Earlier this week, following months of speculation, Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman confirmed their relationship with a People-exclusive pap walk. But while much has been said of late about the Music Man costars (and their recent divorces), I only have one thing on my mind: A dozen years later, I still miss Foster’s deeply underrated, prematurely canceled ABC Family show, Bunheads.
From June 2012 to February 2013, Foster starred as Michelle, an ex-ballerina-turned-Vegas showgirl who finds herself teaching at her mother-in-law Fanny’s (Kelly Bishop) dance studio in remote Paradise, California. By centering ballet, the show, from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, demanded actors who could deliver an emotional monologue and a pas de deux en pointe, casting a mix of unknown young performers, Broadway stars, and familiar faces from the broader Sherman-Palladino Cinematic Universe. (Beyond following Michelle and Fanny, Bunheads also chrononicled the lives and growing pains of four teenage dancers: Sasha, played by Julia Goldani Telles; Boo, played by Kaitlyn Jenkins; Ginny, played by Bailey Buntain; and Melanie, played by Nick Dumont.)
While Bunheads tapped the same vein of wholesomeness that fans of Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will know well, it didn’t quite stick with audiences: By the end of its first and only season, the show was raking in just over a million viewers per episode. It ended for good on a cliffhanger, as Michelle weighed whether to leave the studio for a career on Broadway or carry on teaching.
To this day, I think about Bunheads more often than is probably warranted. But as a teen girl who also did ballet, I found that it spoke to challenges I was facing both in and out of the studio with grace, compassion, and humor. Not only did the girls deal with body-image issues and sex, but also things like grief and dashed dreams. Bunheads may not have been long for this world, but it deserves its (very belated) flowers.
