"Breaking Pointe" Season 2, Episode 9 Recap

As a ballet lover who watches “Breaking Pointe” for the dancing, my heart sank a little when I heard that the title of last night’s season finale was “The Story of Us.” A whole episode devoted to offstage love stories? Oh, dear. And I was right to be afraid.

After the glories of last week’s show, with its extensive footage of Ashton’s beautifully crafted Cinderella, “BP” circled back to the far less interesting human drama going on behind the scenes. I cheered for Allison when she handed Adam her re-signed contact—brava for following your passion!—but groaned at all the semi-staged will-they-or-won’t-they scenes between her and Rex. Christiana looked regal in the Cinderella pas de deux at the gala performance, but I winced at the episode’s unsparing look at her crumbling marriage. Yes, even a deeply private person knows what she’s signing up for when she joins a reality show, but the depiction of Christiana’s troubles with Chris felt especially exploitative.

As I was watching last night, I kept imagining another, better “Story of Us” episode. The “us” that dancer fans of “BP” care about is the ballet community—we’re part of that “us.” And while I know we can never hope for a mainstream ballet show aimed squarely at ballet dancers, I’d like to think that the rest of the world wouldn’t mind hearing a little more of the dance side of the story, too.

That said, having professional ballet dancers on television is a wonderful thing, regardless of how much we actually see of their dancing. So the let’s-finish-this-neatly feeling of Adam’s closing monologue worried me—there were no loose ends, a là last season’s Allison-Rex cliffhanger. Will we see another season of “Breaking Pointe”? Fingers (and toes) crossed.