EPISODE 204: MAN TEARS ARE CHICKEN SOUP FOR ROBERT FULGHUM’S SOUL

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

I love a good musical TV episode. Even when it doesn’t make any sense at all and ends up being a total disaster – Shonda Rimes can do no wrong, except for the episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” where Callie-in-a-Coma spends an hour hallucinating everyone singing – I am going to sit there and watch. “The Flash” and “Supergirl” are doing a musical crossover; I can’t explain it, but I am definitely into it.

Probably, this is because musicals tend to make me cry. (If you’ve ever been to a musical at the movies or in a theater and heard someone suddenly gasp back a sob, that was me.)

It’s not only musicals. I went to see “Bridget Jones’ Baby” in the fall and the song over the credits messed me up. I was so primed for the finale of “Lost” I had to make sure I watched it in an empty house. And I howled, repeatedly. And I’ve never watched it again.

Tears – I got ‘em, and I like to share ‘em. Most especially when there are people singing.

Here, in order of devastation, are my top five upsetting musical TV moments.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Going Through the Motions”
While Joss Whedon is known today for super heroes and his uniquely wondriculous dialoguery, his big break was creating the TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, which ran for seven seasons on different minor networks that combined and changed and now there’s the CW which is kind of their godchild or something.

I never watched “Buffy” while it was on TV; in fact I scoffed at it because the movie on which it was based (also written by Whedon) had been so bad. (Though “Pee Wee Herman” Paul Reubens gives the best death.)

But as it turns out – and as is usually the case when I write something off – “Buffy” was an amazing show that used monsters and horror and vampires to talk about the very real challenges of growing up and living in a crazy world. “High school is Hell” was Whedon’s pitch (and also apt description).

Towards the end of its run, the sixth of seven seasons, “Buffy” did a musical episode called “Once More with Feeling”. The premise: the people of Sunnyvale have somehow been enchanted to express their innermost feelings in song. And Buffy and the gang have to figure out how to break the spell, because eventually all that released emotion causes people to spontaneously combust. (Such a great concept.)

“Once More” is pretty much the gold standard of TV musical episodes. There’s not a single weak moment. And unlike the typical musical episode, stand alone stunts that have no real impact on the ongoing story, “Once More” would reveal something enormously important to the season. Buffy, who had sacrificed her life at the end of the last (incredible) season, had been resurrected by her friends, supposedly because they feared she was in Hell but really because they missed her and one of them was a witch who kinda sorta might have had an addiction to magic.

Turns out, after five years of this awful life of killing vampires and losing friends and her mom dying and sacrificing herself, Buffy had finally found her rest. She wasn’t in Hell. She was in Heaven. And her friends had ripped her out of that. (Bad friends!)

The episode begins with the song above, “Going Through the Motions”. It’s actually very funny, a great sales pitch on how peanut butter and jelly Buffy and singing are going to be. But hearing her talk about where she’s at gets pretty poignant.

But the really devastating song from the Buffy musical, the one that makes me upset even just to think about, is actually not in that episode at all, but in the middle of the next season.

I know. That timeline doesn’t make sense. Here’s the deal: Buffy’s best friend Xander has a thing for demons. Hey don’t judge; they’re not all bad. Xander actually fell in love with a great one, named Anya.

In the musical episode, they’re getting ready to get married, and they’re both having some pretty big fears about that, which of course come out and make their future more complicated and eventually they don’t even have a wedding and they break up and Anya leaves and God Joss loves to break hearts.

The next year, Anya shows up again, and she’s kind of back to her demon-y ways, which puts her on the wrong side of Buffy and the gang. And while they’re fighting she recalls a moment from the musical episode that we never saw, a song she sang about loving Xander before everything goes bad, called I’ll Be Mrs.

And... well, watch it and see.

Mad Men, “The Best Things in Life Are Free”
Did you remember that “Mad Men” did a musical episode? You know, the one where Peggy sings “La Vie en Rose” to of all people Joan, and Pete throws himself out the window?

Okay, so it wasn’t a whole episode. It was just a moment, a wonderful, wonderful moment, in which Don daydreams/hallucinates the now-dead Bert Cooper singing to him, and we finally get to see the amazing Robert Morse use all the incredible talent God gave him. Seriously, I know everyone’s hoping/jonesing/having DTs about a “Game of Thrones” spinoff, but if I had to choose, I’d want to see “The Life and Times of Bert Cooper”. (Or, an “X-Files” prequel about Mulder’s dad; or a show about Astrid Farnsworth from “Fringe”.)

SHE DESERVED SO MUCH MORE.

Bert’s song is played as an old-fashioned Broadway number – sweet, innocent, simple. A little soft shoe. But in the face of Don’s existential loneliness – oh God, Don’s reactions – Bert’s words are like knives.

Glee, "Marry Me"
A third of the way through “Glee”’s second season, Finn’s Mom married Kurt’s Dad and whatever don’t play coy you know you know who those characters are.

The “Furt” wedding, as it was known and is called and ever shall be (and the first of like a thousand weddings on "Glee", which given that most of the characters weren't even 18 is kinda super weird), opens with the kids singing and dancing down the aisle to Bruno Mars’ “Marry Me”. (And it wasn’t even a practice for an upcoming tournament. #GleeBurn)

It starts kind of teenage awkward goofy, Finn and Rachel doing the latest version of their “I know something big is happening here for someone else but I kinda think it’s really about you and me” dance-y dance.

The beat starts to pick up, something’s coming, Sam and Quinn deliver a sweet little harmony.

Then Artie and Brittany show up and oh people it is ON (if you watched “Glee” – winky face – you know that Artie and Brittany were much pretty much the show’s secret weapons; any time a sequence needed to take things to a higher place, they turned to them). We even get streamers – STREAMERS, people.

And then they’re all singing and Mike Chang is making strange moves that are supposed to be dancing because the show’s producers didn’t know yet that Harry Shum Jr. can like, legit dance, and we get the de rigueur glimpse of the three kids that are always playing in the band but never get a line. (I always wanted to write an episode where one of those guys gets to sing.) Then everyone’s dancing and Mr. Schue is sitting and nodding, which is always a little weird but also for the best because that hair is actually a sleeping monster.

Then comes the knife: Mr. Hummel runs in. It’s his wedding, of course he runs in. But then he starts dancing down the aisle himself. And not “Glee” show choir teenage fantasy dancing but awkward-and-owning-it dad style, struts and Fred Flintstone just got off of work and wants to drink with Barney fist pumps and weird shuffles.

And I don’t know why but I just start welling up. I think it’s his freedom; he is so utterly unselfconscious in that moment that it’s moving. (Honestly, how Mike O’Malley never got an Emmy for that role is beyond me. I would like to see him in everything.)

Then Finn’s Mom comes in and Mr. Hummel goes to get her and they dance up together and Finn is singing and Kurt is crying and I am going to need to stop writing this for a moment please talk amongst yourselves.

The Catholic Church is usually pretty up tight when it comes to weddings and what you can and can’t do. And a lot of it makes sense; I know you love Ed Sheeran, we all love Ed Sheeran, his voice does that half gravelly half emotional thing and he’s got those bangs and he’s the world’s wedding song writer, but save him for the first dance, okay?

But still, that moment on “Glee” is for me a glimpse of the kind of joy, expectation and blessing that we hope for when we get married. And the Church could do a lot worse than to allow more of that.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
For the last couple years I’ve kept hearing that I should try this musical comedy show “Crazy-Ex Girlfriend”, about Rebecca, a high-powered New York attorney unhappy with her life who runs into Josh, the guy she had a crush on twenty years ago at summer camp. And hearing he lives in West Covina, California, she decides to move there to try and be with him.

Having started it recently, I’m finding what makes it more than just “Ally McBeal 2017”... (Does anyone even get that reference? Am I alone in the universe? Could someone please feed me?)...is its awareness that its lead Rebecca is kind of legit messed up. For the most part the character herself is in complete denial of that fact; she spends the first third of the first season insisting to her work friend Paula that she’s not in love with Josh, she wanted to move to West Covina (which is basically endless Southern California strip malls without the proximity of the beach to make it tolerable so please.)

But every once in a while Rebecca screws up so incredibly badly that she can’t run from the disaster that is her any more.

One such moment happens about halfway through the season. I don’t want to give away what causes it, because you should watch this show for yourself.

I don’t want to give away the title, either, and I bet you’ll understand why if you listen to it. But I will say, it takes a classic rock staple, the female empowerment anthem, and uses it to show how brutally we can destroy ourselves.

(You know what’s really weird? While that song is pretty intensely devastating, the song that has really started to work on me has been “West Covina”, which Rebecca sings in the pilot to talk herself into believing her move has nothing to do with the guy she’s stalking. It’s wrapped in a sack full of crazy, but that idea of a person leaving behind the rat race, letting go of “my human worth = my career trajectory” is very moving. Liberating.)

Scrubs, "Waiting for my Real Life to Begin"
I don’t know how I ever found the TV sitcom “Scrubs”, about two young residents and the crazy staff of the hospital they’re working at. If you haven’t seen it, it’s right up there with “The Office” as one of the great early 00’s sitcoms. It might be the best sitcom I’ve ever seen at combining the funny and the poignant.

For instance, there was this one episode early in their run about a woman who needs a heart transplant like, today. And she’s really young, and really positive. So of course, you know it’s not going to work out.

But when she flatlines, the main character suddenly has this vision of her singing a Men-At-Work song. And all of the other cast members are there singing, too.

I’ll always remember watching that. I was living in this little Jesuit community for students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our TV room was in the basement, it was all painted cinder blocks and old comfy couches. There were people just upstairs cooking and chatting in the kitchen, but I was by myself, just enjoying the episode when suddenly this ending snuck up on me.

It made me so teary I had to cover my face with a pillow. (I really am a sobber. That’s attractive, right?)

Then I rewound it (remember rewinding?) and watched it again. And then I did it again. And again.

Then I scraped all the salt on my face onto a roast beef sandwich and it was delicious.

Who said eating your pain wasn’t good for you?

++LINKS++

There was a lot of buzz last week about different Super Bowl advertisers referencing things like race and immigrants. I don’t know if you saw this ad from UNICEF. It really got to me.

Also happened to come upon this last week, it’s school kids at Ground Zero making the Pope cry.

And lastly, for those who have no more tears to give, one more “Crazy Ex” link, a “Les Mis” parody about taking a case to water court. So hilarious. Plus, you have to love a show that gives such great roles to walk ons.

In the words of one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott: "Traveling mercies: Love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound."