Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tiny Pretty Things’ On Netflix, About An Elite Ballet School And The Rivalries And Pressures The Students Endure

Dramas about nichey worlds like chess or ballet can really be hit or miss, mainly because they tend to be full of jargon audiences don’t really understand. When they work, like in The Queen’s Gambit, the nuts and bolts of the nichey activity may spark an interest in learning more. Or it may bog things down, and the rest of the show doesn’t do much to distract from the jargon. That’s what we saw with Netflix’s new YA series Tiny Pretty Things.

TINY PRETTY THINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The Chicago skyline is shown. Then we see a teenage girl dancing on the ledge of a rooftop, as a party is going on nearby.

The Gist: The girl on the roof, Cassie Shore (Anna Maiche), is joined by a hooded suitor with a white rose. She tries to resist his advances and eventually stumbles backwards off the roof, falling to the pavement below.

Immediately after Shore’s accident, Neveah Stroyer (Kylie Jefferson), a dancer from Inglewood, California, is selected to take her place. at the Archer School, an elite ballet academy. She’s a pick that the school’s president, Monique Dubois (Lauren Holly) hopes will show that the school is interested in diversity and lifting talented kids up and giving them a chance.

As soon as she speeds to her first dance class, she’s confronted by the competition she is going to face. First is Bette Whitlaw (Casimere Jollette), whose sister Delia (Tory Trowbridge) is a principal dancer for the dance company that performs at the academy’s theater; she sees Neveah as a threat, despite saying out loud that she doesn’t think Neveah has the talent.

In the meantime, her roommate June Park (Daniela Norman), who is already struggling with the trauma of Cassie’s accident, is also under pressure from her mother to excel at the academy; if she doesn’t become a principal dancer, her mother thinks it’s a waste of time and money. Yet she can’t even get the ballet master’s eye so he can give his copious criticisms. When the beat cop who first responded to the scene when Cassie fell, Isabel Cruz (Jess Salgueiro), keeps pressing for answers, even after the initial phase of the investigation is over, June eventually opens up and gives her some clues.

The boys are just as cliquey; Oren Lennox (Barton Cowperthwaite), who is having sex with both Bette and party-hearty Shane (Brennan Clost), has a beef with Cassie’s old dance partner, Nabil (Michael Hsu Rosen). He also has a pretty severe eating disorder. Shane, for his part, seems to be the only one at the school who’s supportive of Neveah, telling her that not fitting the mold “is a good thing, and it always has been.”

At a fundraising party, Dubois pledges that the next ballet in which the students perform will be choreographed by Ramon Costa (Bayardo De Murguia), who is seeing Delia and is getting anonymous threatening texts right before the surprise announcement. Ramon doesn’t want to do the show, but Dubois convinces him. When he sees Naveah dance, he decides to make the ballet a new production about Jack The Ripper.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tiny Pretty Things is a combination of two Freeform shows: Pretty Little Liars and Bunheads.

Our Take: Tiny Pretty Things is based on a book by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton; the series was created by Michael MacLennan (Bomb Girls). We know it’s supposed to come off like a CW-ish or Freeform-ish YA show, with multiple storylines and lots of rivalries and controversies. But while we were watching the first episode, all we could do is shrug at the show’s soapiness. Even though the stakes are high for the individual characters, they’re fairly low for the entire series. Who gets to be principal dancer? Who gets the training they need? Will Naveah make it or burn out? Who really cares?

It might be because the show is so overstuffed with characters and storylines, it became difficult to figure out who was who and what their story was. It was especially confusing among the boys; except for the blond Shane, it feels like Oren and the other dark-haired dancers are interchangeable. So when we see Oren sleeping with Bette — with his roomie Shane running interference with strict RA Torri (Jessica Fuller) — then see him sleeping with Shane and admiring his V-cut, we had to check ourselves a bit to see if it was the same guy. It could be that, aside from Shane, the boys didn’t get much story to latch onto making them fairly generic.

But there’s so much going on, it was hard to keep track of anything. Officer Gomez is acting like a detective and digging into this case because she recently lost her wife and can’t get over it. The threats Ramon is getting might be related to Cassie’s accident or they may not.

Oh, and there’s also the fact that Cassie isn’t actually dead. She’s in a coma, struggling to survive. She’s the voice that narrates the first episode, commenting on the “corps” of dancers that hate each other but have to rely on each other. But we’re not sure if the school knows that Cassie is alive or not, or if they really care.

Most of the dance sequences are fun to watch, but we’re not convinced that the talented cast of dancers are talented actors, as well. They get by, but they put forth a stiff, melodramatic vibe that doesn’t make the show easy to watch, and it’s completely glaring when up against the veteran Holly, who is busy chewing the scenery as Dubois in every scene she’s in.

Sex and Skin: The aforementioned sex scenes between Oren and Bette and Oren and Shane, plus Naveah takes her top off to go into the pool after the fundraiser party is over.

Parting Shot: Navea sees a white rose under the pillow of her bed with a note that says “Your turn to fly.” Uh oh.

Sleeper Star: Brennan Clost is the only person in the cast who doesn’t look or feel like a cliche. Shane seems to be both a good friend and a guy who just doesn’t care about all the pressure the school puts on its students.

Most Pilot-y Line: There are many stiff lines, but this one takes the cake, from Officer Gomez to June: “Look, I don’t know a nutcracker from my nightstick, but I know danger when I see it.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Tiny Pretty Things will make you never want to enroll your kids in a ballet class, given how emotionally scarring the art is portrayed to be here. Between that, the cliched characters and the clunky dialogue, you’re better off watching Bunheads over and over instead.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Tiny Pretty Things On Netflix