There is a lot to unpack in the new Netflix series “Tiny Pretty Things.” It follows teen students at a prestigious ballet school as they compete for roles, navigate relationships and unravel the mystery behind the accident that left the school’s star student in a coma. Like “Pretty Little Liars,” TPT’s mystery cannot be untied from sexual tension and the creators take great intrigue in the sexuality of its underage characters. It is questionable subject matter for a show explicitly marketed to teens, but its indulgence in exploiting the bodies of its teenage characters is what puts TPT in unwatchable territory.
The problem is that every teen mystery show thinks it can be “Twin Peaks.” The creators of PLL, “Riverdale” and TPT seemingly attempt to mystify the setting of their shows in the way “Twin Peaks” did: with nothing but contrived scandal. TPT wants it both ways — to be constructed as a cheap, corny teen drama and to be considered prestige television that justifies its nudity, like HBO’s “Euphoria.”
From the beginning, the acting is flat and forced. Each of the main characters’ acting is one-note, with the actors possibly being held back by the poor writing. Some of the dialogue is so forced that it feels like the actors are being held at gunpoint. On top of that, no one really has a strong motivation for attempting to murder their classmate and each progression in the plot feels arbitrary, not as if they are building to anything of actual importance.
With the bad acting, flimsy character motivations and tired plot points, the creators of TPT seem to have assumed they could add relevance and depth to their series with excessive sex and nudity. It is jarring to not only see several sex scenes an episode, but excessive casual nudity in scenes where the presence of naked bodies does absolutely nothing but add cheap visual interest to a shot. In its entirety, all of the elements of this show combine to signal that it is wildly confused about what it is and who it’s made for.
This is not a matter of prudishness on the part of your reviewer. F-bombs and some body horror are not subject matter that should be excluded from teen television, nor is sex an inappropriate topic for teen media. In fact, nudity can be effective in storytelling. But in a show that criticizes how closely the ballet industry examines and commodifies teenage bodies, it seems hypocritical to feature so much “softcore” nudity of supposed teenagers. Sure, the actors are all of course over eighteen, but this allows for the fetishization of underage bodies.
Overly sexualized depiction of young dancers in media isn’t new. The general public is aware that eating disorders and abuse are unfortunately common in the dance industry. What the show gets wrong, however, is that ballet is a dying artform that is only surviving through this corruption, and not because audiences love and appreciate dance. Like most other dance media before, TPT represents dancers as sexually crazed and abusive and dance itself as antiquated. At one point it is implied that a well-established ballet company only receives funding because the administrators are sex trafficking their students, which is simply not representative of the place dance companies have in the performing arts. Ballet companies receive funding because people love ballet.
If TPT was an effective show in other ways, it’s possible that the excessive sexuality could be looked passed. However, the acting, writing and directing of the show are all lacking, and it turns out that TPT has little going for it other than the quality of its dancers. It was a pleasant surprise to see highly trained dancers on screen doing interesting, modern choreography. If nothing else, fans of ballet can delight in the dancing and everyone else can delight in the hot bods of the cast. All in all, TPT is not smart or fun enough to really enjoy.
