“A little pain is a fact of this life. To feel it is a choice. I choose no.”

Paul said it way back in the premiere: a ballerina’s job is to make the arduous look effortless. Full Dress takes that thought and runs with it, giving us a full hour of people trying desperately to cover up flaws, faults, and mistakes. Some of it, like Jessica’s desperate quest to cover up her embezzlement, is a nerve-fraying good time. The rest is yet another hour that hammers its theme home at the cost of any sort of sense of momentum. There’s a compelling idea for an episode buried in the mess, a sort of bloody, desperate rush to the finish line cemented by a deal with the devil, but the series has invested so little time in building up the tension of the impending ballet, in connecting the characters to one another,...