My 50 Favorite Television Shows of the Decade: 2010-2019

There was a problem facing television as a medium in the 2010s, and if you've been online or reading my year-end lists then you know what I'm talking about: there's too much damn TV.  It's been an outright epidemic over the last 10 years, with new shows and delivery systems for those shows popping up at a rapid rate, far past anyone's ability to keep up with it all.  Somebody once aptly described a TV critic's role as being more like a book critic's nowadays -- there's too much for one person to consume, so you have to make peace with that and curate your experience by finding a niche.

Unfortunately, the influx of TV also led to more bad shows.  The rise of streaming and binge-watching has caused series to indulge in being nothing more than formless pieces of content.  Sometimes it can feel like every writer who knows how to construct seasons, episodes, and even scenes died near the end of the previous decade.  But the sheer magnitude of television in this decade means that there was still alot to love about television.  This list chronicles the best of the best from the 2010s.

The rules: These eligibility rules are slightly more complicated than the ones for the other two lists, so read carefully.  In order for a show to be eligible for this list, it has to have aired more than half of its total episodes within this decade.  Also, only those episodes that aired in this decade are taken into consideration when placing and ranking that show.  For example: 30 Rock is eligible for consideration because 72 of its 138 episodes aired after January 1, 2010 -- that's 52% for all the mathematicians out there -- but the only episodes that determine if it can make the top 50 are Season 4 Episode 9 through Season 7 Episode 13 (the episodes that aired in the 2010s).  Also, only continuing series are eligible for the top 50, while miniseries get their own mini list.

Pilot Talk 2017: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Part of Amazon's latest Pilot Season

Amazon's Pilot Season has been around for a few years now and it has proven itself to be a fun new way to conduct the series development process, allowing viewers to have a say in what pilots will be able to become a full series.  (Though it's unclear just how much of a role the user voting has on these matters.)  It can be a frustrating system too.  If you watch a pilot and like it, there's a possibility that it won't get picked up.  And even if it does get picked up, you're bound to wait at least a year to see the rest of the season.  In fact, I'm still waiting for the rest of Whit Stillman's Cosmopolitans, which was picked up in 2014 and still hasn't seen the light of day.  For that reason, I've largely stopped participating in the Pilot Season, preferring to wait for shows to actually get picked up and release a full season before I commit to checking them out.

Of course, I'm willing to make exceptions if a pilot calls for it and one of the biggest exceptions of all appeared this past weekend in the form of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the latest series from Amy Sherman-Palladino.  I'm a huge fan of Palladino's previous series, Gilmore Girls and Bunheads, so I've been eagerly anticipating Maisel since it was first announced.  The show is set in 1950s New York and follows Miriam "Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), a plucky woman settled into married life with her husband who pursues his passion for stand-up comedy on the side.  It very quickly establishes itself as slightly different from the rest of Palladino's previous work, deviating from many of the traits that made them so beloved.  There is no small town charm, the character quirks are dialed down, and its time period sets it before many of the items in her usual arsenal of pop culture references.

And yet, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel still feels unmistakably like an Amy Sherman-Palladino show.  One of the qualities it retains from her previous shows is the rapid-fire dialogue, which feels right at home in this setting.  It's always a joy to hear Palladino's signature repartee ping pong between characters, and this pilot has no shortage of witty, sharp, and character-defining banter.  Additionally, the show continues her love of brassy brunettes.  Like Lorelai Gilmore and Michelle Simms before her, Midge feels like a dame straight out of a Howard Hawks screwball comedy.  Rachel Brosnahan has some big shoes to fill after Lauren Graham and Sutton Foster, and she rises to the occasion, imbuing her character with a verve that makes her pop immediately.  Brosnahan has been good enough in past roles, but here she feels like a revelation.  While she may not display the vulnerability of a Graham or Foster yet, she's able to completely nail the timing and delivery of the show's difficult dialogue, which is a promising start.

Some viewers might be a little impatient with this episode in the early stages, but I would advise them to wait it out.  Like Bunheads, the pilot involves a great deal of setup before it really gets to the meat of the show.  Once it does, however, it absolutely sings.  Last year's A Year in the Life revival of Gilmore Girls reminded the world of how wonderful Amy Sherman-Palladino's unique style can be, but The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel takes it a step further, showing us how joyous it is to see that style applied to a totally new setting and array of characters.  This one's a winner; let's see if Amazon agrees too.

Grade: B+

Bunheads vs. Gilmore Girls

The common pitch to get people to watch Bunheads is, "Did you like Gilmore Girls?  If so, then you'll probably like this."  After all, those who were fond of Amy Sherman-Palladino's brand of lightning-quick dialogue and breezy, female-centric stories on Gilmore Girls would find it easy to settle into Bunheads, which ported over the former's charms with few adjustments.  The parallels didn't stop there either -- both shows featured Kelly Bishop filling the brittle elderly woman role, the relationship between Fanny and Michelle mirrored Lorelai and Emily's, Truly had a bit of Sookie's sweet but neurotic qualities, and Paradise was essentially a west coast Stars Hollow.  In fact, the similarities proved to be too numerous for some, who accused Bunheads of being a cheap imitation of Gilmore Girls, and even those who like both mostly prefer the latter.  So I'm here to deliver a rare and controversial opinion:  I like Bunheads more than Gilmore Girls.

Though I prefer Bunheads, if you were to break both shows down to their individual qualities, Gilmore Girls would still have some advantages.  For example, Bunheads didn't have the great sense of history that Gilmore Girls had.  In a way, Bunheads was about a makeshift family, and the show's 18 episodes were about building the kind of history that Gilmore Girls already had implanted into its DNA from the beginning.  In true Amy Sherman-Palladino fashion, much of the crucial events in the Gilmore family happen offscreen, in this case years before the show even premiered, beginning with Lorelai getting pregnant and running away from home at 16.  The bundles of pain, regret, and disappointment in the relationship between Lorelai, Emily, and Richard were so precariously stacked that the writers were able to convey so much about them through so little.  Those years and years of bruised history were always something that they could fall back on for a meaty story ("Christopher Returns," "Dear Emily and Richard," etc).

But Bunheads had some tricks of its own too.  It took all of the common elements in Amy Sherman-Palladino's wheelhouse and added something crucial: dance.  In the short time that Bunheads on the air, its dance sequences were the best thing on television, bar none.  Performance elements in shows tend to be a way to express subtext without doing it through dialogue, and some of the dance sequences in Bunheads did that, as in episode two, where a dance sequence underlines how much the girls appreciate Fanny.  But sometimes they were capable of transcending the point of being a mere thematic device, and instead became a visualization of raw, primal emotions.  Each of the dances on the show -- no matter how small -- were always varied, visually dynamic, well-choreographed, and most of all, shot in fluid takes that went unbroken for impressive lengths.

Part of the reason why it could get away with such sequences is that it was, at its core, a much darker show than Gilmore Girls.  While Gilmore Girls might have been about a woman who ran away and had a kid at 16 years old, the darker aspects of the show were always balanced out by its WB-ness, small-town quirk, and that prevailing sense that everything would ultimately be okay.  Bunheads, on the other hand, had a sense that everything may not be okay, but you have to learn to adapt and make do.  On Gilmore Girls, Lorelai's life is pretty stable -- she has a wonderful daughter, her own business, and many friends in Stars Hollow.  Between Michelle's failed dance career, dead husband, and new role of responsibility that she's not prepared for; she's floundering much more.  Minus a few boat-stealing, home-wrecking stumbles along the way, Rory Gilmore's seven-season arc consisted of everything going her way.  The four bunheads don't have it as easy as special genius Rory, however.  Boo is stuck with a body type that will never be conducive to a successful dance career, Sasha is struggling with what to do in the wake of her parents' divorce, Melanie's anger issues sometimes cause her to violently lash out, and Ginny loses her virginity to a boy who couldn't be bothered to give her the time of day afterward.  While some people may like the lighter fare that Gilmore Girls provides, the dark core of Bunheads is something that lingers with me much more.

In an LA Times article, Amy Sherman-Palladino emphasized that Gilmore Girls and Bunheads were both products of the eras in which they aired by pointing out the differences between their construction.  Among them, the most notable was the insight that each Gilmore Girls episode consisted of three acts, while a Bunheads episode consisted of six.  As a result, Bunheads felt like a faster-paced show, since it had to structure the episodes around more act breaks.  Both shows are still notable for their relative lack of plot, but Bunheads was better at giving off the impression of forward progression.  This makes Gilmore Girls easier to skip around on, and Bunheads better to watch in linear chunks.

Rory Gilmore is one of my all-time favorite characters -- yes, I know that I'm boring -- but Bunheads having four teenage girls in its main cast allowed for the show to have a wider perspective.  Sasha, Boo, Ginny, and Melanie all had distinct personalities from the start of the show, allowing for more opportunities to have the audience identify with them.  Gilmore Girls may have given Rory people like Lane and Paris to bounce off of, but Bunheads explored female friendships in a far more complex way.  These were four girls who had their disagreements, but they were ultimately people who cared deeply about one another.  Plus, as much as I defend Alexis Bledel, the four actresses on Bunheads were much better than her.  (Have I mentioned that they danced?!)

Bunheads may have had female friendships down, but nothing can touch the mother-daughter relationship that's central to Gilmore Girls.  Rory and Lorelai's relationship is without a doubt the greatest mother-daughter relationship I've ever seen on television, and as much as Bunheads tried to hint at a slowly developing kinship between Michelle and the four girls, they couldn't come close to the two Gilmores.  Their sister-like closeness may not be something that we all aspire to, but it's admirable and enjoyable to watch nonetheless.  It's what makes their slow drifting in the show's later years all the more powerful.  The show's other mother-daughter relationship, Lorelai and Emily, gives Gilmore Girls another advantage.  They're almost like the flipside to Rory and Lorelai, their years defined by distance instead of an airtight bond, and even when they do have moments of mutual understanding, it's always informed by the tenuous strings that tie them together.  Once again, Bunheads attempted to create something like it with Michelle and Fanny, but it also couldn't compare to the execution on Gilmore Girls.

Ultimately, the Bunheads vs. Gilmore Girls debate runs into the same problem that Joss Whedon fans do when they compare Buffy and Firefly.  Gilmore Girls lasted seven 22-episode seasons and its length provides a breadth of quality that Bunheads just couldn't match.  The cumulative magnitude of "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?," "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais," and many of their other best episodes outshines the sum total of Bunheads' run.  We also never really got the chance to know Paradise like we got to know Stars Hollow.  The side characters on Bunheads felt like great characters, but those on Gilmore Girls felt like whole people.  On the other hand, Bunheads wasn't afforded the time to last long enough for us to get tired of any of those side characters (can you imagine still finding Truly amusing in season seven of that show?)  Its star burned short, but we got to remember its overwhelming brightness as opposed to the slow fade of Gilmore Girls.  Should Gilmore Girls get more credit for spreading its high quality out over a few seasons or should Bunheads get the edge because it never lasted long enough to stagnate?

Perhaps it's actually simpler than that.  I missed Gilmore Girls the first time around, so Bunheads was my first exposure to Amy Sherman-Palladino's work.  Meanwhile, most people watched Bunheads after they'd already seen Gilmore Girls.  So maybe it's just a matter of which of the two shows one watches first determining their favorite.  I guess we'll never truly know.  But really, guys, Bunheads is better.


Gilmore Girls Week ends here.  Don't miss Monday's overview of the entire show, Tuesday's essay on season four's "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais," Wednesday's look into Rory Gilmore's dating history, and Thursday's list of the show's 10 best episodes.

My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2013

Are you sick of hearing about whether or not we're in the golden age of television?  There has been alot of hand-wringing about that lately, spurred on by the fact that 2013 was an unequivocally great year for TV, the best that I've seen since I started following the medium closely.  Not only was the year remarkable for its depth of quality, but also for its breadth.  Good television has been popping up from every corner, with networks like Sundance making their debut in original programming and online sources like Hulu and Netflix expanding their market.  One of the shows in end of the year discussion, Borgen, released episodes on LinkTV -- whatever that is!  It's interesting to think that a little over a decade ago, most of the talked about TV shows came from the big four networks (CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC) and HBO.  Now I literally get anxiety thinking about all of the great television coming from so many different places that I'll never get around to watching.  (For how much TV I already watch, see the full list linked to at the bottom of this post.)

Television lists are harder than music and film lists to do, because the main television season is spread out over two calendar years, with many shows starting their seasons in September and not ending until April or May.  This is becoming less of an issue, as summer is seen as a television ghetto less and less every year, and cable shows tend to air their entire seasons in a single calendar year.  Nevertheless, for each television show, the only episodes eligible for ranking purposes are the ones that aired in 2013.  That seems like an obvious thing, but it always throws some people.  This can sometimes work to a show's advantage.  For example, Parenthood was very high on my list last year because it aired all of its best material (the end of season 3 at the beginning of year, the beginning of season 4 in the fall) in 2012.  On the other hand, New Girl was never going to land in my top 20 this year, but it ended up being way further down on my full list because its third season has been so terrible, it's tarnished the quality of the back half of season 2 that aired at the beginning of the year.  Is all of that clear?  Okay, good.

For all of my talk about the breadth of the television landscape, my top 20 consists of a small cluster of networks, but there are still some unexpected ones.  The list heavily favors cable to network, with 16 belonging to the former and 2 belonging to the latter (and 2 coming from internet-only sources).  My top 20 is also low on straight comedies, consisting of mostly dramas and shows that are listed as "comedy" but are mostly dramatic.  This is mainly because of how good this year was for drama, but it also was a very weak year for comedy, particular network comedies.  So enough analysis of the list, let's move on to the actual thing...

RIP Bunheads (2012-2013)

Look at the disappointment, ABC Family!

I watch alot of TV, and anybody who watches as many shows as I do has to deal with tons of them getting cancelled.  So you would think that by now I'd be used to it and not get too worked up about it anymore, yet it still usually hurts.  Yesterday, after many months of stalling, ABC Family cancelled Bunheads, and this might be the most upset I've ever been about a show's cancellation.  I've spilled alot of digital ink on this blog about Bunheads -- and deservedly so, because it's one of the best shows on television -- so I had a large investment in the show's fate, which had been up in the air since the first season ended in February.  Since then, there were many ups (the cancellation of The Lying Game, all of the various thinkpieces popping up on the internet) and downs (the sets being taken down, good ratings for The Fosters and Twisted, ABC Family barely submitting the show for Emmy consideration), but I was still holding out hope.

Bunheads isn't the first great show to be cancelled this year, as 2013 has already taken the lives of Ben & Kate and Enlightened.  Enlightened is likely to be in the top 3 on my list of favorite television shows in 2013 by the time the end of the year rolls around, and I found its cancellation to be unfortunate, but its ending felt so complete that it was hard to be too broken up about it.  And Ben & Kate was my favorite new comedy of last fall season, but I'm pretty sure we saw all that show had to offer.  The difference with Bunheads was the possibility.  Part of the reason why I was rooting for a renewal was because I was convinced that the show was going to deliver next-level excellence in the second season.  It was already starting to make that leap anyway -- the first 10 episodes that aired in 2012 were good enough, but the back 8 that aired in 2013 were some of the most heartwarming, funny, and devastating television episodes I've seen all year.  Now, instead of getting to see the show's trajectory play out, Bunheads got clipped just as it was blossoming.

Earlier in the year, when everybody was concerned about Hannibal possibly getting cancelled because it's a Bryan Fuller show and it wasn't drawing overly impressive ratings, I was rooting for it too, but if it wasn't renewed I wouldn't have been phased too much.  In fact, I'd easily trade in season 2 of Hannibal to get a second season of Bunheads.  There will be many more gussied-up procedurals.  There will certainly be many more serial killer shows.  But there might not be another show like Bunheads in a long time, which featured such interesting, unique, and real portrayals of women and teens.  In a television landscape overstuffed with blandly "edgy" shows filled with brooding antiheroes, Bunheads was light and easygoing fare, yet it never shied away from dealing with the disappointment and doubt that lurked underneath the surface.  It was unlike anything else on television, but more importantly, it was good.  What's worse is that who knows if Amy Sherman-Palladino has another show in her.  Maybe she'll be too jaded after he experience at the end of Gilmore Girls and now with the cancellation of Bunheads.  Maybe she just won't have any new ideas after this.  But the world will be much less wonderful without her voice.

So goodbye, Bunheads.  Goodbye to Sasha and Melanie and Ginny and Boo and Michelle and all of the other complex and nuanced characters on the show.  Thank you for making me laugh and almost making me cry.  You had a stupid name and were on ABC Family, so people scoffed at you, but you were an amazing television show and you'll be missed.

Why the World Needs More Bunheads

This is how they'll look if you cancel Bunheads, ABC Family.

Bunheads came into the world in June of 2012 and Amy Sherman-Palladino's little ballet show brought us the same quirk and small-town charm that Gilmore Girls did.  Although it took me a little while to warm up to Amy Sherman-Palladino's writing tics (I only watched a handful of episodes of Gilmore Girls as a kid), even in the early going, it was always an enjoyable watching experience.  In many ways, it was the perfect summer show, and some of my fondest memories of that time were the Monday nights when I watched Bunheads.  My enjoyment of the show seemed to have an inverse relationship with the ratings, as my love grew exponentially when it came back in January of this year, while viewership dropped down to the low 1s.  Now, a year after the show first premiered, Bunheads finds itself in a state of limbo, not knowing whether it will be renewed or cancelled.  Despite the fact that it may be the most critically acclaimed show on the network, it just doesn't fit in with ABC Family's branding, which has found a hit in Pretty Little Liars and decided to run with it.  Basically, the future of Bunheads depends upon the failure of the network's new shows, The Fosters and Twisted (both of which had lower premiere numbers than the Bunheads series premiere).  I and every other fan of the show have been clamoring for any kind of word on a pickup, so in the meantime, I've made a list of why the world needs more of this delightful little show:

1. The dance sequences
I don't know how the casting director was able to find four girls who could dance well and also handle ASP's signature dialogue, but thankfully they did, because it makes the dance sequences all the more enjoyable.  I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that they might be my favorite thing on television.  Shot in fluid long takes, the camerawork helps emphasize the beauty and poetry of ballet and capture the immediacy of the dancing.  Fatigue never sets in, because the dance sequences serve a variety of purposes.  They can be regular practice scenes, an underlining of unspoken emotions, free-form poems, or inscrutable bits of wonder.  That last Sasha one is everybody's favorite, but they're all so captivating and hypnotizing.

2. Its unparalleled warmth and positivity
So many of the great dramas on television are overwhelmingly dark and brooding.  The television landscape is at a point where we don't expect a show to be good unless it has some male antihero at the center.  Bunheads is among the rare crop of shows right now, like Parenthood and The Carrie Diaries, that aren't concerned with exploring the dimmest corners of the human condition.  These shows tend to not get the credit that they deserve, but they're a much needed respite from the Mad Mens and the Breaking Bads of the world.  Ultimately, Bunheads is about good people trying to do good things, and while characters may not always get along or see eye-to-eye, there's a deep love connecting all of them.  If the show were to get cancelled, we'd really be losing its special wholesomeness.

3. It features 6 regular cast members and they're all women
In Man of Steel, there's a female character who's clearly a military officer of significant ranking, yet her only role is to be a cipher and her biggest line of dialogue is when she calls Superman hot.  There are much greater problems with the movie than that, but it does underline the inequality that exists in Hollywood, both on the big and small screen.  Lately, there has been an increase in female-led shows, but even those tend to have pretty male-dominated casts.  Homeland, which features Claire Danes giving one of the strongest performances as the fascinating Carrie Mathison, is basically a gigantic sausage fest outside of the lead role.  Bunheads, on the other hand, is pretty much all female.  You'd have to go a little way down the billing of recurring characters before you reach a male.  A show shouldn't get an automatic pass for being female-centric, but when it's as good as Bunheads, it's practically a crime to cut such a radical show's life short.

4. It'd be a shame to leave on such a bum note
For as happy and quippy as Bunheads can be, it can also pack a heck of an emotional punch.  Some of my favorite moments of the show are the somber ones, such as the beautiful scene where Michelle and her brother dejectedly sing the song from The Jerk.  But what makes those moments easier to stomach is that there's always something that eventually picks a character up when they're feeling down.  Season 1 ended on a devastating note, as Ginny revealed that she lost her virginity to Frankie, who had since been nothing but cold and distant to her.  The dance sequence that closed out the episode was lovely as always, but it's quite a dark way for us to remember such a bubbly show.

5. Bailey Buntain the Blonde Bunhead
Television critics really latched on to the alliterative nature of Bailey Buntain's name, and more than the contests to see how long they can stretch the title out, I'd just miss Bailey Buntain in general if the show didn't get renewed.  I was a fierce Melanie guy in the first half of the season, but Ginny quickly became my favorite in the back half of the season, mostly due to Bailey Buntain's fantastic performance and superb handle on the patter of Amy Sherman-Palladino's dialogue.  Really, all of the girls had become so fleshed out by the end of the first season.  No longer was Sasha "the mean one" or Melanie "the tall one"; they were all fully realized human beings with their own little flaws and personality quirks.

When shows are on the bubble, people tend to exaggerate their love for them as a natural defense mechanism.  It's part of the reason for the internet's slavish devotion to Community, which constantly finds itself on the chopping block, only to get miraculously renewed through the sheer power of NBC's mediocrity.  Over the past couple of months, I had begun to wonder if maybe we were all just overdoing it with Bunheads, but in researching and finding clips for this post, I realized just how much I love this show and will miss it if it dies.  It's a show that really nests inside of you and fills your body with so much warmth and joy, you won't have room for anything else.  If I were to make a big list of my favorite moments on television this year, Bunheads would probably be the show with the most on that list.  I'd really like to see a second season, not just to see more of these characters that I love so much, but to also inhabit the breezy world of Paradise, California once again.

A Smile and a Ribbon: Bunheads Tackles a Worn-Out Story With Surprising Grace

"The bigger my toothy grin is, the smaller my troubles grow

The louder I say I'm happy, the more I believe it so" 

-Patience & Prudence 'A Smile and a Ribbon'

When making a show about teens, there are a few boxes that you have to check in terms of ground that is going to be covered.  Perhaps the most common of all them though is the subject of characters losing their virginity.  Like any well-established trope that's been done frequently and for many years, there are only so many broad ways in which you can classify the methods of execution of these storylines.  One fairly common category, which felt especially popular for teen shows in the 90s, was the couple who waited for a long time and finally decided to seal the deal.  But for every David and Donna on 90210, there's the story of a pairing where the choice was a mistake and things don't end so happily.  Either way, both avenues share the themes of anticipation and regret and the idea that losing your virginity "changes" you in some way.

Even the two shows that did my favorite tackling of the virginity story, Buffy and Friday Night Lights, don't stray too far from that general template of storytelling.  Buffy, a show that always used its supernatural elements as a metaphor for growing up and the general teen experience, found its most potent metaphor in the middle of season 2 when Buffy loses her virginity to Angel.  When you strip away all of the plot elements and mumbo jumbo about gypsy curses and losing souls, the arc is really just about sleeping with a guy who turns out to be different than you initially expected him to be.

Friday Night Lights, on the other hand, handled the topic of teen sex on multiple occasions through its five season run, but perhaps its most famous episode about the subject is the stunning season 1 episode, "I Think We Should Have Sex," in which nobody even ends up having sex.  In that episode, it's all about the anticipation and hand-wringing over the big event between newly formed couple Matt and Julie.  Once Julie's parents catch wind of this idea, it becomes more about the how they react to and handle the situation.  Despite the slight spin the episode puts on the structure of The Virginity Plot, it still explores the idea of sex irrevocably changing you and just the idea of having regrets is enough to postpone the deed from being done.

Sexuality and virginity weighed heavily on the mind of the final two episodes of this season of Bunheads.  Initially, when it was introduced in the penultimate episode, it seemed like a bit of a throwaway plot; a planted seed to be harvested at some point in season 2 (which, at this point, we don't even know is going to happen).  However, the finale showed that this idea isn't going away as Sasha, masking her own anxiety about taking the leap with her boyfriend, forces the rest of the three girls to dive headfirst into a crash course in sexual education.  For a while, it seemed like the show wasn't going to be up to the task of tackling this topic with the depth and nuance I hoped it would.  Bunheads is a show that seems to exist in its own little universe, where everything is breezy and low-stakes, and it would be easy to imagine the show approaching this episode with the same level of quirk and light charm with which it approaches every other episode.  And indeed I was a bit disappointed with the execution at first.  The girls seemed a little too naive and innocent about sex (I was 17 recently -- 17 year olds know alot more about sex than Sasha, Ginny, Boo, and Melanie seemed to).

At a certain point, the episode slowly and continually begins to show its hand, with creator Amy Sherman-Palladino revealing a sly depth to the proceedings.  The entire theme of the episode is about the harsh realities of adulthood, exhibited by when the girls follow Michelle to her audition and see just how ruthless the process can be.  Being a professional dancer, much like having sex, is something that you can't just know about from hearing stories and reading books.  It can seem exciting in the abstract, but frightening when made real.  These girls are set on a collision course between adolescence and adulthood, at no point more apparent than in one of the highlight scenes of the episode, a montage set to Patience & Prudence's "A Smile and a Ribbon".  Juxtaposed together are the girlish tone of the song and the womanly images of the bunheads standing in front of a rack of condoms at the store or checking out books on sex from the library, a perfect representation of the mysterious void they find themselves within.  All the while, the show is taking a very sex-positive stance on the matter, a nice change from the "sex = BAD" tone in teen shows of days past.

Upon further inspection, "A Smile and a Ribbon" seems to serve another purpose.  The lyrics I quoted at the top of this post could be interpreted as optimistic -- as changing your fortune by the sheer force of effort, but to me there's something so wonderfully sad about having to will yourself to be happy.  Throughout the episode, the focus was being put on Sasha and Boo, who actually have boyfriends, as the ones confronting virginity head on.  However, near the end, in the most gutwrenching scene of the episode, Ginny reveals to Michelle that she already had sex with her crush, the aloof and mysterious Frankie, a week ago and he hasn't called her back since.  Not only does this device allow Sherman-Palladino to sidestep the issue of tackling the idea of virginity directly, but the moment with Ginny packs even more of a punch because it happened offscreen.  All this time, we've been watching Ginny have to deal with her friends fretting over having sex (and if you watch the episode a second time, there's some killer foreshadowing in a scene or two), when she's already had her heart broken.

Throughout the first (and maybe last) season of Bunheads, I've been surprised by just how confident this show has become in its voice.  Sherman-Palladino's odd sense of humor can still grate on me from time to time, but for all the quirk that she throws in every episode, she really does know how to wallop the viewer emotionally.  Bunheads is a breath of fresh air, and I'd be sad to see a show that has basically no male main characters go, especially when it found a new way to approach an old topic, simply by checking all of the boxes at once.