might as well dance

I was listening to Kate Kulzick and Erik Adams discussing Bunheads, which given the season finale of Galavant and the fact of Singing in the Rain sitting on my DVR, reminded me of the way my engagement with musicals has changed. It's weird, when you think about it -- and it comes up every time someone launches a Cop Rock or a Viva Laughlin or a Glee -- that the musical is one of the most popular and significant genres in movies (albeit one with a long-gone heyday) and yet has played so little role on television. Or maybe it's not that weird -- maybe it makes sense given television's live origins, the popularity of the variety show during the only period when the existence of television and the prominence of the movie musical overlapped, the additional lead time it takes to write musical episodes, and the cost of licensing existing music as an alternative. But saying it's weird is the done thing.

[NOTE: This blog entry was begun shortly after Galavant's first season ended, but not finished until Caitlin and I binge-watched Bunheads, which required tracking down torrents since it isn't streaming anywhere, nor released on DVD.]

Bunheads wasn't a musical, but as a show about ballet students, it had enough song and dance numbers that it might not have been produced in the pre-Glee world. It was a one-season wonder on ABC Family (albeit one divided by a long mid-season gap, and ordered in two batches) by Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls, and in many ways came the closest to that show in tone, outlook, vibe, I don't know what you want to call it. Nobody watched it.

(And because nobody watched it, and because I imagine few of the people who did watch it were also Friday Night Lights fans, hardly anyone knows how versatile Stacey Oristano is, who played quirky delight Truly in Bunheads, who quickly steals the show, and stripper-slash-glimpse-of-the-possible-future-for-Tyra Mindy Collette on Friday Night Lights.)



In a lot of ways, Bunheads suffered from the same problem as Friday Night Lights: though it was a show about dancers, it was morethanthat in the same way Friday Night Lights is about football but morethanthat. For one thing, as with Gilmore Girls - or Quirky Place shows from Parks to Green Acres to Newhart - it started to become a show about a place as much as about its main characters, and over time I'm sure Paradise, California, would have become as well-populated and bizarre as Stars Hollow did. But even more than that, the pilot's set-up made this more than just a show about a ballet school. Sutton Foster plays the lead character, Michelle Simms, a talented dancer working as a Las Vegas showgirl when we begin, and reaching the age at which it's increasingly unlikely she'll ever get her Big Break. She impulsively marries Hubbell, a long-time admirer, moves to his hometown with him, and he promptly dies. All in the pilot.

Michelle barely knows her late husband's mother, whose home and ballet school he had supported financially, and Kelly Bishop from Gilmore Girls does a great job playing the mother-in-law as someone who's not quite an antagonist but not welcoming the stranger with open arms either. The cast is rounded out by the aforementioned Truly, who carried a torch for Hubbell, and the high school girls who attend the ballet school.

Like Gilmore Girls, Bunheads combines some fish out of water elements with family-like frictions and a thirtysomething single female lead in an unusual dating circumstance (she's a widow of a one-day marriage: how long does she mourn? how do you process losing someone you were still getting to know?) Michelle isn't a mother-who's-also-a-best-friend, but she's in a mentor position with these teen girls, and so similar conflicts come up. I'm not saying it's at all derivative of Gilmore Girls or fails to feel fresh -- only that Amy Sherman-Palladino is playing to her strengths here.

It differs from Gilmore Girls largely in that it takes longer to find itself. For instance, before the rewatch, I remembered the music-video-like musical numbers being a lot more frequent than they are. While there are partial dance numbers all throughout the show, the use of popular or unexpected music -- like the Sparks song above -- is primarily found in the back half of the show, and even then it's only a handful of times. Meanwhile, supporting characters come and go as though everyone's auditioning to see if they're going to become important -- there's a wealthy guy who's as much an outsider as Michelle who seems like a possible love interest, and he's never mentioned again after an episode that kind of revolves around him; there's another love interest later whose function in hindsight seems to have been only to make Michelle realize that she missed Hubbell and hadn't dealt with his death.

It took a few episodes for the students to really stand out for me - although they were presumably cast for dancing ability rather than acting ability, I think it was more of a writing problem, where it felt like the writers were waiting to get to know the characters (or actors) to differentiate them. For a few hours, they all just kind of blend together. (It didn't help that one of the Bunheads is named Boo and one of the Bunheads is played by Bailey Buntain and these are two different Bunheads.)



It's slower to come together than Gilmore Girls was, and less focused -- Gilmore Girls always has the central Lorelai-Rory, Lorelai-Luke relationships to come back to, and the Friday night dinners for structure, while Bunheads never entirely settles down and finds its center -- but it is nevertheless a great show, and by the end it has developed its central characters enough that their presence on television is really missed. Unfortunately it only seems to be available in paid digital form, no streaming or DVDs.



Galavant, on the other hand, is a full-on musical. Airing Sunday nights while Once Upon a Time was on hiatus, it has a tenuous Disney connection in that Alan Menken is a producer/songwriter/composer, but otherwise has nothing in common with the weird weird mess that is Once Upon a Time. Thank God.

I can't find video of one of my favorite moments, when evil King Richard -- who has been taking lessons to be more funny -- enters the room and interrupts hero Galavant:

Galavant: Where do you think they're keeping your parents:

King Richard: Perhaps they're up your butt.

King Richard: ... you see, because that's the most unlikely place.




 I really should have mentioned Timothy Omundson -- who I previously only really knew from a questionable arc on Xena -- in my Emmys discussion, because as King Richard he gave one of the two or three funniest performances on TV this season. It's a light show -- not quite as silly a spoof as something like When Things Were Rotten, more strongly plot-driven and invested in character relationships than a Monty Python production. Galavant's off to rescue the love of his life, Madalena, from King Richard, only she's pretty happy being the power behind an evil king's throne, and meanwhile there are sparks between Galavant and the princess who's helping him on his quest. Along the way you have frequent songs and guest stars from John Stamos (as "Sir Jean Hamm") to Hugh Bonneville.

If it weren't for Omundson, the show would be just fine. Creator Dan Fogelson has an iffy resume that is more likely to include a guilty pleasure or two (I like Cars because of the character design and use of Route 66) than anyone's favorite movie, but at least Galavant takes more chances than your average network sitcom.

And Omundson ... Omundson is amazing. The other characters are just foils for him to play off of, as far as I'm concerned.