Bienvenue, welcome, mes amis, to Étoile, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s great revenge for the cancellation of Bunheads. Take that ballet obsession, splash in an Amazon budget, and presto! A new prestige comedy. But will it live up to the hype? Étoile Season 1, Episode 1 “The Swap” is unwieldy in parts as it struggles to introduce us to a vast world of characters – but beneath the chaos is, I think, a star in the making.
I’m here to recap every episode this season, so let’s get started. Curtain up…
Dance the Night Away
Étoile Season 1, Episode 1 “The Swap” starts with a prologue. A young girl (LaMay Zhang) sneaks into a studio at night. She plays a video of a class on her phone, then begins practicing along to it.
Things are less subdued when we meet the leaders of two ballet companies getting their groove on in a neon-lit club. Things eventually evolve (or devolve) into drunken musings on iconic figures in dance, music, and diseases. “Tchaikovsky – he was dripping with syphilis!” Ah, the duality of art.
You might think they’re the picture of friendly cooperation, but the tone is very different at a work meeting the next morning. That’s when Jack (Luke Kirby) learns the real purpose of the visit. Both his company and Geneviève’s (Charlotte Gainsbourg) are in trouble. She’s here with a pitch: swap their stars for the season to drum up publicity.
Jack hates the idea. He hates it even more when she admits that the swap’s financial support comes from Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow), a smarmy mega-donor with seemingly endless wealth and equally endless moral depravity. And here we have the bare bones of our premise. Now, it’s time to fill out the world a little more.
Étoile Season 1, Episode 1 “The Swap” Shows Off a Charismatic Cast
Both Kirby and Gainsbourg overcome some hiccups in the script (a tasteless joke for Jack, a thinly-sketched introduction for Geneviève) to charm early on in Étoile Season 1, Episode 1 “The Swap.” They slide easily into the banter of two very smart people who know each other a little too well.
It’s easy to see Jack as a riff on Kirby’s Emmy-winning portrayal of Lenny Bruce. As a neurotic, passionate arts director trying to keep everything from falling apart at the seams, he reminds me more of Geoffrey Tennant, the disgraced Shakespeare director played marvelously by Paul Gross on Slings & Arrows. Gainsbourg, for her part, is a mess in a very chic way. Her cool patience in the face of Jack’s rambles (and his childish attempts at sabotaging the swap through outrageous negotiations) only irritates him more, but away from her ex (naturally: they had an affair some time ago, and it was the final straw for her marriage at the time), it turns out she’s just as chaotic beneath the surface as he is. Viewers will naturally latch onto the Jack/Cheyenne dynamic (with good reason: it’s sparky and combative and fun), but don’t overlook Jack and Geneviève, either.
So Many Characters, So Little Time
If nothing else, the Palladinos have always had a gift for casting, and Étoile is no exception. But it’s a big cast. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the Étoile pilot is the sheer vastness of ground it’s trying to cover. More than any of the Palladinos’ prior shows, this feels like an ensemble show. As a result, Étoile Season 1 Episode 1 “The Swap” introduces a lot of characters and plotlines in a short time. Presumably, we’ll get more time with them later, but if you don’t feel them tug your heartstrings just yet, we wouldn’t blame you.
Some characters feel more familiar than others. As Raphael, Geneviève’s right-hand man, Yanic Truesdale slides comfortably into a sidekick role, albeit one less neurotic than Gilmore’s Michel. Gideon Glick’s brilliant yet strange choreographer Tobias recalls his role as oddball Alfie on Maisel – again, albeit toned down. Tobias is less than thrilled when Jack sends him to Paris as part of the swap. And David Haig’s Nicholas, the Metropolitan’s sweetly old-school artistic director, is impossible not to love.
Rory, Midge: Meet Cheyenne
The scene-stealer of Étoile Season 1, Episode 1, though, is Lou de Laâge as Cheyenne. She’s the one Geneviève doesn’t want to give up, and the one Jack insists on (for that very reason). But a dainty tutu princess, she is not. A fierce environmental crusader, she has probably the best introduction of any of the characters. In some ways, she’s a classic Sherman-Palladino heroine: “not like other girls,” hates children, fiercely ambitious. But where Lorelai, Rory, and Midge are chipper and perky, Cheyenne is prickly and terrifying, like a grown-up Paris Gellar in pointe shoes.
She strongly objects to going to New York, but ultimately has no choice. After chewing out Geneviève before departing, she tears into Jack upon her arrival. They’re like oil and water, but when they stop fighting, things get more vulnerable. “I don’t know how much is left in me, Jack,” Cheyenne confesses. For his part, Jack reminds her that “to watch you dance is like dying and finding out there is a heaven.” And yes, Maisel fans, while it lacks the overtly romantic (for now) context of “You are more important than God,” Kirby does still have a knack for delivering lines like these with absolutely breathtaking sincerity and not an ounce of corniness.
Ultimately, they come to an understanding, for now at least. The same can’t be said for her and Shamblee, who interrupts her pacing the stage to condescendingly compliment her. He insists his love for ballet is pure (unlike everything else in his life), but she’s not buying it. And yet, their conversation seems to be the only thing that even briefly rattles her.
His suggestion that she be “helpful” to other people, though, does pay dividends. Wandering the halls at night, Cheyenne discovers young SuSu practicing to the videos her mother – the ballet’s cleaning lady – surreptitiously films for her each day. Cheyenne seems to approve, though, keeping SuSu’s secret and recommending she sneak videos of a different, better teacher’s class instead.
Above all, Étoile is a love letter to dance. Even the rehearsal scenes are beautiful, packed with real-life ballet talent. The pilot is so heavy on exposition that we haven’t yet gotten a feel for the characters or plot. It’s enough to hook me in, but it also needs to do a tad more to differentiate itself from Sherman-Palladino’s previous work.
Curtain Call
- Fun fact! The song played over the opening credits is by music duo Sons of Raphael — who previously performed on tour with Charlotte Gainsbourg!
- Within the first 15 minutes, there’s an impassioned monologue about the meaning of art and beauty, and a spiraling, sprawling, rapid-fire rant. Yep, this is an ASP show.
- And, as is par for the course with ASP shows, there’s at least one running “joke” that really, really does not sit well with me. Here, it’s a series of “quips” about a delay in sexual harassment training. Kirby, fortunately, plays the line as a harried to-do list, rather than a dismissal of the specifics. But given the reality of sexual harassment in real-life ballet companies, it feels like a tone-deaf choice of topic for jokes among our supposed heroes.
- The gag of Cheyenne’s mother Bruna having a phone lowered from the upper floors has to be an Easter egg referencing a near-identical setup from Maisel.
- The pilot does feel more heavily weighted towards the New York side of things. We do briefly meet Mishi (Taïs Vinolo), who, we learn, has been dancing in New York since the French program cut her – but now they want her back. There’s also Gabin (Ivan du Pontavice), a French dancer tired of being relegated to the background.
- I’m pleasantly surprised at how much French the characters actually speak. With a couple of exceptions, scenes with only French characters are in French (with subtitles). And bilingual characters, like Cheyenne, Geneviève, and even Jack, switch back and forth in the span of a single conversation.
- Ballet (and Broadway) fans will love playing “spot the real-life star” with the background cast!
- Don’t skip the credits – there’s tons of real-life footage of the dance cast rehearsing and performing!
