It’s been 12 years since Bunheads was cancelled after a single season on the old ABC Family channel, and we miss it to this very day. The series, created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband/writing partner Daniel Palladino, not only celebrated AS-P’s love of dance but the sense of community and relationships that made the Palladinos’ signature sure, Gilmore Girls, such a well-loved show were really strong by the end of that only season. More than a decade later, AS-P is returning to her first love with a series set in the professional dance worlds of both New York and Paris.
ÃTOILE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A darkened rehearsal room. As her mother cleans the floors, a girl named Susu Li (LaMay Zhang) practices ballet as she watches a video of a rehearsal on her mother’s phone.
The Gist: In the meantime, executives from the biggest ballet companies in New York and Paris are dancing at a club. Jack McMillan (Luke Kirby), who is the director of the Metropolitan Ballet Theatre in New York, Geneviève Lavigne (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is the interim director of Le Ballet National in Paris, are debating whether Tchaikovsky had syphilis or not. Geneviève’s second-in-command, Raphael (Yanic Truesdale), chimes in, as does Jack’s artistic director, Nicholas Leutwylek (David Haig) about who exactly had syphilis.
The next morning, hungover, Geneviève meets with Jack and his team to tell him the reason why they’re in New York: Both of their companies are losing money and their budgets have become tight. People aren’t coming out for the arts like they used to. So she proposes a big swing: That the companies swap their most talented stars for a year, with a massive promotional campaign to accompany it.
Jack is reluctant, and wants to know who is going to finance this venture. In walks Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow), who has worked with both Jack and Geneviève before. Jack completely objects, due to the fact that Shamblee’s companies manufacture weapons and ruin the environment. “That man rapes soil. He’s a soil raper,” he says. Still, he ends up reconsidering when he enters a practice room full of little girls learning their steps, knowing that Shamblee’s blood money is necessary to keep ballet alive.
When Jack and Geneviève sit down to figure out who to exchange, Jack keeps “putting a pin” in everyone Geneviève asks for, including Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick) a young, headphone-wearing choreographer. She readily agrees to Jack’s requests, until he asks for Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge), a former primary in his company and currently Geneviève’s biggest star. Shamblee not-so-gently persuades her to give Cheyenne up.
Cheyenne isn’t exactly waiting around for a phone call; she’s on a boat owned by an environmental nonprofit, pissing off everyone on board to the point where her own crew wants her arrested. When she gets word from her mom that the “pointy shoes” want to talk to her, she goes into her dance company’s offices still smelling like dead fish. When Geneviève tells her she’s going to New York, she doesn’t take it well.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Given that Ãtoile is created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the inevitable comparison is with Bunheads, the one-season AS-P series where Sutton Foster’s character taught teenage ballet students at a school owned by Kelly Bishop’s character. Both shows are an outcropping of Sherman-Palladino’s dance background.
Our Take: Ãtoile has everything that you expect from a show from the Palladinos: Smart, rapid dialogue that includes pop culture references and a lot of speechifying, funny moments, quirky characters, and an attention to detail. These are the factors that made Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel into enduring shows that continue to attract audiences. It’s a factor that made Bunheads endearing. But, applied to the world of top-level professional dance, the formula becomes a bit intense and grating.
Yes, Bunheads was about ballet, too. But that was more about the girls who were learning under the tutelage of Foster and Bishop’s characters, as well as Foster’s character Michelle trying to rebuild her life and career. It was rooted in relationships, not the ins and outs of the ballet world.
On the other hand, there’s a big “inside baseball” factor to Ãtoile that the show needs to overcome as it goes along, similar to what Mozart In The Jungle had to overcome when it started. We’re not sure how much audiences really care about the ins and outs of dance companies, even at the highest level. There’s a lot of pretentiousness present in the situation, and it comes out mostly during Kirby’s rants as Jack; while he showed on Mrs. Maisel that he’s fully capable of running through AS-P’s mouthfuls of dialogue, there seems to be a lack of grounding in Jack’s rants, at least in the first episode. The rants feel like he’s performing, not talking.
The first episode has a number of dance interludes that are beautifully shot, but they also slow down the momentum of the story. What we hope is that the insidery nature of the show becomes moot as we get to know the characters. There is certainly hope once me meet Cheyenne, who isn’t exactly a shrinking violet. She tells Jack she dances because “it’s who I am,” but it’s certainly not her biggest passion in life. And she advocates to herself, to the point that she has lost jobs like the one with Jack’s dance company, but isn’t apologetic for it. She’s the most dynamic character introduced in the first episode, and de Laâge does a good job of showing how Cheyenne will continue to not take any shit from anyone.
As the season goes along and we see the impact of the swap in both New York and Paris, our hope is that those personalities, and personal stories between the characters, will come to the fore. Otherwise, this show may be a bit too inside for our taste.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Cheynne finds Susu practicing late at night, and advises her that another teacher is better than the teacher she’s watching. Then over the credits we see scenes of real dancers warming up and rehearsing.
Sleeper Star: It’s always fun to watch Gilmore Girls alums in other AS-P shows, and here we have both Yanic Truesdale and the incomparable Kelly Bishop in recurring roles.
Most Pilot-y Line: We see a flashback of Mishi Duplessis (Taïs Vinolo), whom Geneviève trained and wants back in the swap. When she tells Nicholas she knows all the parts for the show they’re rehearsing, a background voice says sarcastically, “Hello, Tracy Flick.” It’s a funny line, but also one that feels like it was inserted in post-production.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re giving Ãtoile a recommendation more on hope and the Palladinos’ reputation than anything we saw in the first episode, which moved slowly and felt a bit too insular for our comfort.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesnât kid himself: heâs a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Étoile’ On Prime Video, An Amy Sherman-Palladino Comedy About Ballet Companies In New York And Paris That Switch Stars appeared first on Decider.
