S01.E01: Corps

[peachmangosteen]

Quote

Ballerina Neveah arrives at Chicago's famed Archer School to find cruel new rivals — and the disturbing truth behind her surprise acceptance.

Airs December 14th.

[Xantia]

Some v clunky dialogue...

I'll stick with it for another episode anyway as I'm enjoying the dance sequences. 

[Arynm]

I will watch anything about Ballet so I was in from the word jump. Or plie if you will. I like that they are doing their own dancing and they can act, for the most part.

Can't wait for Cassie to wake up and tell who pushed her.

[tennisgurl]

I totally thought that Cassie had died, I was surprised to see that she is still alive, albeit in a coma. I mean, even if she didn't get shoved off the roof, there was a pretty good chance she was going over anyway, dancing around on the edge of a four story building isn't the greatest life choice ever. 

I will at least try pretty much anything ballet related, so even with the cheesier CW style drama I am so totally in for this. The ballet sequences are lovely, I am glad they found performers who can dance as well as act, and I have been wanting a ballet show to watch for ages. Flesh and Bone a few years ago had its moments, and it certainly did show the intensity of a ballet company, but it got way too bogged down in needlessly seedy subplots and had way less ballet and way more incest than what I would have preferred. 

[peachmangosteen]

18 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

I totally thought that Cassie had died, I was surprised to see that she is still alive, albeit in a coma.

Same! I thought she died and then when they revealed that she was in a coma I thought it was like a secret somehow but no apparently they all know. So strange lol.

This was really bad, so naturally I am already into it. 

I was going to ask if anyone knew if they were doing the dancing or they had stand-ins. I love that they're doing it themselves. Are any of them dancers primarily or did they all learn for this?

[tearsandhysteria]

I don't know what the dude's name is with the country accent but it is nails on a chalkboard to me. I wanted to like this show so much more than I do but I'm bored and I can binge watch it. I'm so sick of Amazon curtailing my ravenous fiending of their shows by airing the good stuff once a week. 

[peachmangosteen]

3 minutes ago, tearsandhysteria said:

I don't know what the dude's name is with the country accent but it is nails on a chalkboard to me. 

One of them has a country accent? I did not notice it somehow lol.

[Arynm]

1 hour ago, peachmangosteen said:

One of them has a country accent? I did not notice it somehow lol.

The boyfriend of Cassie is French. It's bad

[meatball77]

2 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Same! I thought she died and then when they revealed that she was in a coma I thought it was like a secret somehow but no apparently they all know. So strange lol.

This was really bad, so naturally I am already into it. 

I was going to ask if anyone knew if they were doing the dancing or they had stand-ins. I love that they're doing it themselves. Are any of them dancers primarily or did they all learn for this?

They hired dancers that were transitioning into acting which was the right thing to do.  There are hordes of underpaid and former ballet dancers and finding ones that can act can't be that hard and then you don't have to deal with dance doubles.  One of my friends daughters auditioned for Bette, she was a trainee in a ballet company the year before and had moved to NY and is transitioning into acting, she takes ballet class regularly.  They required her to submit a video with her sides and about half an hours worth of dance.  She didn't make it to an in person audition but that's what they required for those in the first couple rounds. 

I'm a few episodes in and I'm dissapointed.  It's not fun or pretty, just dark with lots of teenage sex.

 

[tearsandhysteria]

2 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

One of them has a country accent? I did not notice it somehow lol.

I just googled. His name on the show is Caleb. He is the curly haired boy. I can't remember if he was on the first episode or not. I only commented on this one because nobody had said anything in the others and I've watched quite a few. But everytime he talks I just feel some type of way. And I'm from Mississippi. I can handle a country accent but his is torture to me! 

Edited December 16, 2020 by tearsandhysteria

[tearsandhysteria]

1 hour ago, Arynm said:

The boyfriend of Cassie is French. It's bad

Yeah, Pepe Le Pew's accent is terrible too. But it still doesn't make me as crazy as Caleb's. 

[In2You]

Clunky dialogue and too much nudity for teen characters

[zenithwit]

6 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I was going to ask if anyone knew if they were doing the dancing or they had stand-ins. I love that they're doing it themselves. Are any of them dancers primarily or did they all learn for this?

The actor who plays Shane (Brennan Clost) used to be on a Canadian kids TV show about a dance studio called The Next Step.  That show has a really cheesy "so bad that it's good" quality but most of the dancers were insanely good and I weirdly became invested in some of the plots.  In that show, Brennan was definitely one of the better dancers and was always portrayed as having amazing technique.  So it's interesting seeing him portrayed as a more average albeit elite dancer.

Overall, I thought this episode was just okay.  The dancing is good but the acting was on the weak side and I had a hard time telling apart some of the characters - particularly the French guy and the guy hooking up with everyone (i had to rewind a couple of the scenes).  But pilot episodes are tough to get right so I'm willing to give the rest of the season a shot.

[peachmangosteen]

12 hours ago, tearsandhysteria said:

I just googled. His name on the show is Caleb. He is the curly haired boy. I can't remember if he was on the first episode or not. I only commented on this one because nobody had said anything in the others and I've watched quite a few. But everytime he talks I just feel some type of way. And I'm from Mississippi. I can handle a country accent but his is torture to me! 

I realized that was who you meant in the second ep lol. I know I know that actor from somewhere but I can't remember where. I wanna say The Society but I don't think that's right. I also can't remember if he talked like that in the other show or not.

8 hours ago, zenithwit said:

The dancing is good but the acting was on the weak side and I had a hard time telling apart some of the characters - particularly the French guy and the guy hooking up with everyone (i had to rewind a couple of the scenes).  

Agree on both. The acting is quite bad, especially from Neveah. I mean, they're all bad, but she straight up embarrasses me. I also thought it was the French guy at first both times they showed the other guy sexing it up.

Oh, and thanks for the info on the actors everyone!

[Vanderboom]

I wanted to like this more than I did. The overwrought narration lost me, but I hope it's just 1st Episode Weirdness. I'll try one or two episodes; I hope they'll be better.

[Chaos Theory]

A lot of very weak acting.  This kinda reminds me of The Black Swan but with a lot more sex and naked butts.

My early guess has June Park as  the killer.  Something about the scene with her mother.  Either that or the head of the school just killing of whatever students fail to make a better school.  You know you fail you fall kinda thing.

[zenithwit]

5 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

My early guess has June Park as  the killer.  Something about the scene with her mother.  Either that or the head of the school just killing of whatever students fail to make a better school.  You know you fail you fall kinda thing.

Except Cassie isn't dead... yet (just in a coma).  But I get your point and do think June Park is a viable candidate.  They made it clear that she viewed Cassie as a blocker to her own success.

I'm less keen on head mistress as the culprit.  Or maybe she did but for different reasons.  It seemed like Cassie was the star student.  Not sure how she expects her school to be "the best" if she tries to knock off one of her better students.  

[jrzy]

On 12/15/2020 at 5:15 PM, peachmangosteen said:

Same! I thought she died and then when they revealed that she was in a coma I thought it was like a secret somehow but no apparently they all know. So strange lol.

This was really bad, so naturally I am already into it. 

I was going to ask if anyone knew if they were doing the dancing or they had stand-ins. I love that they're doing it themselves. Are any of them dancers primarily or did they all learn for this?

It does fall under the so bad its good category.   I love the dancing,  wish there crappy drama didn't have to be there. 

[Xantia]

I did stick with it and watch the full season - it does get a bit better after the first episode. 

Or maybe I've just run out of Netflix to watch because it's 2020 and pandemic boredom has me watching all sorts of nonsense.

For people like me who were enjoying the dancing more than the acting, there's plenty more dance scenes in the rest of the episodes too. 

[Enero]

I agree with all. The acting is pretty bad from everyone but the dancing is beautiful. 

I think June being the attempted murderer is a red herring. I actually think the choreographer seems the most suspicious at this point. 

I’m not bored with this but I’m not completely enthralled either. It’s just ok. I’ll give it a couple of more episodes to see if things get better. 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Enero

[Silly Angel]

It's Riverdale in pointe shoes, which isn't entirely a bad thing. I watches stupid, stupid Flesh and Bone, so I'm obviously just a ballet sucker. I like the lead. I'm in until it goes off the rails.

[luckyroll3]

11 hours ago, Silly Angel said:

It's Riverdale in pointe shoes, which isn't entirely a bad thing. I watches stupid, stupid Flesh and Bone, so I'm obviously just a ballet sucker. I like the lead. I'm in until it goes off the rails.

I totally forgot about Flesh and Bone!  I liked that one better than this though.

[lucindabelle]

Flesh and Bone was horrible. Ballet companies have officious boards but the idea that they pimp dancers out to board members is ridiculous. (Neither do opera companies or theaters or museums). And the random killing of the baby birds and yeah the infest . I couldn’t stick with that beyond 2? Episodes.

 

this feels A lot like pretty little liars in leotards. But the class scenes feel spot on. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I'll watch just about anything with dance so I was ready for this no matter how bad it turned out to be. So far it has two really big things going for it: they hired actual dancers so we don't have to have long shots every time the leads dance and they obviously hired a dance consultant so that the parts of the script pertaining to actual dance are accurate (like the comments from the teacher during class, the shoes rejected by company members, the camaraderie that comes from your frenemies, etc). Some of the non-dance aspects are also accurate, the best/worst one being Neveah as a name. I can't stand typing it because I have to stop and spell heaven backwards every time so sorry, girl, but you're going to be Heaven going forward for the rest of the show for me. And of course Monique doesn't care that Heaven is actually from Inglewood, not Compton which also struck me as painfully accurate.

The weakest aspect is the actual script. The dialogue and plot are not very good, so I'm giving any of the subpar acting a pass since they do not have a strong script to work with. It also feels like they are piling on a lot of stuff which I'm tempted to accept since it's a pilot, but it's just SO much. Oren has an eating disorder and is secretly into guys but still in denial. Bette is the queen bee bitch who is insecure because her sister is already successful and they have the stage mom from hell. Ramon was secretly hooking up with Cassie behind Delia's back. Escandalo!

[Bill1978]

On 12/17/2020 at 1:37 AM, peachmangosteen said:

I realized that was who you meant in the second ep lol. I know I know that actor from somewhere but I can't remember where. I wanna say The Society but I don't think that's right. I also can't remember if he talked like that in the other show or not.

He played the main male student role in Rise and I think that is his natural voice. It didn't jump out at me as being different to his acting on that show.

I decided to check out the first episode cause, well I'm on holidays and need to slowly spread out other shows I'm watching. And I think I'm in for the duration of the show. Damn YA shows needing a mystery to be solved to keep me hooked. Plus I do enjoy watching dancing eve if I don't really understand ballet. I will definitely check out episode 2 just to see if it has enough to keep me going, frist episodes are trying so hard to introduce everyone it's a bit unfair to abort after the first episode 

[In2You]

8 hours ago, Bill1978 said:

He played the main male student role in Rise and I think that is his natural voice. It didn't jump out at me as being different to his acting on that show.

I decided to check out the first episode cause, well I'm on holidays and need to slowly spread out other shows I'm watching. And I think I'm in for the duration of the show. Damn YA shows needing a mystery to be solved to keep me hooked. Plus I do enjoy watching dancing eve if I don't really understand ballet. I will definitely check out episode 2 just to see if it has enough to keep me going, frist episodes are trying so hard to introduce everyone it's a bit unfair to abort after the first episode 

His accent doesnt sound strong in interviews even though he is from The South

[sab85]

I agree with everyone else- really good dancing, pretty bad everything else.

I found myself mentally editing dialogue in my head and I don't know that I've ever done that with a show before. 

Needing to cast dancers of this level must make it really hard to find people who can also act. It's very uneven- Shane's actor seems decent while Nevaeh is baaad.

[methodwriter85]

On 1/3/2021 at 10:57 PM, sab85 said:

Needing to cast dancers of this level must make it really hard to find people who can also act. It's very uneven- Shane's actor seems decent while Nevaeh is baaad.

Flashbacks to Center Stage. Jody could act but the actors playing Ethan and Cooper were absolutely terrible. Cute, but terrible. However that final dance montage was amazing and a good deal of it is because they were actually dancing.

I do think they went the right way in prioritizing actual dancers over getting actors who can't dance. You can coach someone to be able to act and put up a passable performance over a couple of months. It's not possible to do that with ballet. Hell, even Natalie Portman who spent a couple of years training for Black Swan still needed a body double.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

On 6/7/2021 at 7:38 PM, methodwriter85 said:

I do think they went the right way in prioritizing actual dancers over getting actors who can't dance. You can coach someone to be able to act and put up a passable performance over a couple of months. It's not possible to do that with ballet. Hell, even Natalie Portman who spent a couple of years training for Black Swan still needed a body double.

ITA but for the record, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis only trained for six months to do Black Swan. They both had taken ballet as kids so they had at least some basic technique before they started. I didn't think the acting on this show was egregiously worse than other teen centered shows I've seen on the CW, Freeform, etc. I blame the writing and the dialogue for a lot of the problems because you can only polish a turd so much. Obviously these aren't Oscar winning performances, but I'd rather see okay acting from real dancers than okay acting from actors who need body doubles for all the dance scenes.