As a diehard fan of Gilmore Girls it’s impossible to watch Bunheads and not get a strong sense of Déjà vu. We have three generations of strong willed women living in a small town. We have a gruff and lovable man serving beverages. We have a main character who speaks in paragraphs and tends to roll her eye rather a lot.
Gilmore Girls flashbacks aside, I like Bunheads, even if it has one of the worst title for a TV Show since Suddenly Susan or maybe GCB.
It’s the story of a Vegas showgirl who marries an older man from a small town who still lives with his mother. This mother is played by Kelly Bishop, who also played the oldest generation in the Gilmore Girls. If there was one complaint I could lay on Gilmore Girls, it was that male characters were never portrayed in a favorable light. Even the wonderful Edward Herrmann’s Richard Gilmore was often a tad on the domineering side. So the shock ending of the first episode of Bunheads fits in with the whole It’s All About The Women theme that Amy Sherman-Palladino loves.
Shonda Rhimes, master of easily predictable and surprisingly popular shows like Grey’s Anatomy, recently complained that Bunheads doesn’t have any people of color, so she can’t feel good about letting her daughter watch the show. I tend to hate this kind of political correctness, does every show need a cast like Glee?
Sutton Foster, who is a super nova on Broadway, but pretty much unknown outside of NYC, plays the lead role of Michelle Simms. She looks just enough like Lauren Graham that I kept thinking, couldn’t they get the real Lauren? And whenever she stood next to the pouty Julia Goldani Telles I couldn’t help but think of the pouty Alexis Bledel.
All of this familiarity makes Bunheads feel more like a show that’s been on for years instead of one that just started. We care for these people right off the bat and the show does a good job of eliciting emotion. I’ll keep watching Bunheads and hope I can see these people as more than mere shadows of the people from Stars Hollow.
- Starfield – A Few Months In - December 23, 2023
- Still Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton - November 1, 2022
- Starfield First Impressions of Gameplay Reveal - June 13, 2022
I don’t think it’s a bad name. My dance teacher used to call us her little “bun heads” affectionately years ago before anyone in pop culture knew what it meant. I always thought it was cute, and I still do, and it is accurate to the subject of the show, it is an affectionate thing that dancers call themselves or their students, and Michelle has the dancers as a reason to be happy, and is affectionate to them.
Ok, I’ve kind of gotten used to it. And it’s not like Gilmore Girls meant anything right off the bat either. Still, Bunheads says Princess Leia to me, not ballet dancer.