Let’s talk about Bunheads Season 1 Episode 2.

Maybe I wasn’t really in the mood to watch it, because I found myself picking the show apart as if it had been create to intentionally make me angry.

Recycled themes:

• Gilmore Girls – remake of characters with a ballet theme

Look, I loved Gilmore Girls when it first came out, but I don’t want to see the Lorelai and Rory in a new show as dancers. The lead character (the one married to Hubble? Hummel? Hobble?) and that one young ballerina girl might as well be Lorelai and Rory. The visual similarity is too much for me.

• Clueless – remake of the gym class exercise scene

I saw Clueless in the movie theater back in 1995 and owned a copy which was well worn out. That is a classic movie and I don’t like seeing the exact gym teacher scene remade like this. Not original at all.

• Dirty Dancing – “This is your dance space, This is my dance space.”

As soon as Boo said it, I felt like Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey were about to practice the Cha Cha.

• A League of Their Own – “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Tom Hanks said it best, so let’s just leave it there.

While it is entirely possible these characters purposefully quoted lines from older movies in the same way I quote lyrics from various rap songs, I don’t know these characters well enough yet to know if it was intentional. Were they influenced by the movies, or did the writers really just recycle the lines in hopes of a laugh (or that no one would notice)?

Technology:
A flip phone? Really? – To be fair, Fanny had a flip phone and the main character (I can’t remember her name yet) has something like a Blackberry or those old Palm Treo phones. She didn’t swipe to answer, so I automatically think “old phone”. Sorry, I’m a tech snob.

I love the arts and snarky humor, but other than that – I’m not sure I can handle much more of this show. As far as a favorite character, I think I like Boo the best. I wonder what that says about me.

As I was writing off this show as “meh”, the last scene started to play…

The last scene:
OMG I hate being emotional, but the last dance scene was beautiful. At the beginning of the show I never expected them to pay tribute to dude with a ballet dance scene. This was enough to push me forward to watching episode 3.

Bunheads airs weekly on ABC Family. I can’t tell you the times or day because I have it set to record on my DVR.

Update: As I was searching for something to use as the feature image, I realized I own all of the movies I referenced above. (I forgot I replaced my VHS tapes with DVDs.) Ha! No wonder it was easy to spot the quotes.