Monsters of Television

“I am all knowing. I am Michelle.”

These are four mad girls in tights.

Lingering from the January 2013 issue of Glamour and Zooey Deschanel’s cover issue interview is a quote about how being “feminine” and being a “feminist” aren’t mutually exclusive. Her words: “I want to be a f–king feminist and wear a f–king Peter Pan collar. So f–king what?” Speaking as a person with no personal vagina, I tend to agree. A woman should not be questioned on her dedication to the empowerment of females because she identifies with things that could subjectively be categorized under the heading, “Things that Subjugate Women.” Not that I think anything with a Peter Pan collar has the capacity for any kind of violence, physical or cultural.

The quote has been scrutinized a few times for its denouncement of anyone that would assume she is hurting the cause by making herself her own vision of pretty. To me, the only thing that really stuck out was the “Peter Pan collar.” Fine, whatever, she’s standing up for her right to not have her whims examined by the Fundamentalist-Feminist Thought Police but — a Peter Pan collar? I had to look that up because it just sounds so — it sounds like something that Zooey Deschanel should wear, if in name only. And, after looking at what that is, I was so right.

Her persona (so lastingly coined by FOX as “adorkable”) is comprised of these kinds of dalliances and affectations, something that’s both put on display and lampooned by her show. I never like to assume anything about celebrities since there’s generally, even behind the most honest and down-to-earth-seeming ones, a grand machine dedicated solely to producing a public image, but she projects everything that is twee and hipster and quirky. Big glasses. Exclusively in dresses from another era. Most likely a very active knitting circle. Wait, is my nanna a hipster?

What I’m saying is that she’s a beacon of quirkiness, both a lightning rod and a broadcaster (from HelloGiggles). Even though the movement would hate her since she’s the mainstream of something that’s supposed to be alternative, there is no questioning her authority and reign.

But Bunheads tried to take it from her this week.

Quirk will eat itself. I’m not even sure where to begin with the episode’s quirkiness. And, I’m going to warn you upfront, I’m going to use the work “quirky” until it dies in this post. Like Space Ghost and punch, it’s about to lose all meaning.

We the audience can’t deny the quirkiness of the characters on Bunheads. Everyone is packed with the idiosyncrasies and affectations that make them all so gah-ram endearing. We also accept that this insane town hasn’t been institutionalized yet, its denizens somehow able to function despite so much evidence to the contrary, based on a suspension of disbelief that, despite the lack of a Taylor Doose, people that aren’t 16 are able to get up and go to work everyday.

That’s the kind of quirky that begins this episode. Truly not being able to pay her landlady despite being the only decent clothes store in Paradise (and then subsequently taking over Michelle’s apartment) is a prime example of how a quirky character behaves, somehow moderately successful while blissfully wandering aimlessly through life. And if that wasn’t enough for you, Carl carved Boo a bow and some arrows while at camp. He goes to camp, people. And carved her a bow. Purely for a Katniss joke.

That’s the kind we’ve grown to expect from the Small Town Television that Amy Sherman-Palladino has put together for us. Those members of the Bunheads audience that recalls Gilmore Girls have been trained on this kind of whimsicality. It’s a big, hefty part of why we constantly compare the shows against each other, particularly since their female leads tend to be brunette dervishes that are quirky but in a different or opposite way than the town they rampage through.

Hey, girl. Do you want a paper airplane sealed with my kisses and sadness? I know you do.

“Channing Tatum is a Fine Actor,” though, introduces a new kind of quirky, one that tends to shine the red hot light of quirkdom onto a species of quirky we’ve already gotten used to. Cosette (played by SYTYCD Season 5 winner, Jeanine Mason) and her brother Frankie (played by Niko Pepaj — don’t look up pictures of him when at work) arrive with that Zooey Deschanel kind of quirky but turned up to 11. Thousand. Deschanel likes the style of the French New Wave? Well, so does Cosette except she also speaks French, has elaborate picnics with wine, and almost seems like an extra from Amelie. Zooey has eccentric hobbies? Well, so does Frankie except he’s an expert artist, pianist, violinist, and brooder. I don’t think brooder is a real hobby but Frankie has it down.

Watching these two run circles around them, the Bunheads quickly pick apart the affectations that make them so quirky and thus bringing the quirky kids back down to earth. Notice that Melanie starts the show reading two books while listening to an extra audiobook (quirky) but, by the end, is just a normal schlub like the rest of them who have to bask in the quirky glow of their Vespa-riding peers (Sasha shoving the kid who was truly basking in the glow was priceless).

One could argue that the quirkiness of Paradise is not on the same plane as the affectations of Cosette and Frankie. Clearly, the show is trying to position them as worldly and, on Small Town Television, worldly is up there cleanliness and godliness. They have lived and experienced. While the people of Paradise might have created their culture from an echo chamber of weirdness, Cosette and Franke get their quirkiness from a constant exposure of new things. Their mosaic of eccentricities are of an exoctic kind as opposed to the idiosyncrasies developed by living in a place where juvenile ballet is a big deal.

The layers of quirkiness almost beg for a new definition. It’s hard to just say the show or characters are quirky because they belong to such different regions of this now umbrella term for all the nuanced types of quirk. Eccentricity, whimsicality, idiosyncrasies, oddness. We now are left to sort out the people of this town on a spectrum of quirkiness. Like autism. But more prone to cardboard kitchens wired for electricity.

Let’s talk about some of the finer notes of the episode:

• They really went out of their way to let us know that they know we know about how Sasha is the younger Michelle. Yet, every time, I was tickled to see Michelle show up to break up the party. Sasha didn’t exactly protest either. Yeah, I said tickled. This show makes me feel about 73 years old.
• Don’t worry, Boo. Down-there grooming is a subject I wish fewer people talked about.
• Basically, Carl is the anti-PLL male character. I wouldn’t suspect him of anything. But maybe that’s his plan. You know, the best thing about being seen as the nicest guy on ABC Family is that no one searches your backyard for bodies. CARL Seeeeecreeeeeets.
• I don’t like Michelle’s Jekyll and Hyde approach to doling out advice. Boo wants some? She cowers into a corner and doles out only venom and darkness. “Don’t be yourself, you waffling wretch! Be someone else! You’re awful!” But, as soon as Sasha wants some help — “Do you want any advice? Are you sure? Let my life experience gently wash over you!” Anyone else think that was weird?
• OF COURSE MILLY IS PARIS. Why didn’t I see it before? I think they actually tried to hide how successful the landlady was so no one would suspect (well, no one that paid attention to the Swan Lake dance instead of the Liza Weir credit at the beginning). After watching her on Scandal last year, I was pretty psyched to see Paris Gellar back in the saddle. Older, wiser, still damaged. Totally recycled from Gilmore Girls but so glad to see her. Complicate things with Hubbel and it’s about perfect. I actually slow-clapped when it happened. Noel all-caps’d me via text.
• To cap off the talk of twee, the sequence that grew to be the episode endgame was a dance by Cosette. Now, I know that you don’t hire a SYTYCD winner so she can stand around and talk fast but the fact that she danced so perfectly, so much better than any of the other girls, so effortlessly, to THAT song (compounded by the fact that it’s used in a movie by Wes Anderson), is the explosion of quirk on so many different levels. “Trippy song, huh?” Yeah. That’s not the word I’d use to describe it. But I think that word died a couple sentences ago. AND THEN the paper airplane picture that lands on Ginny’s lap with the “destroy me” demand attached. Come to think of it, are we sure Wes Anderson wasn’t at least a consultant on this episode? Seems like this should’ve been some sort of committee with him, Deschanel, Michael Cera, all of my local baristas, and Charlene Yi. Jason Schwartzman is on standby.