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Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Bunheads is having one of those freshman seasons where everything is struggling just a little bit to come together. But since this isn’t an uncommon attribute of other shows we’ve come to love (Parks and Recreation, for starters) and because we are really enjoying the show’s ballet numbers (which are surprisingly seldom), we’re sticking it out. Having found ourselves unexpectedly enthralled with the dance aspect of the show, we’ve decided to highlight our favorite performance so far (an environmental allegory!) as well as the other dance sequences in TV history that have left us amazed, amused, and flat-out inspired to get up and move our legs in time. Have a favorite we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Bunheads: “Paper or Plastic”

You would expect an environmental dance number on an ABC family show to be didactic and boring. Not this one. In this performance’s surprise twist ending, the canvas bag ballerina  — a proxy for nature in all its entirety — is killed off. How can you not appreciate fatalism when it’s packaged like this?