A Very Grey's Anatomy Musical

If you're an avid reader of my blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Grey's Anatomy and I believe it too often gets ragged on by people who blow it off as your typical soap opera drama.  What you might not know is that I'm also a big fan of musicals.  I'm always a little bit excited but a lot skeptical when a musical episode of a TV show I love is going to come out.  Because as you may or may not have noticed, plot and character development are very important to me, and just throwing a musical episode in for no good reason takes one out of the story.

It worked on Buffy because there was a demon that got off on making people sing out their true feelings.  It actually moved along the plot in a very unique way, bringing out characters' thoughts and feelings without them being able to control it, causing them to let out deep dark secrets that would change the way other characters understood them.  It worked on Scrubs because a patient had a terrible brain aneurysm that caused her to hear life as a musical.  They were very cautious to make sure she was always around during the musical numbers, even if she was just kind of saddled in the background or passing by for a second.

Of course, what both of these shows also did was play to the actors' strengths to get the best musical numbers they could, and they included some very well-written songs that really added something to the show.

The Grey's Anatomy musical episode did very few of these things correctly.  The episode started off, and Callie (played by Sara Ramirez), a beloved, pregnant doctor at Seattle Grace had just gotten into a terrible car accident where she flew through the windshield.  By the way, her soon-to-be fiance, Arizona, walked away with seemingly little injury despite her face being covered in blood and bruises for the rest of the episode.  I find it hard to believe that a group of doctors would let their doctor friend go completely unexamined just because she was standing, but that's a mini rant for another day.  In the opening scene, Callie has an out of body experience and sings to her shocked and completely bruised and bloodied barely breathing self.  When it moves to the emergency room, Dr. Hunt and Dr. Bailey join the singing.

This is all very acceptable and actually kind of moving.  Callie was too shocked to feel her pain, so instead she heard singing around her.  The song was "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol, and it was extremely beautiful and I couldn't stop crying.  I thought, this seems promising.  But they were using only existing songs, songs that had been featured previously on Grey's Anatomy, and of course this makes the capabilities very limiting.

Because of the limitation of having to take an already existing song and making it fit a situation (Although Jersey Boys on Broadway does this sensationally...), things got a little hokey after this first scene.  There was even a scene where Callie hallucinated back to the moment where Arizona was about to propose to her, and so Callie started to sing a song a very happy song called "Running on Sunshine" by Jesus Jackson, about how Arizona made her feel.  As the song continued it literally cut to every single couple on the show singing this song to each other.  It really just came out of nowhere and had no business being in the episode.  First of all, this was an intense episode.  And there was no build to the happy feeling song, it was a quick switch.  One minute Callie was talking about how she's about to get hit by a truck, and the next she's singing her love.  It really felt out of place, and took me out of the intensity of the moment.  The second thing is, as you may have noticed, characters were singing when Callie wasn't around.  So it wasn't in her head... they were just singing?  This was one of quite a few times this happened in the episode.

Which brings me to my next point, by the end of the episode, every single actor had had a chance to sing.  And everyone sounded pretty great.  But it was abundantly clear who has a really good voice, and who was auto tuned to sound good.  As a music lover, I think that just bothers me.  But it also took me out of it a little bit.  I think Buffy and Scrubs had the right idea.  Keep their voices, so it's that character singing.  Play to your actors' strengths to make a good musical, don't mold them to the musical you want.  Don't mix some really beautiful organic singing with some crappy auto tuned shit.  It's tacky, and in a couple songs, it really threw off the balance.

Overall, I think this would have been an amazing, incredibly intense episode if there hadn't been any singing, or they just put in the first number.  Although, I do have to give a shout out to Sara Ramirez, who is an incredible singer, and at least made it so the majority of the songs sounded amazing.  Kevin McKidd who plays Dr. Hunt also has a surprisingly beautiful voice.

Parenthood: Why So Serious?

I want to start off by saying I really, really love this show.  Parenthood is an NBC dramedy ensemble piece about a large family.  It's categorized as a drama, but I say dramedy because I think if you disregard the comedy than you're missing out on a lot.  This show makes me laugh just as much as it makes me cry (until recently, but we'll get to that later).  Overall, Parenthood is a really realistic portrayal of family life and the way families interact with each other, through the good times and the bad.

This one big family is comprised of five smaller families.  There's the grandparents and their four children, and then each of their children (who are now fully grown adults) have their own families, each with at least one child.  Overall there are a whopping fifteen main characters, which I think might actually beat Grey's Anatomy, and every character has had their own fully developed plot line at points in the show.

Usually the show has a really good balance between comedy and drama.  When Adam was in a fight with his wife Kristina, his boss gave him an "edible", which he thought to be an ordinary lollipop.  An edible is actually a food item containing marijuana.  I learned that from watching Weeds.  Anyway, obviously things got wacky from there.  And they made up, in a hilarious scene.  That's just one example of how every episode of Parenthood has its fair share of drama and comedy.  It doesn't hurt that there are three adorable little children who say the darnedest things.

But lately there's been a shift.  The past three episode have been all drama, and sure, there was some pretty heavy stuff going on.  [If you haven't watched the recent episodes, and plan on it, here is your Spoiler Alert.]  Crosby got into a fight with his fiance Jasmine, and when she wouldn't talk to him his anger and upset escalated until he slept with someone else.  That someone else happened to be Gabby, the behavioral aid of Adam and Kristina's son Max, who has Asperger's.  Gabby has real feelings for Crosby, so she quit.  This lead to Adam screaming at Crosby about how irresponsible he is and how his nephew has Asperger's and he can't just think about himself.  Max overheard this screaming match and the episode ended on confused and quizzical Max, "I have Asperger's?"

The next episode was mostly about how to explain to your son that he has Asperger's and what having Asperger's means.  I kind of understood why these episodes got so heavy, and I found it appropriate.  I thought after that episode, things would start to lighten up again.  But it's only gotten worse.  Julia can't have a baby, Amber only applied to two colleges and didn't get into either of them.  Sarah wrote a play and even though it looks like it might get produced, there's something weirdly heavy about that plotline, too.

And it's not that I don't like the show anymore.  I still find it very interesting, I'm still very attached to the characters.  I just think if it keeps going in this direction, I'm going to get sick of it and it will stop being the show I fell in love with.  The show I watch twice every week because there were so many amazing highs and lows.  It will stop feeling so realistic, and I'm not the only one who won't like it anymore.  Parenthood gets pretty decent ratings, especially for its network and time slot (NBC at 10pm), so why start modifying something that's doing well?

Bring back some of your awesome comedic flair, Parenthood.  Or I'll miss you so much it'll hurt.