Please stop the beat: why we've had enough of musical episodes
Can you hear the sound of distant banging? No, it’s not the sound of your neighbour starting their 34th ill-fated DIY project in lockdown, it’s the final nail being hammered into the coffin of the one-off musical episode. And the killer? Dynasty, series three, episode four.
For those who missed it when the entire series was unceremoniously dumped on Netflix three weeks ago, Dynasty took on the great tradition of having its cast burst into song mid-episode. Fallon, seemingly the only family member affected by a gas leak in the Carrington Manor, spends the entire episode hallucinating her family randomly bursting into song – everything from Burning Down the House to You Can’t Hurry Love. The cast look embarrassed before, during and after the performances, caught between trying to send up the whole genre and sounding good. And without being cruel and naming names, there’s always one cast member who’s not a natural singer and that’s painfully obvious here. TV legend Alan Dale, Jim from Neighbours, who plays the family butler Anders, wisely fades into the background.
It’s not the weirdest thing to happen on the show, by far. In fact, considering the series has had an episode in which Fallon hallucinates The Wizard of Oz, multiple “I’m your real father!” moments, two dead bodies getting pulled out of the Carrington estate’s lake and the line: “He’s my cousin. Well, I did sleep with him and almost marry him, but at the end of the day, he’s my
cousin”, a singalong is quite tame.
The most memorable musical episode to anyone over 30 was, of course, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Once More With Feeling, season six, episode seven, Buffy runs into a demon who compels people to burst into songs about their innermost thoughts at any given moment. Fans loved it, critics loved it and it spawned an album release and singalongs in cinemas.
Since then, however, it has been diminishing returns and declining quality on musical episodes, with every show from Grey’s Anatomy to Scrubs to Community trying it out. Xena: Warrior Princess has a notoriously nonsensical one, and Supergirl and The Flash – in which both heroes were played by actors who had appeared in Glee – had crossover musical episodes. Once a groundbreaking idea, it’s now either a chance to show off the cast’s incredible voices (album deal, anyone?) or a clunky detour for a show that’s run out of ideas.
Netflix’s Riverdale is a serial offender. Clearly, the cast can sing – the show never misses a chance to crowbar a musical performance into a normal episode – but over four series, it has had no less than three musical episodes – based on Carrie, Heathers: The Musical and, most recently, one in which Archie, Betty and Veronica soundtrack the murder of their school principal to songs from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Musical episodes would be all well and good if they were optional – hey, if you can’t bear over-eager singing, just skip forward to the next episode – but shows often sandwich huge plot points in between songs. For instance (spoiler alert) Archie and Betty’s clandestine kiss in Riverdale, or Liam cancelling his wedding after recovering six months of lost memories in Dynasty. (We didn’t say the non-singing parts of Dynasty made sense either.)
Interestingly, no shows traditionally aimed at male audiences have taken on musical episodes. We all know, after his role in Moana, that the Rock can sing, so why, over five series and 47 episodes of Ballers, did we not see him break into song on the American football field? Was the final episode of Breaking Bad originally written as a musical episode with songs from Grease? Instead of Jesse driving off alone at the end, maybe Walter, dressed as Olivia Newton-John, was supposed to get in the car with him before it flew off, both of them singing You’re the One That I Want?
It’s almost as if TV execs are labouring under the sexist notion that all women like musicals. The Walking Dead has had two more episodes than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (146 to Buffy’s 144), yet we’re still waiting to see the stars perform the hits from Wicked while beheading the undead. Come on, AMC, make it happen!
Surely, with TV shows based around music – the incredible My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist, even Glee if you’re desperate – the others can stop flogging the dead panto horse of musical episodes and accept that they are unnecessary?