Shut Up And Dance
The Perfect Couple and other shows hop, twist, and slide into TikTok dance trends-- logic be damned.
I’m here to report a miracle: My entire family (including my divorced parents!!) are watching the same television show.
Somehow, the one program in recent memory that has united my dad (who only watches critically-acclaimed TV on planes), my mom (who only watches TV if it’s about murder or doctors), my sister (who only watches TV if it involves mean rich women being mean), and me (who watches everything) is Netflix’s recent hit murder mystery The Perfect Couple.
The show is pure end-of-summer popcorn— a murder mystery set during the perfect-seeming wedding of a perfect-seeming wealthy family on the perfect-seeming island of Nantucket. But after the dead body of one of their guests washes up on shore, the family’s buried secrets start to come out and, get this… that titular Perfect Couple? Turns out… they’re not so perfect (gasp)!!! There are many things in the show that could be discussed by the culture at large: Dakota Fanning’s gloriously bitchy line reads while outrageously pregnant. Nicole Kidman’s horrible wig budget. Eve Hewson causing a family emergency in the first episode by wandering outside in her lacy lingerie to save?? a?? ladybug???
However, what the Internet has mostly glommed onto is the opening credits dance sequence, a Bollywood-esque line dance set to Nantucket native Meghan Trainor’s once-forgotten song “Criminals.”
The brief credits sequence has spread across TikTok faster than it takes to drive across Nantucket (a very small island!), and thinkpieces have popped up across the Internet attempting to explain the confounding sequence. Are the actors in character? Did this take place on the wedding day in the timeline of the show, or is this out of reality? How did they get Nicole Kidman to do this? Why, of all songs, did the show’s creators pick a Meghan Trainor b-side about boinking your husband?
Most of the people involved say that at the end of the day, the dance really exists because it’s just supposed to be fun. An interview with the director Susanne Bier explains that the dance sequence signifies “this is a slightly heightened reality and as an audience, you can allow yourself to have fun and enjoy it” She goes on to explain the dance sequence was originally going to be a dream sequence in the show, but they decided to pivot and make it the opening credits since it set the tone of the comedic murder mystery so well. “Yes, there’s a murder, but you’re going to laugh, and hopefully you’re going to text your friends about whodunit,” said the showrunner Jenna Lamia. Which is completely fair. This isn’t a serious Big Little Lies prestige HBO mystery, with its opening credits filled with moody music and shots of sad moms driving across a bridge. This is a bingeable, easy-to-watch show that goes down like a smooth blackberry mojito.
What I also found particularly fascinating about the interview with Tudum was how up front Bier and Lamia were about making the sequence specifically for Internet virality. Lamia shouts out another Netflix show, Wednesday, for its dance sequence that helped turn the show into a Gen Z smash. “We thought that [dance] was really fun, so that was kind of in our minds,” she says of the dance set to “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps, and then later popularized on TikTok to a remix of “Bloody Mary” by Lady Gaga. This dance scene probably remains the most infamous part of the show, even more so than Jenna Ortega’s one liners or the excellent production design and world-building of Nevermore Academy.
The Perfect Couple and Wednesday are far from alone in putting in dance sequences specifically seeming like they’re designed to capture America’s youth’s feet. The science-fiction show The Umbrella Academy features numerous dance sequences that have become one of the most iconic elements of the show, in particular their season-one dance to “I Think We’re Alone Now” by Tiffany. As the seasons went on, dancing was fit in at every possible opportunity— for instance, the incredible group dance to “Footloose” in season three is explained via hallucinogenic venom (not saying this dance isn’t iconic but… logically a bit of a stretch). Peacemaker, in a grand tradition for James Gunn, features a hilarious dance sequence set to "Do You Wanna Taste It" by Wigwam. But rather than the diegetic dance sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy (which came out in the pre-TikTok era of 2014), where the dancing is driven by the main character’s love of ‘80s music, this dancing occurs on a sci-fi soundstage with no connection to the main narrative or characters. It’s mainly just a vibe setter, like The Perfect Couple’s opening credits. Ms. Marvel and Never Have I Ever feature scenes of their high school aged protagonists performing Indian wedding dances in wide, open dance floors with stable camera movements and limited extras to not get in the way. Though these scenes are inspired by Bollywood flicks, there’s an emphasis on simplicity of the dances over spectacle and grandness. The camera movements are steady and the dance moves are front-facing and easy to follow, making the choreography routine a perfect fit for a TikTok dance trend.
As an avid line dancer (shoutout queer country line dancing, my current favorite hobby) and fan of Broadway musicals, I do love a good dance sequence. And as a marketing technique, it completely makes sense. If it’s easy to throw in a dance sequence over the opening credits or as a dream sequence in a show, and that gets Gen Z watching TV (which they are watching less and less of), then by all means, go ahead. But there is something that I miss with the rise of the TikTok dances in television. For example, musical TV shows, or even musical episodes, are rare occurrences these days. They’re too expensive to make, with choreography that’s not simple enough for a front-facing video. And why would you have somebody write original music if its only quick snippets of pop music that you need to make a dance trend? One of my favorite episodes of TV, “Once More With Feeling” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, would probably never get made these days. And forget about a glorious show with original music in every episode like Smash. I also do appreciate music scenes that don’t necessarily come with Internet-ready choreography attached— sometimes it can be even more effective if there’s no dancing at all (like the “Maybe This Time” rendition from Schitt’s Creek), the dancing is terrible (like “The Nightman Cometh” from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), or if the dancing is paired with complex filmmaking and production design that doesn’t translate to TikTok (like “All For Us” in Euphoria). It just feels limiting to have everything be a line dance. If anything, I’d love it if there were more music and dancing in our TV projects, rather than having dance sequences siloed to one scene per season to give people a singular focus to talk about over the virtual water cooler.
Dancing can be used to express so many things for characters: Joy, despair, togetherness, solitude. Bringing that theatricality into the medium of television can accentuate any emotion a character is currently feeling through external movement and song. It’s no wonder that musical scenes help create some of TV’s most memorable moments. So personally, I hope that if shows like The Perfect Couple are any indication, is that there is a real appetite for song and dance in the medium. Just ideally to no more Meghan Trainor songs. Please.
I’ll leave you all with one of my favorite dancing opening credits, from the show Pachinko.
What I’m Currently Enjoying:
Industry, Season Three
The Decameron, Season One
Fantasmas, Season One
The Perfect Couple, Season One
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Some Like It Hot
Sex And The City (2008)
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If musical and dance episodes of otherwise serious shows have zero fans I am dead
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