An ode to the partial musical

I feel like it's been a while but remember when every tv show had to have a musical episode? Was Riverdale the last one? Who knows, who knows, but for a quite a lot of years they were apparently essential, despite the fact that the only one that was any good, or did anything interesting with the concept happened all the way back in 2001, on Buffy the Vampire.

The thing about the Buffy musical epsiode, Once More, with Feeling, that sets it above other musical episodes of tv shows is that it uses the conventions of musical theatre to advance the plot of the series.

Sometimes, in a musical, the songs take the place of dialogue. The characters sing to each other when, in the fiction they inhabit, they are having a conversation. But sometimes the songs are non-diegetic. Characters sing what they're thinking and the audience hears them, but the other characters don't.

In Once More, with Feeling a demon is in Sunnydale causing everyone in town to perform their lives as if they're in a musical. This includes making them sing non-diegetic songs – but they're actually doing it, out loud, within the fiction, in front of each other. All the characters sing their deepest feelings, their carefully kept secrets and everyone hears them, and those revelations drive the show forward over the subsequent episodes.

No one else has bothered to do anything quite that interesting with the form so honestly I don't know why anyone else has bothered to have musical episodes, but I suppose that doesn't really matter because I'm not here to talk about musical episodes. I'm here to talk about something much better: when a tv show or a movie turns into a musical very briefly and then stops being one.

I love this.

The Magicians, which I'm currently rewatching, is great for this. The Magicians rules, by the way, it's based on the books by Lev Grossman and it's camp as hell. Basically what if Hogwarts was a grad school in upstate New York, and also what if Narnia was real and deeply fucked up. Every possible content warning on it, shit gets very dark, but shit also gets very silly and it's excellent.

And every so often there's a song. You know, for magic reasons. A musical spell, or a hallucination that involves singing. They're always pretty well arranged and adequately sung; somehow more charming because everyone's only ok to decent at singing.

I would link to a video but out of context it feels cringe and weird and off-putting, but trust me the show earns those songs. There's only one episode with more than one, and only three or four episodes with any songs in five seasons.

They come out of nowhere. I love a song that comes out of nowhere.

Also good for this is How I Met Your Mother, a show that simultaneously is better than you remember it being, and has exactly the reputation it deserves. But the songs always hit.

Suddenly there's a massive musical number about suits and you're loving it. Barney gets slapped in the face real hard and there's a song about it. Robin used to be a pop star. Sporadic and unexpected and unsustained.

30 Rock has a lot of music, but I think only the one suddenly this is a musical bit, and it's when they all sing Midnight Train to Georgia about Kenneth.

Look, I love musicals (even though most musicals are bad) but there's something special about something becoming a musical only briefly. It reminds you that really you can do anything you want. Creation is a joyful anarchy; there are no rules that can't be broken. We are always free to embrace the magic of asking why the fuck not and we should be asking it more often.

The gold standard for the partial musical is, of course, Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar. It's better altogether to go in cold on Barb & Star so I really want to say as little as possible about it. I want you all to experience the full coming out of nowhere of everything in the film, especially the musical numbers.

But if you don't trust me enough to drop a couple of pounds renting it on your streamer of choice, while I consider you a fool, I guess I will give you just one link, I suppose.

I would like more of this kind of thing. I would like more why the fuck not. I would like more committing to the bit and then changing what the bit is and committing to the new one.

Writing a whole musical is really hard. Probably one of the most difficult things to write. That is why most of them are bad! But you don't have to write a whole musical, just write part of one.

Please!