An Unexpected Life : Bunheads - pilot recap by Jacob | TWoP | p1 :

Everybody's talking so fast and so much there's not really time to process what's going to happen next because of all that is already happening.

.. So far Michelle is not really strutting her Lorelei charm, is she?

p2   Michelle: "Suffice to say I don't deserve to be loved, and need some kind of stalker to talk me into it."
...What was that you were saying about teaching young women important lessons? But I guess coming from the Haus of Sunflowers [sent by Max to Lorelai; but it was daisies? or something, not sunflowers; she'd said it was her favorite; it was when he asked her to marry him maybe?] and "I built you a car" [haha Dean to Rory on her 16th Bday] it's not as bad as it sounds to us. The guy's been coming every month for over a year, every time he's in Vegas, and he is just a slow learner. Besides, Michelle's got that audition.

.. Michelle thanks him, graciously and goofily, and he just keeps piling it on, and before you know it he's saying shit like, "I took the liberty of making us a dinner reservation for tonight" and other stalker things.  You know, I don't think the Friend Zone is a very valid reason to be shitty about women, but even more than that I don't think the Friend Zone is really a thing: It's called trying to be nice about the fact that I'm clearly not interested. And so when you push it, or stalk, or whine about how Nice Guys Lose or Women Only Like Assholes, or complain about the Friend Zone itself, it's a really gross expression of privilege in at least two ways, because men are told they can have whatever they want -- nothing new -- but women are in turn told to never piss anybody (men) off, so it's a car accident of two things that we shouldn't be taught in the first place. What you're saying is that you think you're in love, but you have no idea what that means, or else you would respect the woman enough to take her at her word instead of trying to trick her or wear her down.

p3  On the other hand, in the real world sometimes that works out okay, and if the woman doesn't have enough faith in her own agency to ignore it, or shove the guy out of a moving vehicle, then she's assisting in her own harassment.   It's their job [the pursuers? I think] to say yes, and our job [the pursueees] to say whatever we actually want, and our responsibility to mean it. 
But I've never found this particular Edward Culleny full-court press very attractive, because at the very least it presumes that I'm [as the pursuee] either so retarded or so sexless that I need help figuring out whether or not I want to fuck you. Trust me when I say, I already know the answer to that one. And [/but/ (ie, anticipating the objection; & conceding the complication)] yes, everybody likes to be pursued.
I guess the only way out of this particular sexual Viet Nam is just, know your privilege, learn to read a room, but also learn to accurately gauge the other person's ability to read the room /ok./. If you're being too subtle, and you are aware that you're being too subtle, it's not contingent on the guy to knock it off at that point because you're the one making the choice, and that is for unsavory reasons. I mean, this has been going on for a year. Your self-respect is in question. Both of you.

CHICAGO [audition]

Director: "No."
Michelle: "But I'm 25?"
Director: "Really? But also, no."

...  ...  ...  

p6   STUDIO

In the backyard of Hubbell's house is a dance studio and in that dance studio is a small class of teens and teaching those teens is Hubbell's mother, Madame Fanny. And just like you were eventually able to forget Kelly Bishop was the mom in Dirty Dancing -- and the show survives, God willing -- I bet you'll forget she once played Emily Gilmore too. The price of presence is lingering presence, and damn does she have presence, so it's okay if you can't shake it off all at once, but I love what she's doing here.
Four of the teens are named Sasha, Boo, and I think Melanie and Ginny.  Boo is the one we feel sorry for. Sasha is the one that is a bitch. At some point, we will probably feel sorry for her too, but not today, Sasha. Not today.  

Fanny: "...And relax. Oh please, so dramatic. Mr. Balanchine once made us do grand battements* for two and a half hours. We only stopped when someone finally dropped dead."
*(The first time somebody decides to email me about spelling, I'm going to start misspelling on purpose. Until then I will do my best, between my atrocious French and completely forgotten ballet, but please don't waste either of our time proving how much you know about everything, because there is nothing to be gained by that for either of us. The first thing you have to ask yourself before you do anything whatsoever involving another person is who you're trying to impress.)

The first thing you have to ask yourself before you do anything whatsoever involving another person is who you're trying to impress.

Afterwards, Sasha is a bitch to Boo and Boo is a sadsack who doesn't have the body for ballet but hasn't figured that out yet, so just like in every movie, one assumes she'll end up moving into hip-hop dance -- or even more likely, some made-up salad of a dance technique that combines all dances -- because that is what happens in every movie that has ever been made.

...

p9   Fanny introduces her to the girls, and then suddenly everything is moving really fast because Fanny is throwing a party tonight to welcome Michelle into the family.
Sasha: "Do you not want us to come?"
Michelle, already getting Sasha's vibe: "Well first, I don't know you..."

We head into a discussion about the sort of unrealistically smalltown vagaries of life in Paradise: There's no movie theater, the skating rink doesn't open until November every year, and -- most unrealistic of all -- "Sometimes Mr. Feldstein forgets to lock the library door, and we go in and read!" I like this kind of stylized timeless Stars Hollow dorkiness, but I can understand why it's confusing for some viewers, because like hell. To all of it, to any of it, to most of the characters we have yet to meet: Like hell. But it's part of the trip.


 p11     Like you do in the middle of throwing a party in your home, Boo finds Madame Fanny doing some lonely, lovely dance moves in the studio, all alone. Actually, it makes sense that she'd need a moment to herself, and that she'd retreat to her best thing. 

You want artsy people to be flighty, and performers to be dramatic, and sometimes that comes at your peril, because yes, dancers are artists and they are performers, but more than either of those, they are physical machines of perfection with a focus you can't even contemplate, meaning that even when they're being dramatic or messy they're still doing even that hardcore as fuck. They are scarier than tennis guys with this. Scratch a ballerina, you are going to find a bisexual cokehead that hates her mother and hoards candy. This is true 100 percent of the time, with absolutely no exceptions in the history of the universe, which I can tell you with full confidence because I have met and partied and eaten popsicles for dinner with each and every one of them, and I am dead serious when I say girl, they will wear you out.

Scratch a ballerina, you are going to find a bisexual cokehead that hates her mother & hoards candy. I have met & partied & eaten popsicles for dinner with each & every one of them, and I am dead serious when I say girl, they will wear you out.

p12   Boo: "Madame Fanny? Please encourage me to apply to the Joffrey program."
Fanny: "Couldn't hurt."
Boo: "No but I mean like really get in there and delude me. I can't dance like Sasha, but I can dance like a boy, I can turn and jump, so how do I parlay that into..."
Fanny, verbatim: "-- Ballet is very hard, Boo. And a lot of it does depend on how you're made. You have to be realistic."
Boo: "Do I, though?"
Fanny, verbatim: "You're a big-boned girl. You have a tummy. Your waist is very short..."
Boo: "Uh."
Fanny: "...None of which means you shouldn't try. Right?"

And that's how I fell in love with Fanny. Body issues are real, and destructive, but that's not what this conversation is about. You asked the question, you got the answer. If you'd asked, "Am I pretty," girl you are gorgeous.  But what you asked is, "I am fairly certain I understand the reality of this situation, but just in case, I'm asking one more time." And you got the answer you need, which is: No.  Plenty of other things, but not this one thing.  Not to say you shouldn't try, because everything that rises does converge, but if you want the actual answer, there's your answer.

And that's not about feminism -- much less lookism, or fattism, or whatever dumb thing they're calling it nowadays, where you constantly need other people to validate your appearance for you -- but about whether or not a hammer is good for screwing in screws ..  (or whether Michelle Simms would make a good Effie in Dreamgirls, which, hold that thought) ..

...

p17  Michelle: " .. That's the key to any audition. Attitude. You have to show up confident, and be ready to do or be anything they want in an instant. I once got an audition for a Broadway show, totally last minute, I grabbed my bag, I ran thirty blocks, I walked in the door? It was for Dreamgirls."
The teens gasp; one of them asks what happens.
Michelle: "I got a callback."
Teens: "Shut up!"
Michelle: "Attitude, my friends."
I dunno, I kind of love how it keeps flipping back and forth, but ultimately it's like, twenty years later I still remember this movie review of Life Is Beautiful that said basically the message was only the very most hilarious people deserved to escape the Holocaust. (That still cracks me up.) But as far as Boo's ass or Ginny's breasts, the message seems to be really waffly. Can Boo join the Joffrey program or not? I guess we'll find out, half a season from now.  Or maybe this distinction won't matter by then. Maybe it'll continue to do this back and forth, and make its point that way, or maybe it's just a fight I'm going to have with the show. I mean, Ryan Murphy has been doing this same insincere uncommitted shit since his first TV show in 1999, with -- oddly, but consistently and very specifically -- second-wave Anita Hill feminist issues and Downs Syndrome, and he still hasn't come up with anything vaguely like a considered opinion about those things, so I guess we'll see?