Bunheads Nutcracker Recap

It turns out the August 20th episode (Nutcrackers in Paradise) of Bunheads is really the mid-season finale. ABC Family has ordered some more episodes.  The movie references were coming fast and furious throughout the show, including not one, but two Jack Nicholson films: The Shining (1980) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

We didn’t really give it much thought that Sasha was referencing films “before her time” ourselves, seeing as how we’ve watched many an old film. Many. Old films rock. And besides, Sasha didn’t bat an eye when Michelle brought up the term “gaslighting” in a previous episode, from a 1944 film. So it’s highly possible Sasha caught Single White Female (1992) and Dead Poet’s Society (1989) and many other films on cable on any given night when she wanted to drown out the sounds of arguing parents.

There was even a reference to Shrimp on the Barbie, a 1990 Cheech Marin vehicle, which could be where Michelle heard the expression.  What was cute about it was she asked Godot the question when he mentioned he was going to Australia. The actor who plays Godot, Nathan Parsons, was actually born in Adelaide, Australia, although he was raised in the USA.

So anyhow what happened in Nutcrackers in Paradise? Well, romance-wise, Australia-bound Godot put the moves on Michelle and they kiss passionately at Rico’s in full view of every Paradise resident attending the fund-raiser Michelle volunteered Rico’s place for (which he didn’t seem too happy about). We griped enough about the grossness factor last week, so let’s just say, oh, he’s going to Australia? Well that don’t look like a goodbye kiss.

Fanny was planning at least a 3-month vacation in a cabin with her man, Michael,  and she wants Michelle to take over for her. Only that didn’t work out, because Michael bought some land in Montana and his plans for land didn’t include Fanny. “Fanny in Montana?” he snorted, when Michelle told him about the cabin.

Boo got Carl back at the fund raiser by getting up on stage and delivering a half-weird, half-touching heartfelt apology for her possessive behavior over Charlie, who had taken up with Ginny. Ginny was over the moon with her infatuation with Charlie but that just went the way of many a misguided infatuation. When they went to kiss, she bonked him in the lip with her head and there was blood on his lip and teethmarks on her forehead. Then she saw him hitting on another girl. Sasha meantime met a very articulate guy named Mason, who was on the football team during her short cheerleading adventure when she knew him as Tyler. Mason is really his middle name, but Sasha lets him know that won’t be happening with her — she prefers her given name over her middle name, Henrietta.

There were three big dance numbers: one choreographed by Michelle where the guys are businessmen rats and the girls looked very cute as police officers. The Nutcracker was going quite well until The Ringer switched the hairspray for a can of Michelle’s mace and all the girls were temporarily blinded.  Michelle got the blame big-time. Not only was Fanny at her wit’s end, the parents of the girls wanted her head on a silver platter, or at least out of town permanently. And there was Michelle herself performing “Maybe This Time” (from Cabaret), in a dream sequence audition. This time the reply to her trademark “hello” is positive because it’s Hubbell, who says he’s been around the whole time. Fanny wanted him to dance once, he says. She would have liked a little girl better. Hubbell says Michelle is there to change things, but Michelle wants to know if it would have worked out between them if he had not died. He didn’t get to answer because she woke up but we’re sure he would have said, not if you were going around screwing directors and beach boys.

Michelle leaves the hospital after waking up from the dream and that is when Sasha leads a rallying cry for her to stay by recreating the “O Captain My Captain” scene from “Dead Poets.” One girl said she doesn’t watch cable so she didn’t know what it meant. Guess they don’t have a Civil War poetry unit in Paradise because even if they didn’t see Dead Poets, they should know it really refers to Abraham Lincoln. Michelle reminds the girls that the guy in Dead Poets (Robin Williams) had to leave in the end.

Now about that Ringer… she was quite the wacko, what with the ground glass in the toe shoes. Anybody know who played the Ringer? Maybe she will come back to clear Michelle of incompetence in the mace incident before she pirouettes off to the mental hospital.