Favorite musical episodes are Buffy's (of course, anytime someone bursts into a song about how bunnies are evil gets an auto-favorite), and Community's.... Not the Christmas one about Abed, but the one parodying Glee.
I love Joss Whedon so much for making Once More With Feeling the way he did. I've seen every episode of Buffy twice, with two exceptions - I've seen OMWF about 30 times and Tabula Rasa, the episode immediately after it, about 10 times. It's just so good, and he did it with such respect for musical theatre. The music itself is never criticized or used as a punchline in a derogatory way - most musical episodes treat it as a joke of an art form. But not Joss. Also, thank you for not mentioning the Supernatural musical episode. It was terrible and cringey and I'll never watch it again.
If you're talking about Once More with Feeling, that's not diegetic. There's a supernatural excuse for the musical to happen, but the characters aren't intentionally setting out to sing songs, like on a stage. They sometimes don't even realize that they're doing it until they're in it (like Spike).
'Phineas and Ferb', a show that already had a song in every episode, also had a musical episode. It lampshaded the hell out of theatre, Kenny Ortega was in it.
I feel like it's so easy to make fun of glee but it had a lot of heart and promise in the beginning. Though I feel like you are forgetting another prominent musical tv show, Phineas and Ferb! There was a song in every episode. It's an incredibly smart show and gets down played because it's for kids
I know you posted this a year ago, but another interesting thing about Phineas and Ferb is that it also has it's own musical episode. It's a recreation of the first episode, but with a bunch of songs added, like "Hey Ferb", "What'cha Doin?" and "Rollercoaster". In "Hey Ferb" in particular, there are a number of visual homages to famous musicals like Phantom and Les Mis.
I am surprised that you didn't mention the I love Lucy episode, ”Lucy go to Scotland”; wherein, the Ricardos and Mertzes are on their way to Paris, but first Lucy wants to go to Scotland to seek members of the McGillicuddy family into which she was born. While Lucy talks about wanting to locate her family roots, she then falls asleep and dreams of going to a village in Scotland named Kildoonan, where a vicious two-headed Mertzian dragon comes to eat a McGillicuddy once every 30 years. There is plenty of fun diagetic musical numbers.With the name of the village Kildoonan, and the two-headed dragon surfacing once every 30 years, the episode was clearly an homage to 'Brigadoon.'
Haven't even started this vid yet. But let me just say - WE'RE ALL STILL WAITING ON A MUSICAL EPISODE OF ONCE UPON A TIME!!! Including the cast and crew!!!!
I only particularly remember one musical episode you didn't even mention. Phineas and Ferb's "Rollercoaster: the Musical" remakes the series' pilot episode in musical format and even includes some direct nods towards Broadway shows.
I feel like lumping Malcolm in the Middle in with the shows just doing a once off musical for the sake of it isn't fair. The show has many examples of integrating musical and theatrical performances in with the larger sitcom format (Hal dance/skating, Malcolm performing in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream, etc) but more fundamentally it was the culmination of a much longer arch involving Dewey. Dewey starts off the series as a weird little kid and the larger society assumes that weirdness is stupidity, but all along the way the show indicates that he just has great creative intelligence to be on par with Malcolm's more traditional intelligence. We see Dewey try out street performing, singing in school musicals, learning and perfecting the piano, creating a full organ out of found parts, etc. The Opera episode is a chance for the audience to then see the payoff of these many seasons of set up when Dewey first sees an opera on public access TV, falls in love, and commits to expressing himself in that medium. Like many great artists, he takes inspiration from his surrounding environment and the best way to convey what he's going through is to put the characters he's basing his story on in the opera that's based on their life. All this being a way of saying, I really liked that episode.
I only realized while watching this video that the musical episodes of shows are almost always my favorite episodes. It's not really shocking, but it's the first time I've ever really thought about them at the same time to make the connection.
Let's not forget the sondheim hommages in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. At the Gala is Into the Woods and Art of the Dress is putting it together. Theres also two full on musical episodes: pinkie pride and magical mystery cure. The show itself used to be pretty good but it is way overhyped. Most episodes are meh or good but there are several id call great. Definitely check out the episodes I mentioned here. Also, have you read story by robert McKee? Great book. And I love your channel.
Great video. Definitely interesting to see how the normalizing of the "musical" episode has led back to networks working on live musical telecasts like Peter Pan and Sound of Music. Definitely good to see these back on TV, though I've yet to see one that I enjoy wholeheartedly. Hopefully NBC's telecast of The Wiz changes that for me.
I'm leaving a comment three years after you uploaded this but you left out Steven Bochco's "COP ROCK" (1990). Every episode was musical. Wish you would post more!
Poor, overlooked, Brittania High. (Which was a year before Glee. And was terrible.) Great video! I always love a musical episode. A special little treat.
Glee's kind of weird example though. In the early episodes of Glee, all of the singing was diegetic. They were singing for performances or practice or just goofing off. It wasn't until later in the show that non-diegetic songs came out and characters just burst into song without being aware of it. And even then, the camera would often cut to them performing it for the club with any other sequence being...i don't a daydream?
Eilish Moogan oh man, I LOVED that show! The dialogueic ping-ponging was so good. I was reminded of that show when I first saw Gilmore Girls - it has a similar rhythm to the mother/daughter dialogues.
Once Upon a Time did a musical episode this year, at the end of season 6 called "the songs in our hearts." Flashing back to when Snow White was pregnant with Emma, and made a wish that something would secure her daughter's happiness, and everyone is singing the next morning. In present day, Emma, Snow and Chaming's daughter, was preparing for her final battle/possible death with the Dark Fairy, and preparing for her wedding to Captain Hook. Emma sings at the end of the episode (a song she made up when she was a little girl) which temporally helps her defeat the dark fairy. Then Emma and Hook get married, in a musical number filled wedding, right before the dark fairy unleashes a new dark curse.
A couple of months ago, I heard there would be a musical episode of Scorpion. I missed the episode when it aired, but when I searched for it here, it looked like it was only one song during the opening of the show, and I think it was a dream sequence.
Love Boat, 1984 or 85. Not only started adding song and dance numbers to each episode with guests like Ethel Merman and Carol Channing, but had at least one spontaneous song where Captain Steubing, Gopher and the rest sing about the idea of putting on a show, on the ship.
funny thing I am actually a film & theatre major and while he's correct about diegesis. non dietetic music is music that the character is unaware of or doesn't interact with (not present in the story world). If a character is singing it, it is dietetic. if it's playing from a radio in the frame or references in the frame it is dietetic. However if it's mood music or sound effects and the character can't hear or notice or be affected by it then it is NON DIEGETIC. So fore example a narrator narrating a story is non dietetic, if the character interrupts said story (not if the narration fades but the character actually talks to the narrator) it becomes diegetic
That definition is one that doesn't take the conventions of musical theatre into account. In musical theatre, "diegetic" is generally understood to include any song a character sings as a performance in front of other characters within the world of the show - 'All That Jazz', 'Mein Herr' or 'Edelwiess' are diegetic songs because the characters are literally performing them, often on a stage or in front of some form of audience ('All That Jazz' and 'Mein Herr' are both performances in nightclubs; Captain Von Trapp plays/sings 'Edelweiss' as a performance for his children). Non-diegetic songs are ones that are the classic "people randomly burst into song and dance" songs - they're happening but they're not acknowledged within the world of the show as actually being performed. Most musicals tend to be more non-diegetic. Take a show like Phantom Of The Opera for an example: songs like 'Point Of No Return' and 'Think Of Me' are diegetic - the characters are performing them on a stage in an opera house in front of an audience - while songs like 'All I Ask Of You' and 'Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again' are non-diegetic - Raoul and Christine aren't literally singing to each other on the roof; Christine isn't literally singing as she's wandering through the graveyard. If the show wasn't a musical, these moments would probably be a line or two of dialogue instead of a song. Tl;dr: if there's no specific plot-related reason for someone to be singing, the song is non-diegetic.
Great video, well done! There's a live-action musical episode before Xena, and that's the one on Northern Exposure at 1993. Mostly it's just one character who does the singing, but by the end her husband harmonizes with her, so that counts as musical-i :)
***** "Old Tree" - Season 4, episode 25 of Northern Exposure. It was in a draft of my script, actually. I ended up leaving it out for two reasons: The first was that an OVERWHELMING number of TV history articles pointed to Xena as the first example of a live action musical episode. While clearly untrue, it seems that Xena had a larger impact on the cultural consciousness of musical episodes. (And perhaps I am only perpetuating this mistake with my video.) The second (and, really, more motivating) reason was that I couldn't find a decent enough video of that episode ANYWHERE. And I didn't want to comment on something that I hadn't actually seen. 😄
Hi, 3 things... 1. Love your channel and everything about it. 2. Before Glee, The Backyardigans (though animated) featured each episode as a new, themed musical. Check it out. 3. You dress 'right' and we shouldn't know this. 😉
Musical cartoons are actually a fairly common thing, especially ones aimed at kids. The ones that come to mind for me are Friendship is Magic, Phineas and Ferb, Steven Universe and Sofia the First.
I find it amusing how Xena both had a musical episode specifically to best serve the plot (The Bitter Suit, so damn good I listen to the soundtrack often) and also had a musical episode that was basically just then jumping on the musical episode bandwagon that they basically created (Lyre Lyre, an episode so bad it's kinda fun).
Hi there, LOVE your videos! Haven't read all the comments, but what about Family Guy? The opening title is a musical act and the show incorporates many songs into each episode. :)
This is real interesting but i do wish Tommy had also done a vid actually ABOUT the Buffy;OMWF episode. That would've been so great, Sigh! I think it does deserve it
A few things that might need to be added to the time line: The short-lived 1990 series Cop Rock was a Glee-esque every episode is a musical type series. Now, of course, that's not a "musical episode" of a series but a musical series. Still, an early outlier worth mentioning. There are a few examples of non-diagetic numbers from shows that predate the Zena episode you mention: The Sept 8 1996 season 2 opener of The Drew Carey Show "We'll Remember Always, Evaluation Day" as well as the May 14th 1997 season finale contain choreographed musical numbers. The show went on to include at least one musical number in most subsequent seasons. The May 18, 1997 season 2 finale of 3rd Rock From the Sun "A Nightmare on Dick Street" includes an elaborate musical dream sequence starring French Stewart (shot in 3D). Those are all examples of a single musical number in an otherwise non-musical episode and not episodes built around a musical format, but are still interesting and worth thinking about when considering the development of the musical episode as a genre.
I used to love the Drew Carey Show as a kid (I have no idea why, I was a weird child) and I remember there being several musicalesque moments throughout the 9 seasons. I was trying to find a boxset of it, but I was reading somewhere that there are copyright issues with some of the music and it likely will be a long while before it gets a DVD release. But yeah, their Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pricilla Queen of the Desert crossover sing/dance-off was enjoyable to my unaware child brain.
I was waiting the whole video for a mention of The Music Meister and Psych: the Musical... I am at peace now..🙌🏻 {note: I have both full soundtracks on my playlists rn... Jamaican Inspector is a work of art}
I know this video is five years old but I cannot believe that no one has brought up the Henny Penny musical episode of the Golden Girls. "A piece of blue sky just fell on my head. The where for and why is best left unsaid... but I have a hunch and it's appalling that like it or not... the sky is falling." That show is iconic.
There was an episode of "Love American Style" where one character keeps bursting into song, much to the confusion of the rest of the people in the show. Actually, as I recall, LAS was a thirty minute show split into two 15 minute segments, and it was only one of those two segments. But it preceded the mario show.
American Horror Story did have some Diagetic songs in the fourth season. For example,Sarah Paulson's character sung 'Criminal' as she was performing on stage in the episode. Same with Evan Peters' character who sung 'Come as You Are' for a rehearsal
In season 5 of Xena, they did a second musical episode. If the first one is a good exemple of musical made for plot points, the second called Lyre Lyre Hearts on Fire is a good exemple of a filler episode that is a musical for the sake of it. I love them both, I just that it was a good comparison... Great channel BTW ! :D
When I was a kid I discovered my love for musicals because of my favourite show: Dexter's laboratory, episode LABretto (and my love for science, double win ♥).
There's arguably another "I Love Lucy" episode that's arguably a musical episode: the episode in Scotland, where Lucy has a dream sequence where Ricky is a Scotsman and there's a 2-headed dragon. There's definitely some bursting into song in that one.
I'm honestly kind of surprised there was no mention of Fame (the TV series); that was probably the first real example of "every episode is a musical episode" since pretty much every episode of its 6 seasons contains at least one song and it's a good mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic musical numbers.
Yeah, it's funny, the show itself is really already a musical, with the first non- diegetic number popping up in the 20th episode with "Strong In The Real Way," long after 4 songs had already premiered ("We Are the Crystal Gems," "Let Me Drive My Van Into Your Heart," "Cookie Cat," and "Giant Woman," which is also arguably non-diagetic), and it's kinda become a mainstay, with a new song pretty much every few episodes. However, it's correct that there's an entirely sung through episode called "Mr. Greg" that both parodies and pays homage to musical theatre. Music has always been a huge part of this show, with specific characters and locations being represented by instruments and themes, these instruments combining when the character's fuse (character fusion songs are probably the coolest thing the show does imo), and even the hint that the corruption method is through a sort of song or sound.
im so sad that smash was only brievely spoken of, because honestly it was ome of those shows that showed how difficult being a star could be and trying to be one.
I guess kids' tv doesn't count? Because Rainbow and Barney were always about the music ❤ Also, probably not the point at all, but I think the musical episode of Scrubs is meant to pay homage to Avenue Q (re: imitation), because the patient in that episode is played by Sd'A, and the music (as far as I remember) is written by the composers of Avenue Q. It's been a long time, though, so I could be wrong. But, if memory serves... Anyways, wonderfully interested content. Thank you :)
Mirster Rogers Neighborhood would sometime have visits from an opera singer, name John Reardon,, over several episodes he would help the characters in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe plan, write, stage and preform a light opera. While The Neighborhood of Make-Believe segment usually only took a small part of an episode, on opera day it basically take over the episode with a quick intro and sum up by Rogers, we would then see the opera. The only diegesis for this these worlds of music was the character were performing an opera. Which is Diagetic to Rogers Neighborhood but not to the operas themselves. I can think of at least a half dozen of these and I could easily be missing some. Also I think after Mr. Reardon’s death, they did a musical play about a short necked giraffe which spread itself out, all but taking over several episodes.
There was one ILL ep where Lucy dreamed she was going to be sacrificed to a two headed dragon (Fred and Ethel) and she needed Ricky to save her. It was in the style of a musical. I think it was one of the European tour episodes because it was a bit of a spoof of Brigadoon.
Thanks for this great video! Though I disagree with you about Once More, With Feeling. I'd love to see the source where Joss Whedon says there are plot points that can "only be served through the genre of musical theater." I've been doing a lot of research on that episode for an upcoming book chapter and I haven't found that. He wanted to write a musical and, yes, he wanted to express certain plot points through song, because they were important enough for the music to carry them, and using the common definition that music takes over where words no longer suffice. But I don't think that's the same as "doing it for specific plot reasons." Perhaps it's a subtle difference, but I think it's important.
Love Boat had at least two movies that could be considered "musical". The Love Boat Follies" where Ann Miller and Ethel Merman guest-starred. And, the episode where a movie was being filmed on the ship with Ben Vereen.
I Love Lucy did a 3rd musical episode. Season 5 Episode 13 Lucy goes to Scotland is non-diegetic. Lucy dreams of being in Scotland where everyone happens to sing and dance. Check it out if you have time!
I always believed that a musical episode should be based on whether or not the music included in the show moves the story along or is commented upon by the characters as not normal based on their world and the application of it. This however brings into question whether or not cabaret the movie is a musical because their performances are on stage and Diegetic within the universe with an explanation that is logical within the universe.
