finished piece-a-crap Tuscan Sunrise McMansion you ever did see. The mosaic-tile fireplace and gigantor telescope alone are like a Target barfed a Pier One; I am not even exaggerating and it's not even really the kind of thing I generally notice, but Jesus.
The leisurely pace at which the show moves continues to seem like an experiment or a dare of some kind, but it's a pleasant one. Sutton Foster and Kelly Bishop are fantastic, the former especially this week; there are still zero Sean Gunn sightings; and the humor is a lot more relaxed. A few scenes and jokes are still dodgy and/or anachronistic, but the emotional throughlines continue to be insightful and moving, even occasionally breathtaking. And during the moments that you're not utterly mesmerized by Sutton Foster doing her impression of a -- strikingly beautiful -- pelican on stilts, it's inordinately helpful to just think of it as if your friend's funny weird mom wrote a TV show. Because that is essentially what has happened here.
On the Bunheads side: Boo has a crush on Ginny's brother Charlie, so Sasha tortures her endlessly, so Melanie and Ginny talk about what a bitch Sasha is -- like that's a new thing they just noticed -- and Boo sticks up for her, which just pisses off eavesdropping Sasha even more. Melanie's mom is adorable, Boo's mom is fantastic, and of course Sasha's mom is a Real Housewife made of marble and plastic who is married to a homosexual. Sasha's got it rough, but not so rough that she deserves to be treated well.
Anyway, the rich guy with the awful house -- do I just not get California? -- is kind of a hottie, so of course Michelle babbles at him for half the episode about nothing, and it takes at least that long to decant a bottle of wine, so she finally goes back home and -- after a run-in with horrible, wonderful, terribly neglected Sasha -- finds on her property a one-room guest house with a bathtub in the middle of it, along with the lake and two ponds and various other oddnesses. (It looks like the original shack that Lorelei lived in when Rory was a baby, crossed with a Montessori school, and is thus perfect for Michelle.) So she pours out a separate decanter of wine, and settles on a compromise between both Fanny's wrath and her own roots-and-wings problem: Fanny's life will stay the same as it always has, and Michelle will live in the ... yard. Next up, one presumes, will be emotionally blackmailing Fanny into letting her teach in the studio.
But for that we'll have to wait, the next new episode airing as it does in two weeks. Because what a bubble show with a horrendous name really needs is to be off the radar as often as possible.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Come and play with me," proposed the Little Prince. "I am so unhappy."
"I cannot play with you," the Fox said.
"I am not tamed."
PREVIOUSLY
It's been quite a few days for relatively likeable ex-showgirl ballet prodigy Michelle Simms: Her stalker married her, moved her to a place called Paradise, left her everything, and then died. In addition to his house and presumably his shoe concern, Michelle's also inherited Hubbell's mother, his own stalker, and a dance studio full of little girls we're still getting to know. Hubbell's mother, Madame Fanny Flowers, is still in mourning, but that doesn't seem to stop her from acting crazy; Michelle herself is as comfortable here as anywhere else, which is to say she's always the same amount of comfortable in her own skin.
NOW
Fanny: "I don't understand."
Jerry: "Okay, again. He called me when he was driving you both back from Vegas, and made me put everything in Michelle's name. The will, house, the studio, the seven acres, the car, the other car, insurance, new voter registration, even a subscription to Rolling Stone that will start next month."
Fanny: "I don't understand."
Michelle: "Because we're already halfway through this month."
Fanny: "I understand how a magazine subscription works, Michelle. I just don't understand the rest of it."
Jerry: "Um he called me when he was driving you both back from Vegas, and made me..."
Fanny: "I am losing my shit by inches."
Michelle: "Are we forgetting the part where I was drunk and/or passed out through most of our entire marriage? This is nuts."
Jerry: "No, he was obsessed with getting married -- dressed as a groom every Halloween throughout childhood. Talked a crazy old lady down the street to pose as his bride."
Michelle: "I can identify with that part of the story."
Fanny: "So I'm homeless. Maybe I can move in with the crazy old lady. I heard she keeps her mummified mom in the fridge."
Jerry: "Well, how about: All this was his anyway, and now it's Michelle's. Isn't that comforting? You've never owned anything, so nothing really changes!"
Fanny: "Listen, motherf..."
Michelle: "And that's our cue. Thanks for stopping by, Jerry."
There are a million tick-tocking clocks on the wall behind the women; Michelle grabs a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers, but Fanny's already gone.