The Musical Episode

this video is brought to you by audible start listening with a 38 audible trial and get one audio book into two audible originals completely free just go to audible.com slash their zet or text serozha 500 musical episodes are such a weird and cool phenomenon for a TV show that normally just involves regular dialog to suddenly evoke singing in dancing for just one episode is a big change and can often make episodes really memorable for better or for worse all kinds of shows have introduced the musical episode from Scrubs to community to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Grey's Anatomy as well you have shows like crazy ex-girlfriends though is extraordinary playlist and Glee for which every episode is a musical one some of these shows have decided to make everyone singing diegetic or actually happening inside the world for example one common premise is that the characters in the show are putting on a musical for some reason or in the example of Buffy everyone has been cursed to sing and others the music is simply happening in someone's head or in the audience's collective imagination I think in either case there are some really cool things you can do with that and many shows end up being extremely creative with the premise some of these episodes have been really successful and incredibly good while others have gone down in history as either unmemorable or downright terrible in this video I want to take a look at which musical episodes are the best and worst and most importantly what makes a musical episode good it pretty much goes without saying that the main difference between a regular episode and a musical episode is the introduction of songs and I think a full understanding of why songs are in musicals in the first place is really key to the quality of a musical episode I think understanding what makes musicals work is key to adapt anyone and a showrunner that understands the purpose of songs can employ them as tools in really unique and interesting ways on the other hand simply putting in songs in a way that's have hazardous is one of the main reasons musical episodes can seem awkward or all over the place so first and foremost I want to talk about why musicals have songs and why this matters for musical episodes for a lot of people who aren't into musicals the idea of going to one seems particularly silly like they're talking acting normal and then suddenly they just burst into song the impression I get at least from the few friends I have who genuinely dislike musicals is that the songs are weird pointless detract from the story or are there for no reason when the characters just as easily could have communicated their feelings by like talking I used to just kind of dismiss this as musicals just being an acquired taste like my parents like musicals so I grew up listening to CDs from musicals and so I'm just used to it and it never registers to me is particularly bizarre that the characters are saying now like yeah they're singing because it's a musical and that's what you do in a musical much like characters visually appear two-dimensional and flat if you watch a TV show because a television is flat it's just what the medium is if you don't like it it's because you're probably just not used to it or not a fan of what a musical fundamentally is but the more I sat down and thought about it I think a lot of people who hate musicals do have a point when they criticize in many instances the characters just getting up and singing just because because I think in some less good musicals that is the case that's not to say the only reason someone wouldn't like them is because they've never seen an amazing musical some people will sit down and watch like Hades town or into the woods and just dislike it because musicals are genuinely not to their taste and that's completely fine but also I think the criticism of their singing for no reason isn't specifically a criticism of all musicals so much as a bad musicals much like any element of any good story like what characters are in it and who says what songs serve a specific purpose in musicals insofar as their unique ability to communicate information and emotion there are things you can do in song that you just can't do with other mediums and the reason is song should be there in a good musical is because it's the best medium to do that thing also should say I'm about to give some examples of really cool song usage in musicals and show why specifically having it be told through music lets you do really interesting things but also not every song in every musical is this amazing complex musical creation that you stay up until 2:00 a.m. analyzing music serves a unique purpose in a show but sometimes that purpose is just it slaps just like not every movie has to be a masterpiece of writing and filmmaking in order to justify movies as a whole I don't think every musical has to be this incredible work of art that changes your life with perfectly placed songs in order to justify the existence of musicals so when I'm describing how really good musicals specifically use music to accomplish things other mediums can't accomplish as well that doesn't mean I'm saying a show like kinky boots or Mamma Mia that doesn't do that as much as a bad show or that it isn't worth seeing and enjoying what I more so want to highlight is that in the best musicals music isn't there just to be music but because of the specific things music can do plot-wise emotion-wise and tone wise that other mediums are just less able to actually do if you've seen the video I guessed it on in Trey Poulos productions channel you might already be familiar with some of these examples since I've written a couple of them up in that video too but while in that video I was able to give a quick overview of a couple of the things music can do I hope in this one I can go into a little bit more deeply why these songs work and why music is such a great medium to communicate what these songs are trying to say and then once I've talked about each important component of what a song is supposed to do in a musical I want to look at why some musical episodes get those components right and why some don't so first of all one of the great things about musicals is the ability to communicate information and emotion in a unique way with a visual medium you can get a generally okay sense of how someone is feeling by looking at their face but you still don't get a full sense of exactly what they're thinking what they fear what they're excited about or what motivates them there are numerous ways to convey this kind of information of course but when it comes to a lot of the really internal stuff in most cases it's the kind of information that gets revealed through conversation we find out that say Wesley and the Princess Bride feels upset and abandoned from buttercup marrying someone else because he tells her that or through her family visiting her and her conversations with her girlfriend that Tara on Buffy is afraid of not fitting in with a group and endangering people because she believes herself to be part demon these are opportunities for really great writing in relationship building but it also often means that in mediums that relied really heavily on conversation we often don't get really clear insight into what characters are thinking and feeling until they're ready to share which in the case of musicals is where songs come in what a really fantastic thing about music is its ability to reveal information that people can't or won't discuss with other people otherwise so take the song Requiem from the musical dear Evan Hansen this is a song about grief from the perspective of a family whose son Connor recently took his own life at this point another boy Evan accidentally led Conners family to believe the two were friends even though they barely knew each other and after being too anxious to correct them kept up the lie with fake letters and emails between the two Conners family members all react in different ways to their son's loss Conners father Larry responds with hurt and anger that his son who had such a good life would do this and his reaction is to repress his feelings and refuse to talk about it Zoe Conners sister feels as though Connor was terrible to her in the past and feels pressure to grieve in a traditional way and talk about Connor like he was a great person even though overwhelming grief and sadness are not what she's feeling right now meanwhile Connors mother Cynthia is finding immense relief and reading Evans letters and has convinced herself that her son wasn't so lonely after all at this point none of them are ready to talk to each other and process the loss they just experienced Larry won't even go into Connors room Zoe doesn't want to read the letters and Cynthia is experiencing difficulty trying to bring the family together and talk about what they're dealing with so if this were just a play without basically going into their heads and getting a monologue from everybody we're not really going to fully experience the nuances of what every family member is feeling right now which is where music comes in as this incredibly fantastic medium to express those complicated and very internal feelings there is dialogue in a song a small exchange between Larry and Cynthia Cynthia is sitting in Connors room and invites Larry to join her but he simply says he's exhausted and going to bed and he'll leave the light on for her it's tense and strained and they're not getting through to one another just yet because they just aren't ready but after Larry leaves to go to bed we hear his thoughts through song and the sheer contrast between what he's willing to say out loud and what he's feeling is incredible each family member has a verse where they're able to express how they feel and why they feel that way in a way that's both very poetic and very enlightening and all of them during this difficult and divided time seeing the same central line which is I will say no Requiem tonight Zoey won't sing Requiem because she doesn't want to mourn her brother Larry won't because he isn't ready to process his feelings and doesn't understand why Connor did what he did and Cynthia won't because she feels like Connor is still there with him because of the letters these are three very different sentiments and emotions and yet the underlying similarity of what they're all feeling is still there despite the fact that they're not able to communicate just how much they have in common quite yet and because of how music can invite us into their minds and emotions we can understand this before the characters do [Music] I think an order for a musical episode to be successful whoever is writing music and deciding what happens needs to understand that this is something music can do and that this is something music can do in a unique way I shockingly did a lot of community theater as a teenager and was in a specialized theater high school as you might be able to tell by the everything about me and yes that was a cell phone and one of the things we got told all the time about why we have songs and shows is that you sing when you can no longer speak as far as I can tell by searching around this is pretty standard wisdom in the theater community and I think it really does ring true it's not that every song is an expression of deep internal emotion that could never be communicated any other way but the fact that this is something music can do really really well is one of the strengths of musicals and when I think back to all my favorite shows pretty much all of them have a number that's like this in some way Leamas has a lot of these but especially the song stars which is about this police officer Jay Baer who has an extremely black-and-white sense of morality chasing down a former criminal Valjean who has obviously reformed and this song is basically an ode to the Stars and a declaration that no matter what he will find Valjean there's no one for him to talk to you about this and especially not in such evocative and poetic terms but through the song you hear about how much he loves the stars firstly as heavenly sentinels who keep watch over the world in the night and secondly because the stars don't change they're always the same it affirms not only his deep sense of religiosity but also his deep commitment to his very black-and-white sense of morality and justice this song wasn't in the original French version of limas and I really glad they added it because it's a great insight into how the show's antagonist thinks and feels not to mention after Valjean shows him mercy and his way of viewing the world is completely rocked to its core he ends up jumping off a bridge after realizing that his entire way of life was wrong and not being able to deal with it the addition of the song adds fantastic context to that moment in a way were unlikely to get otherwise or into the woods has a fantastic song called on the steps of Palace once again into the woods has tons of amazing monologue songs that deconstruct and explore how these characters are feeling moments in the woods is another great one but on the steps of the palace is from the perspective of Cinderella she'd come to several dances and fled so the prince in an attempt to make her stay had put pitch on the stairs to stick her there and the actual saw takes place in about a split second as she makes the decision of what to do so time slows down as we get to understand all the factors that went into her decision-making in a way that it'd be hard to understand otherwise how can you know who you are till you know what you want what you don't so then which do you pick what you're safe out of sight in yourself but whenever anything's wrong everything's right and you know on one hand she knows she's not the type of person she knows the prince is expecting her to be what happens when he realizes she's common and doesn't want her or what happens if he realized that she's common and doesn't want her she knows this high society is a world she's never going to really belong in even if the prince is still interested in her but would it be better than going back to her old life she's about to try to get out of the tar and just lead to her old life because at least it's simpler than whatever might happen if the prince actually learns her identity and then she realizes the best thing to do right now is to not have to make a decision at all and put the ball in his court so she slips out of her shoe and leaves a slipper behind as a clue for the prince to find and waits to see how he'll react to it this is really a split-second decision she's making she's not just gonna stand there and monologue about what she should do because that fell out of fashion a little after Shakespeare did it and there's no one to talk to about this either but once again because of the way music works were able to not only see that she's conflicted but exactly what she's conflicted about and why she chooses to leave her slipper behind this is a show that's essentially a deconstruction of traditional fairytale tropes Act one basically ends exactly where all those traditional fairy tales end Cinderella gets the prince the couple seeking a child gets a child Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk sneaks back down and gets his riches Rapunzel is freed from the tower and falls in love etc etc etc but somehow everything is just wrong this is supposed to be the happy and a but it just isn't an act to is about exactly why that's the case off topic but that's why although I understand why that's the case I am very salty about how the kids version of into the woods is just act one like it misses the whole point of the show uh but anyway sounds like Cinderella's not only elucidate a character's feelings and motivations but also provide great context for what comes next which is that things aren't right in the castle Cinderella worries at the beginning that even if the prince picks her she'll be in a place where she knows she doesn't belong and she ends up being right and music is such a critical device for letting us understand this so I think if you're going to do a musical episode you absolutely have to understand that this is one of the key components to why music works in musicals in a good musical the songs aren't just there to sound good and be songs once again that doesn't mean musicals that aren't super profound and are just a fun time or terrible or anything like that but I think a musical episode with a proper understanding of what musicals are and why they work really needs to get this I think the absolute best example of this is bucking the vampire Slayer's musical episode once more with feeling and God I could nerd out about this episode for hours although I think Buffy aged a hell of a lot better than most content from the 90s it still definitely has its problems and as much as I love it I'm always willing to criticize some of the shows and more pernicious plot points but God once more with feeling is almost perfect in my eyes not only as an episode of Buffy but as a musical episode and I think it understands perfectly what the point of putting songs in a musical is I got so excited I spilled tea on my lap cool cool cool cool so the premise of once more with feeling is that a demon is something that causes everyone in the town to express their thoughts and feelings through song at first it's a minor inconvenience at worst but eventually maius starts to take a darker turn not only because people who stay in dance for too long end up dancing themselves to death but also because all the characters end up reviewing things about themselves that they don't exactly want others to know so at the point where this episode comes in almost every character has secret-spy he's in love with Buffy and doesn't know how to reconcile his feelings with her and the relationship they've had in the past willow is starting to lean too much on her magic and is starting to use spells to erase her girlfriend memories of their fights Anya and Xander are engaged and despite the fact that they haven't sat down and had a conversation about this both of them are terrified of what marriage entails Giles is feeling like he isn't able to be a good father figure for Bucky anymore and that his presence is only hindering her growth as a person and Buffy has been resurrected by her friends against her will and doesn't want to tell her friends why she's so traumatized and saddled them with horrible guilt and at that point in the show all of these secrets have been bubbling under the surface and no real catalyst has happened that would force all these characters to reveal those secrets I mean I guess the show could have introduced the magic spell that made them all tell the truth or something but this is way much more fun because like we've already talked about songs are very often used as a device to communicate a character's internal feeling when we can't or won't learn about them through other methods so what starts happening is that the demons spell ends up revealing all those secrets and they're forced to say about it spike sings this rock opera song to Buffy where he tells her that she makes him feel alive but he knows he never can be and because buffy is obviously not willing to be with him the torture of being close to her when he can never have her is too much for him Willow and Tara have this beautiful love song that's ironically called under your spell and Tara gets a tragic reprise of it when she realizes what willows been doing to her Xander and Anya had this old tiny duet where they admit their feelings about marriage to a fourth wall which finally lets them face it together and Buffy has this incredible and tragic song give me something to say about where she's forced to reveal in front of her friends exactly what happened to her after she died at the end the demon leaves the saying is gone but the fallout from exactly what they've all said is still there and it's incredible this is an episode that was so obviously made with love for musicals and a real understanding of what the medium of music in a musical allows you to do I think this is such a crucial component of quality in a musical episode and it's one of the many reasons once more with feeling works so well on the other hand when a musical episode doesn't do this I think that's one of the biggest components of failure when it doesn't work so take a look at the musical episode fan fiction from Supernatural [Music] by the time this episode aired I only had one foot in my supernatural phase the peak of it was like 2012 when I was 13 and I was like yes this is such a good show there's so much potential I can't wait to see how it ends and then it just kept dragging on and on and it didn't do anything interesting with what it had no one actually grew or learned any lessons and because the dead horse kept getting resurrected they just kept repeating the same plot threads over and over with no growth or variation in fact if you're interested I did a whole video about it judging by its ratio it seems to be the most controversial people I've ever made which is just very funny to me but in late 2014 they did a musical episode and I was hyped it was also filmed at my friend's high school so I had a personal connection to add to the excitement even more and then I watched it and I honestly think that was the nail in the coffin for me so early on in the show they revealed that someone who I believe later turned out to be God had written books about the adventures of the main characters that had developed a cult-like fan base they didn't do that much with it like the Winchesters were never recognized anywhere or something but they did use the concept to make a few meta jokes like having fans at a convention play active conflict or introduced the crazed fan girl character Becky which I have many feelings about but that's a whole other cup of tea telling this one they go to a school that's putting on a musical production of Supernatural a lot of this is just commentary on the show's real life fans they're reciting some of the more iconic or quotable moments from the show they're super obsessed with Dean and Castiel getting together and there are some meta jokes poking fun at one of the actors for a necklace that was once important to the show but Becky hated to wear honestly I just don't think this is the best setup for a musical episode in the first place and I think authors trying too hard to be meta it's something that can be cool if done really well but honestly rarely is I've seen a few TV episodes that are supposed to be commentary on the show's fandoms Adventure Time did it gravity falls did it with docked active community did it in their fake recap episode which by the way was really good and one of the few times this has ever made me laugh and Doctor Who's done it like five times now I honestly usually just don't like these in general because they're often extremely heavy-handed and can border on just saying it's stupid how much you care about this when poorly but sure let's say this is the setting of our musical episode even if the concept is hard to do well it's not impossible if we go back to the idea that songs are there to communicate motivation and feeling there's definitely some stuff to be done with that and even if the characters singing weren't the Winchesters themselves but actors playing them it's definitely a concept you could make interesting have an actor sing a song that reflects the feelings the characters are currently feeling and makes them come face-to-face with that or even just use music to reflect mood and to--and have the monsters of the week in some way tie into the musicality of the show even if the concept isn't great you could still absolutely use the music in the episode in a way that you couldn't use in other mediums but what they do instead is just very net they have an opening song where the actor talks about the brothers backstory although they're not communicating anything new Castiel actor sings a song about how he's just waiting for Dee all the time which is honestly not bad but it's also not a particularly good song and it's not anything we or the characters don't already know about the world they have a rendition to carry on my wayward son a song that's often used on the show which I guess is a nice moment for a nostalgia but it again doesn't tell us anything new it's just looked it's the thing you recognize in the same way ready player one relied on just showing us things from the 80s and relying on our own nostalgia to fill in the emotional gap all in all the music didn't do anything unique and it felt like it was just there to be music to say they did a musical episode not because they had something real to say that they felt could be communicated well through music but because they wanted to say they did it I mean I guess there was some nice stuff there it was a bit of a message to the fans where they told fans if they had conflicting interpretations of the story that was okay and it was an affirmation that the fan fiction and fan created he is cool which as someone who remembers when no writer would ever day to be cool with fan fiction of their work it's nice so that's fine enough I guess but as a musical episode it was really a lot of nothing because the songs didn't do or tell us anything except to just be songs and the music itself while it sounded fine wasn't anything particularly catchy or musically interesting either it seems to me like instead of deciding there was a story they wanted to in deciding music was the best medium to tell it the writers just decided they wanted to do a musical episode just because and worked backwards from there the result was an episode that y ou not atrocious relied almost entirely on its self referential nature to do anything interesting at all and did nothing interesting or memorable with the premise of a musical episode so it is short in a storytelling sense music has a very unique and very specific purpose it's a tool and there are things that can do well that other mediums either can't do or can't do as well and if you're going to put music in your show you should take full advantage of what it can do and not just have hazardously put it in there just to be music for the sake of doing a musical episode but music and musical songs aren't only effective communicators of story and purpose in this one sense musicals are also a fantastic medium with a really long history behind them and that's something that can be utilized really effectively as well in every medium there are cues and elements you can use a shorthand to communicate other important things so in a movie if someone is introduced by panning up from their feet to their body and they're wearing revealing clothing you're like okay this is a sexy character or if someone is wearing dark colors and music in the minor scale is playing as they're introduced they're probably a villain and you can play with that either by playing it straight or subverting it and this is the case partly because they're accused we just innately recognizes communicating one or two particular things but also because there's a long history of using this shorthand in movies to tell us things and when we watch things were not blank slates we understand these references because they come up time and time again and they're familiar cues to us the same is true for musicals certain styles of music and lyricism and dance are used for different purposes and when they're played within the context of a musical episode that can tell us all kinds of interesting things about the story another great use of songs and musicals as storytelling shorthand is the musical episode of the TV show Scrubs unlike a lot of examples here music isn't exactly used to tell us what's going on in JD's head because we already know a lot of the show is told through voiceover into his internal monologue which is done in a really entertaining way so the premise of the episode my musical is that this woman wakes up and suddenly she hears everything in song the episode later reveals but this is the result of an aneurysm but the focus isn't hugely on her so much as on the pre-existing characters there are a number of conflict underpinning it like Turks wife Carla wanting to go back to work after having a child in the - not agreeing on it and JD's roommate and love interest Elliot wanting to move out on her own even though the songs aren't really happening in universe and are only occurring in the patient's imagination the use of existing references and musical styles highlights what they're trying to communicate so for example one of the songs is the ranch song which is a patter song a term that refers to music like you got trouble I'm not getting married today or modern major-general that sung or spoken very quickly with a lot of lyrics the song is sung by dr. Cox a very cynical and derisive character who in the show has kind of become a mentor figure to JD despite not really liking him and this song is basically a list of all the ways he hates JD some very quickly and with impressive diction he now a newbie that's a thing you do that drives me up a tree because no matter how I rented you you never let me be so I'm done with all your daydreaming your wish to be my son it makes me suicidal and I'm not the only one this works for a number of reasons first of all it's a great musical style for dr. Cox because he often goes on fast-talking rants anyway secondly in a musical patter songs are a lot of fun and have a real purpose they're often full of tongue twisters and are a great opportunity for actors to showcase their skills and comedic timing and they're also often used to communicate that characters mentality is fast and racing in the same way this might be because they're panicking the song not getting married is a great example as a singer is quickly spiraling out of control on her wedding day and is listing all of her anxieties and reasons not to want to get married you know both of us be losing our identities i telephone my analyst about it and he said to call him Monday but Monday I'll be floating in the Hudson with the Yamagami or they might be trying to very quickly manipulate someone the song he got trouble is about a Salesman quickly and effectively preying on people's anxieties interests and patriotism to run his con in the case of dr. Cox the choice of the patter song is simply because he's overwhelmed with reasons to hate JD and the choice to have his song be in the genre for this purpose already tells us a lot about how he feels without even having to listen to the lyrics another fantastic use of references and known musical styles and musical episodes is in the show crazy ex-girlfriend I know bringing up crazy ex-girlfriend is kind of cheating because it's not actually a non-musical show that has a musical episode so much as a show where every episode is a musical episode but I'm bringing up anyway because why not it's a fantastic show that usually has about three or four original musical numbers per episode the premise is that this woman who has borderline personality disorder and is deeply unhappy with her life as a higher earning lawyer in New York picks up everything and moves to a small city in California to basically stalk and insert herself into the life of one of her exes from summer camp it's a wonderful show that's both hilarious and tragic and that I really love and would 100% recommend also there are three self-identified by characters in it one of whom has a musical number about being bi where he plays a saxophone solo in front of a bi flag and it gives me so much life basically please watch the show watching the show it's very easy to tell that Rachel bloom who created and stars in it loves theater most of the songs have very clear visual and musical references to musical classics and Rachel bloom plays with this in a lot of interesting ways my only real complaint with the songs on the show is that the songs have a tendency to over explain the joke too much but really that's just me at picking and I could probably write a mini essay about virtually every song in the show and how it effectively uses references to communicate cool story information so for example the song the math of love triangles is very very obviously referencing the song diamonds are a girl's best friend from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes both with the costumes and the musical style and once again without even listening to the lyrics this already tells you a lot about both the story and the tone that moment is going for diamonds are a girl's best friend is a movie classic and it's been used as a shorthand reference by tons of media to communicate a really specific tone which is that of excess and romantic playfulness for example its use in Madonna's Material Girl music video and in the film birds of prey communicates this tone really easily in the case of the math of love triangles it's performed during a time when the main character Rebecca is trying to choose between two different men neither of them are actually into her at the time and this is essentially a delusional flight of fancy but because the song is happening in her head we can see the way she perceives the situation as a love triangle with her in the center is this popular Marilyn Monroe West figure the song also pokes fun at the outdated tropes at the time with jokes like thanks for teaching me man math is the mantle of triangles is it simple as which is a Tom or dick I might pick the center of the triangle it's precisely the contrast between what's going on in Rebecca's head and what's going on in her actual life that highlights just how misguided she's being in an engaging and downright catchy way the number is also used in the show's final season where Rebecca has grown a lot as a person received a proper diagnosis has owned up to her mistakes and is going to therapy despite the leaps and bounds she's made she finds herself in a similar situation only this time it's an actual love triangle where multiple men are interested in her well love quadrangle they're three of them so we get a reprise of the song with the same set in costumes but this time she isn't enthusiastically performing it and getting excited about being in the center of the triangle instead she's questioning it and very unenthusiastically dancing with jokes about dusting off the set because she's in the same situation the math of love quadrangles is way more fun than trig but one of them your feelings hmm we don't see those not a thing so the first time the Diamonds visual is used it creates a really evocative image of Rebecca's delusional state that can later be deconstructed in a super interesting way she also deconstructs this trope in the song what's your story a parody of 1975 musical Chicago cell block tango cell block tango is a famous song were in these cool dangerous ladies sing about killing their husbands it's dramatic and sexy with big movement in sexy 1920s costumes in the case of what's your story Rebecca goes to jail for a brief amount of time and she's been romanticizing it in her head as this place where she can come to terms with her crimes and redeem herself which is very much the perspective of a rich white lady who mostly hangs out with other people of her socioeconomic status in song she's getting everyone who she meets in prison to tell their stories while trying to keep the dramatic song going and these are all women who are far less privileged under her whose stories are simple and frankly depressing she keeps looking for cool ways to romanticize it and no one is having it the song ends up awkwardly fading out as she comes to terms with her privilege and lack of perspective the use of the cell block tango reference to do this is not only a really creative way to communicate what's being communicated but also any theater fan who watches that song instantly recognize what's being referenced and having the mind frame of this is what she thinks prison will be like set out in a recognizable way really helps set up what her expectations are so they can be contrasted later or another example maybe she's not such a heinous after all visually and musically references the classic song be my baby by the Ronettes it's a well-known old-fashioned love song which evokes both romance and a kind of wholesome old-timey charm the song is set when Rebecca stays with her mother with whom she's always had a tumultuous relationship and the two of them are getting along a lot better than they used to which also ends horribly but for now let's ignore that Rebecca is experiencing pleasant surprise that while she's still kinda hates her mom it's just in a regular way and not in the same horrible turbulent way that she used to in the lyrics she deliberately compares this feeling to a romance saying her first real rejection was her relationship with her mother [Music] using a love song as the base for this is a really interesting choice that lends some really cool insight into how Rebecca feels about her mom and the contrast with the old timey charm and lyrics about how from once she doesn't want her mom to die horribly is just really funny ultimately using this shorthand works great because it plays with our expectations in a way that's both engaging in the audience and tells us more about Rebecca God this show is so good please watch it it's so good on the other hand what happens when you get a musical episode that doesn't use musical styles or references in an interesting way one example is one of three musical episodes on Riverdale where they sing a number of songs from the musical Heather's okay this is literally just media picking but I feel like I need to say that I hate episodes of high school TV shows where they're putting on a musical when it lasts like two weeks and barely has an impact on the characters lives like know you're going to be there for hours after school for months probably daily by the end of it and it's going to consume your life anyway first things first musically speaking it's just ridiculously bland the choreography is flat and the songs themselves are a lot of auto-tune and very little substance which just doesn't work well with a medium like theater where the songs aren't really designed to sound polish but devoid of passion that just already sets it up to fail but more importantly all the songs themselves are just there to be songs from Heather's I mean don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of there's musical I saw it twice in London and watched the bootleg more times than I can count the Heather's music is good and I like it but the use of it here just doesn't work and I mean it should both shows are in some way about taking the painful hierarchies of high school and showing what happens when they're taken to their deadly extreme and I don't think the fact that the songs are from a different show is inherently a bad thing you can do cool stuff with jukebox musicals when you write a story and find existing songs with the emotion and theming to match it American Idiot was a pretty strong example of this but the problem is I think that the episode is built around the songs in a very awkward and stilted way so instead of the music being used to enhance the story or say something about the world in the same way scrubs or crazy ex-girlfriend did it honestly feels more like an obstacle to it as the story awkwardly tries to fit around a very constrained set of songs that can't be altered in any meaningful way so they have to have a party because there's a party song in heathers they have to have a moment where one girl becomes rejected and socially isolated from her peers because there's a song after that happens in heathers and the plot has to work itself to fit these predetermined beats and it's done in a very awkward way where everything just happens extremely quickly and out of nowhere just because instead of the music in a musical episode enhancing the story it simply detracts from it which means that instead of the style and history of the music being used to communicate something about the world the world is instead trying to communicate something about the music which because Riverdale is not a very good show is mostly just it exists and we're referencing it the result is this very flat musical episode that doesn't enhance the story in any way and also doesn't have any bonus of the music being particularly good either all in all I think in order to be any good a musical episode needs to be written with an understanding of why musicals themselves are so good placing music into an episode for the sake of having a musical episode or choosing specific songs simply because they're popular with no regards to what they might be used to say about the characters or about the story leads to very awkward experiences that aren't particularly memorable and don't enhance anyone's ability to story tell conversely music can be used to storytellin really incredible and interesting ways and when right a shows musical episode can be considered among its best if I had to pick one I would not hesitate in any way to select Buffy's once more with feeling as the best musical episode on TV it's an episode that understands perfectly why musicals have music in them and utilizes music as a tool to its fullest extent not only to sound good and be catchy but to also tell us things about the story world and characters as well as drive the plot in a way that only music could really do I also just really like anthony Stewart head singing voice and shouldn't have to watch him cut someone's organs out and repo just to get to hear it I just think broadly speaking when creating and judging musical episodes it's just really important to understand why musicals have music in them they're not just plays with the addition of songs at random intervals and treating them as such leads to well Riverdale and supernatural rather when use to their full potential songs are fantastic tools shows like buffy scrubs and crazy ex-girlfriend take full use of those tools in an incredible way and i can't wait to see what other shows do the same in the future i am fully prepared to stand whoever does I'd like to thank audible for sponsoring this video arbol is a great audiobook service that allows you to listen to audio books of all kinds from romance to sci-fi to nonfiction to fantasy you can also listen anywhere whether it's at home or would it be irresponsible of me to say other places you can listen to it because there are a lot of them but right now I've only been listening to audible at home you can also enjoy easy exchanges of audiobooks if you pick one out that you don't like and an audiobook library that you can keep forever even when you cancel I've currently been listening to a darker shade of magic by ve Schwab it's been a favorite for a long time so it's really cool to get to listen to it an audio form and the narration is so good as a former feeder kid I'm a big fan of stories that are big and dramatic but to still have that individuality and emotion and I think this book is such a fantastic example of this it's about this guy in a fantasy world who can travel between parallel worlds there's one with magic and one without and one that's dangerous and one that doesn't exist anymore he's the only one who can do it but one day a thief from the ordinary world hitches a ride with him and it's so good also as an adult who still loves dramatic and escapist stories it's nice to have a story that isn't quite why anymore but still catchers those themes of adventure and found family if you want to listen to a darker shade of magic or any other audio book you can get 30 days of audible free completely and listen to one audiobook and two audible originals by going to audible.com/veritasium Sara Z - 500 500 as with any audiobook I recommend if you listen to this one please share your thoughts with me this is one of my favorites and I love hearing people's thoughts about it plus it's a trilogy and it gets so good oh my god [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Sarah Z

Views: 323,854

Rating: 4.945919 out of 5

Keywords: sarah z, video essay, video essays, musicals, broadway, musical episode, musical episodes, scrubs, my musical, scrubs musical episode, buffy, buffy the vampire slayer, btvs, once more with feeling, breadtube, lindsay ellis, lefttube, hbomberguy, philosophy tube, spuffy, riverdale, riverdale heathers, riverdale musical episode, crazy ex-girlfriend, supernatural, supernatural musical episode, the road so far, heathers, dear evan hansen, requiem dear evan hansen, into the woods, les mis

Id: NRHTtrbUWjs

Length: 40min 1sec (2401 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 29 2020