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Premiere Week for the Big Four networks is underway, and while it’s not as exciting as it once was, there’s still some potential for fun new shows to debut during this September frenzy. The Big Leap is one of those shows, presenting a fun pilot that shows the potential for a feel-good series full of interesting characters. Or it can crash and burn. It’s just one of those kinds of high-concept shows. Read on for more.
THE BIG LEAP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Seven years ago, we see a high school pep rally in Detroit, where promising dancers Gabby Lewis (Simone Recasner) and her boyfriend Justin Calgrove (Raymond Cham Jr.) doing a routine.
The Gist: Gabby and Justin were destined to dance together forever, until Justin confirmed what everyone but Gabby knew: He’s gay. Her one-time sexual encounter with a random guy results in her getting pregnant. Cut to seven years later and Gabby and her son Sam (Crew Kingston Miskel) are living with her mother (Nora Dunn) and working an office job.
When she gets word that a Fox reality dance competition called The Big Leap is having auditions in Detroit, she thinks that’s the key to changing her life. It’s getting Justin back on board, after ghosting him seven years prior, that might be difficult.
We see other people get word of the auditions. Julia Perkins (Teri Polo), a 50-something former ballet dancer who now does vlogs aimed towards middle-aged women has to deal with the fact that her husband (Seth Morris) is working all the time and her teenage kids are snark machines.
Mike Devries (Mike Rudnitsky) is still down in the dumps over his wife asking for a separation, and the factory job he got laid off from isn’t coming back. One of his odd jobs is as a Lyft driver; he picks up Nick Blackburn (Scott Foley), executive producer of The Big Leap, and takes him to the theater where the auditions are held, where he gets the idea that being in this show could help him get his wife back.
During the auditions — the show will eventually whittle down the hopefuls to a 20-member dance troupe that will perform Swan Lake at the end of the season — judges Monica Sullivan (Mallory Jansen) and Wayne Fontaine (Kevin Daniels) see all sorts of awful dancers, including several in Spider-Man costumes. But they like what they see of Mike, Julia, and a former corporate type named Paula Clark (Piper Perabo). Nick chimes in with choices that up the entertainment factor, like an adult film star/stripper.
Gabby manages to track down Justin and convince him to audition with her. But during their audition, she slips on stripper dust and falls flat on her face; Justin moves on but Gabby is cut. Determined to get back into the show, she goes back to the theater the next day to convince Nick and the judges to let her back on. There, she sees them talking to Reggie Sadler (Ser’Darius Blain), a former football star whose drunken antics on social media have made him radioactive; she offers to work with him and the two of them would be partners.
Through all of this, Nick is sensing his storylines, like a budding attraction between Mike and Paula, who happened to be the executive that laid him off; he films a confrontation Nick has with his estranged wife. He also sees Reggie and Gabby during the partner dance and can already see that he’s going to break her heart at some point during the season.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Glee and Smash crossed with So You Think You Can Dance. The show is actually based on a British reality series called The Big Ballet.
Our Take: Created by Liz Heldens (Friday Night Lights), The Big Leap has a lot going on during its pilot; we’re being introduced to a myriad of characters, and we have to get their stories, get them to the theater for the auditions, and them have them make it onto the show somehow. For the most part, Heldens and her writers are able to wrangle all those stories into something coherent and even entertaining, especially considering that there are a number of dance interludes.
But some people got better initial stories than others. We loved the determination of Gabby, who has the backing of her mother and son and doesn’t just slink back to her job when she’s initially rejected. Her pairing with Reggie showed the most potential, as Reggie starts to appreciate Gabby for who she is, and gives her the lift that she’s always been seeking, literally and figuratively. Mike and Paula are a good pair, even if it seems that Nick is determined to make their lives dramatic by bringing up what they don’t know about each other and continuing to dredge up Mike’s failing marriage.
Teri Polo, though, deserves better than Julia’s story. She feels a bit lost because her kids don’t need her anymore, her husband is always working, and she’s “lived more years” than a typical influencer, and she’s losing sponsors. After her husband tells her it’s a bad idea to pursue this, she finds a bottle of lotion in his desk, where he supposedly “works” all the time. Yep, he’s been watching porn all day instead of working, as she finds out from the Genius-esque techs at a computer store. Yeesh. Polo has played all sorts of strong women during her long career, and it feels like Julia is going to take awhile to grow a personality to match Polo’s abilities.
For the most part, though, The Big Leap has a lot of funny, feel-good moments, and the show-within-the-show story gives it enough narrative momentum to last an entire network-length season. How the show will adapt and change once everyone dances Swan Lake, however, is anyone’s guess.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: “She’s our story,” Nick tells the judges about Gabby. “She’s going to fall in love with him. And he’s going to break her heart.”
Sleeper Star: There’s a reason why Piper Perabo keeps popping up on our TV screens. She’s always charming in whatever role she plays, and she definitely is here as Paula, especially when she and Mike do some flirtatious exchanges of movie musical dance moves up a fire escape.
Most Pilot-y Line: While Scott Foley is equal in charm to Piper Perabo, and we like him as the ruthless EP here, giving Nick a background story in the first episode seems like a bit much. We’re OK with seeing more dimensions of his character as the season goes on, but seeing him on the phone trying to negotiate custody with his lawyer seemed like just a tad too much cramming of story into one episode.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Big Leap is a fun show that has set up some interesting characters and relationships after its first 44 minutes. Whether it can sustain its good momentum, though, remains to be seen.
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.
