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...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 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 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."
Truly gives her an envelope from Fanny, with the studio's keys inside -- nice -- and assures Michelle that she's doing fine.
Truly: "Yes, I may have to read a terrible, awful book, but at the end of that book there's cake. And friendship. Which you will never understand."
Michelle: "I understand cake."
...And that's the end of the first act, friends.
STUDIO
Michelle: "Where the hell are you?"
Fanny: "I dicked ya!"
Michelle: "You ran to a spa for a week? With all that money we don't have?"
Fanny: "It's cool, I just dicked ya! Look, I'm taking a well-deserved break while you assume the responsibilities this show has wanted you to take on since minute one of the pilot."
Michelle: "But my paper-thin, dumb reasons!"
Fanny: "That's what makes it so marvelous. You have none, so I'm in the right. And loving it!"
Michelle: "But unbeknownst to you, my showgirl friend Talia is driving my car down and we're going on a road trip..."
Fanny: "I suppose if you need a birthday party like an eight-year-old girl you can dress up like Cinderella and wear a tiara..."
Michelle: "-- That was one time!"
Fanny: "-- At night. But those girls are yours in the daytime. Dicked ya!"
Fanny: "Also, I installed a stripper pole in there for you."
Michelle: "What are you talking about?"
Fanny: "I have no idea. This show makes zero sense whatsoever. Teach cardio striptease to the housewives of Paradise, there's a DVD that came with the pole. Make some money."
Michelle sighs, defeated by this lack of logic, and teaches the girls some ballet.
OYSTER SHACK
The young ladies try to figure out what their fried appetizer is made of. Melanie eats one and dies; nobody cares.
Boo: "The movie truck is coming to town! It's a truck, with movies."
Ginny: "Oh cool, like our last storyline involved us going to an R-rated movie."
Melanie: "This appetizer smells like my brother's feet."
Sasha: "Cool story, Appalachia. Anyway, you ladies are invited to stay at my house all weekend, and get up to shenanigans. I hope nobody falls asleep with a boy! I'm desperate for friendship."
Melanie eats more Charlie Feet food and they just laugh. Oh, Melanie.
STUDIO
Michelle plays with the stripper pole for approximately as cute and goofy a time as when she was having that curtain rod problem. Talia enters, and points out how funny it is that she left Vegas and then ended up on the pole.
Michelle: "Please stop asking vague questions about my birthday so I have to keep being vague about what we're doing."
Talia: "Oh, this teddy-bear coat is actually a cloak. A teddy-bear cloak."
They discuss how much fun they have on Michelle's birthday, including one time she kissed George Clooney -- yep -- and Truly awesomely admits that her last birthday involved a trip to Colonial Williamsburg with Fanny: "Got a bonnet."
There's more gorgeous Truly awkwardness -- she is really finding all the colors here -- and she finally bulldozes Michelle into inviting her along tonight. It's a fairly delightful scene, actually, but mostly because of the performances. She's wiggly and weird and twitchy and funny and desperate and sometimes she holds up a teddy-bear head and lets it talk. I just swung right around on old Truly, I did. For now.
SASHA'S SCARY HOUSE
Dad: "[Yells vaguely gay things.]"
Mom: "Come over here and say that to my face!"
Ginny, awesomely: "Oh I hope he doesn't come over here and say that to her face."
Sasha ushers them in, past a cloud of stereotypical gay shit we don't need to talk about, and they run upstairs. Instead of leaving.
UPSTAIRS
Ginny plucks Boo's eyebrows; Sasha is a bitch about it.
Boo: "You're being so uncharacteristically shrewish! Just kidding. Look, I have to look good for Charlie tonight."
Ginny: "Mel, does your brother like Kat von Gross, or Dita von Nasty?"
Melanie: "He likes Neo from The Matrix."
Ginny: "...Never mind."
Once, when I was very young, I was told about a strip club in California called Naked Keanu, where all the girls looked like Keanu Reeves. I would not wish to go there, but I've always taken comfort in the idea that this is more than an urban legend, or a particularly harrowing dream I had. The truth is that human sexuality is a moving target.
Sasha: "My mother loves work, and will thus be getting them out of the house eventually. In the meantime, I'm going to act all horrible."
Melanie: "Cool, I'm going to paint my pinkie a different color from the other ones."
Sasha: "That checks out, sure. You halfwit."
Sasha is summoned downstairs and the young ladies chat about how the dad is in love with a man named Timothy, who is moving out of town. Someone knocks on the door, and the girls all scream their heads off, because they don't know what a door is. Someone named Josh lets himself into the room, and everybody pretends that he's a character on this show.
Josh: "Why were you so scared?"
Girls: "We thought you were Sasha."
Josh: "Why are you scared of Sasha? Oh, right."
Ginny: "Oh, my boyfriend Josh. The redhead. Who now has black hair."
Did I make up the ginger part? Redheaded vegetarian? Why would I make that up? I mostly date redheaded vegetarians, it's true, but I don't think that's it. I would never ever date a Josh. Those guys are trouble. And besides, I can tell the difference between myself and Ginny from Bunheads with near-unerring accuracy.
...EW! But of all Joshes, this one is the worst. He has brought four pink giftbags filled with girls-night crap, which he lists -- "cucumber eyemasks, pop 'em in the freezer" -- and it's all very confusing and horrible, and then Sasha reappears and demands her giftbag, and everybody gushes about how great a boyfriend Josh is. I guess teenage girls really do just want to date gay guys. I guess that's a real thing. I can barely do it, so I guess somebody had to.
Sasha pushes her pain way down, and gets the girls motivated.
SPARKLES
Truly: "I look like a hooker!"
Michelle: Calls her like a dog.
Truly is, of course, dressed like a woman for once. She looks gorgeous, of course.
Truly: "Are you sure you're not hazing me?"
Talia: "You look so pretty!"
Truly: "Thanks, whatever, but Michelle? I really need your approval right now."
Michelle: "Meh."
Truly: "Okay, fine. I'm still desperate and excited! Your pointlessly aggressive and continuous mistreatment of me doesn't cause a single eyelash to bob. I guess it's true what they say, I know what's best for everybody but myself."
I thought she was the Sookie but it might be worse than that. She's not the Lane by any stretch, but she may well be the Kirk. Or some unholy admixture of the two. The only thing worse than Sookie would be extra Sookie, or a Sookie-Kirk hybrid. Kookie. Ugh.
A CARNIVAL (?)
I guess now we're at a carnival. Charlie meets the girls, and they bitch about how they've been waiting for them, and it's all very unconvincing.
Boo: "I'm so in love with Charlie. He's very convincing as a real person."
Sasha: "Cute."
They go into a carnival tent, which is where a movie is happening, and Charlie yells at her because the seats are nearly full, and Boo whines because she's going to end up sitting near someone who is not great, which is anybody besides these three girls, because she is codependent and shy.
Sasha: "Ginny, go make that old man move. Melanie, go up front and be tall. I'm going to work my way forward from the back. Boo, work your way in from the side."
Boo: "I'll use my insane-looking eyebrow! To unnerve!"
Sasha flirts a boy out of his seat to go get her popcorn; Melanie is tall as she can be and very cutely switches with an old lady; Boo talks to a grody man who notices her freaky eyebrows and then spits in a cup; Ginny threatens an old man with a heart attack. Things go south at this point. Sasha comes up against a wall of texters -- these kids, am I right? -- and Boo's holding a baby with her scary eyebrows, and Ginny is trying desperately not to get knocked out by the old man, and somehow Melanie gets a guy dragged out by his girlfriend, and they are so close, and here's the kicker.
Melanie: "Sir, can we switch seats with you so we can all sit together?"
Sasha: "I didn't think of that. That obvious thing that we could have done an entire act of this episode of a television series ago. I guess that proves some kind of a point? Either way, it's hilarious."
Suddenly, Charlie is sitting to Boo -- and the baby she's mysteriously holding, and her fucked up looking eyebrows -- and it's adorable. What, were you thinking she'd end up to Godot or something? No, this isn't one of those episodes where that matters. This week it's all about Charlie. Horrible, bitchy, stoner Charlie who hates her.
Which is when she wipes her eyebrows off on the baby and hands it to a stranger, which is admittedly excellent.
Meanwhile, Michelle and Talia instruct Truly in shit like how do you wear shoes, and Talia admits that she spent all of Michelle's check on their clothes, and they talk about how that doesn't make sense because why would Talia spend Michelle's money on buying Truly her own things that she already owns, but instead of just shutting the fuck up, they lean into it. Eventually, Truly gets them in by sneaking through a propped-open door.
Charlie and Boo are adorable and funny laughing about the movie, because away from his sister I guess he thinks Boo is cool, and the showgirls assemble at the back of the movie carnival thing truck. Truly shows them her stolen bottle of Gypsy's booze, and they all scream "WOO!" for no reason, and Michelle talks through the whole movie. These Girls! They're Going Wild!
Suddenly in the middle of the movie, Sasha realizes (?) that they have to go back home because retroactively the house alarm was always going to go off in the middle of this movie (?) so she chumps on up to get Boo out of there. I remember things like this being a logistical nightmare as a kid, sure, but at least I had time and space on my side. Not so in Paradise, where bank accounts grow and shrink at whim and people fuck during their own misguided bridal showers and sometimes food makes you fat but other times it doesn't and sometimes the clock runs backwards and you end up having to wipe your chola eyebrows off on a baby.
Michelle? Still talking through the movie. And still drinking. Eventually, the Bunheads notice that Michelle is back there, a few feet away, drunkenly babbling.
Sasha: "I don't know if Michelle is regular cool or like narc-cool, but either way she can't see us at this movie! Now, remember a second ago when I said we had to go straight back to my house or the cops would come? Forget that, no longer the issue. Now, we have to watch the whole movie with Michelle standing a few feet away. That way, she won't notice us."
Girls: "We're cool with just doing whatever you say."
AFTER THE MOVIE
Mel spots Boo, who is sitting alone at a picnic table, just as she's getting attacked by Michelle screaming drunkenly about the movie, but before they can drag her home Charlie shows up and writes a number on her hand. Whose number? Some girl. See, he wants her to text him the number when she gets home.
You know, like how guys are always doing that after a movie date? Writing information on you? Always doin' that.
DRUNK DRIVING
Michelle realizes she shouldn't drive when they find her car, so they talk about taking off their clothes and sleeping in the car, but Truly is not having it. Then this happens
Truly: "Cupcake ATM! In Los Angeles there is a pink ATM that dispenses all kinds of cupcakes 24 hours a day!"
They don't want to drive to LA, because they are drunk, but guess what about old Truly, she doesn't like to drink, so she was spitting each and every sip she took back into the bottle.
Quick, think of something more motherfucking sickening than that. Besides the deep-fried Charlie's Feet we were eating at the beginning of the episode, of course.
The showgirls pile into the car so Truly can drive them to LA (?) for ATM cupcakes (?), of course, instead of punching her in the box for being repulsive and then leaving her broken body at this mysterious carnival that just appeared halfway through the episode.
SASHA'S SCARY HOUSE
I'm sorry, but what the honest fuck? I really thought last week was a fluke, but this whole episode is so goddamn unhinged and bizarre it's like... Like Bunheads has it out for us in some way. There's a level of malevolence.
Like, you know those old stories, like Lovecraft or whatever, where there's a song or a book or a corner of a room that's so wrong and extradimensionally weird that if you look at it, your brain shits the bed forevermore and you partially go out into the lofty deeps and you start seeing alien intelligences and hearing ghost-crabs singing on the moon and there are rats with human faces, telling you secrets?
I'm not saying this episode is that, exactly. I'm just saying there are four more episodes after this one.
SASHA'S SCARY HOUSE
Sasha bitches at everybody for a while, and then decides they should climb up the side of her house and into a window, and everybody is snotty right back to her because of all their made-up problems they're having, and Sasha tries some various strategies. The last one, a jump which Ginny videotapes, involves Sasha accidentally dropping through the car's ragtop by her ass. Everybody laughs, but again: Was it a ragtop convertible a second ago when she climbed it? Is she aware of what parents drive? Is she aware of what cars are? Yes, no, and apparently no. On the other hand, I think I was confused before: They have until 6 AM to wait until they can just turn off the alarm, so they're going to end up sleeping outside. That makes a lot more sense. I've actually done that one. My bad.
GAZEBO
Michelle: "Remember that James Bond movie where she died of having her pores clogged by gold? That's going to be me, with ATM cupcake frosting."
Talia: "We used to have so much fun before you moved to a town for no reason and stayed there for no reason."
The only useful thing I did during my recent vacation was teach myself to sing the theme song from Goldfinger like the lead singer of the band Goldfinger. I never thought I would have a good enough reason to share that information with you. But now? Fuck it. Why justify anything, ever again?
Michelle: "Hey, remember that time we defiled a synagogue?"
Talia: "I know! Good birthday. Remember that time we commandeered an aircraft carrier and drove it to Applebees?"
Michelle: "That's right! Because we had a coupon for both. Remember that birthday we drank a lunatic's spittle all night and then ate cupcakes?"
Talia: "Yeah! That was a good one. Not, you know, George Clooney good, but..."
Michelle: "Oh, George. He knows what's best for everyone."
Talia: "Even himself."
Talia: "What's it like getting older?"
Michelle: "I wouldn't know. I act out."
Talia: "Let's talk more about cupcakes and eat more cupcakes."
Michelle: "They're sweet. Cupcakes."
Talia: "Not to mention your Unexpected Life! I'm jealous."
Michelle: "I'm jealous of the life I was going to have here, for those six hours."
Talia: "Are you saying you need to be married to live in Paradise?"
Michelle: "I'm saying I have a grudge against myself for some reason."
I guess they come to some kind of conclusion about their living situations or something. Who knows if it'll stick. The lack of Fanny in this episode -- painful on many levels, frankly -- seems to suggest we haven't gotten any traction as far as getting Michelle to accept accepting the life she is currently accepting.
SASHA'S SCARY YARD
Boo: "Melanie and Ginny can sleep in any position. Even wrapped around each other in the back seat of this car. Good thing we're sleeping on the hood."
Sasha: "Wipe that girl's number off your hand, you fucking peasant. Have some goddamn respect for yourself, just this once."
Boo: "I just like him, though. And I still have this one crazy eyebrow, so..."
Sasha: "I get that you like him, and I'm sympathetic because nobody is watching, but it's still pretty gross. Listen, I got my Joffrey letter yesterday. Officially."
Boo: "Oh, does that still exist on this show? Are you going to attend? And are you going to inform your parents? What if they feel abandoned? Like I am already feeling?"
She's still got the eyebrow! It makes everything so weird! It's like a Girls shout-out, except that seems really unlikely. Frankly more of a rip-off maybe.
INSIDE
Dad's just sitting on the couch, staring into space, and I guess he has been doing so all night. The girls scatter, and Sasha sits down and looks at him for a while, clearly about to come out of the closet, shaking and kind of teary-eyed, and decides she'll have none of that.
Sasha: "I stayed out all night and wrecked Mom's car. Goodnight."
And she leaves. Which yes, that would be a kind of cool ending to the episode. Not fucked up, totally understandable, and kind of yearning and sad, like, just delaying the inevitable moment she has to accept things and grow up, and their whole family breaks into a million pieces, and her mom ignores her even more than before. Right? Wouldn't that be an unexpected but welcome character moment to fade to black on?
NOPE
Because instead, we transition to a fantasy piece in which Sasha -- in a black catsuit with quasi-Black Swan eye makeup -- does a beautifully choreographed, sexy dance to "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."