Why More Shows Should Have Musical Episodes

Last week Supernatural aired its 200th musical-ish episode and it made me realize that a lot more shows should have musical episodes. I’m not particularly a fan of musicals, they always seem cheesy and I’ve never really been able to take them seriously for too long. I appreciated Glee on occasion but too much of it made me want to vomit, same goes for Mamma Mia and all the rest, but it always feels different when the show is not usually a musical. Supernatural pretty much has a different genre every week, it can do comedy, drama and horror but it has never ventured into musical territory until season 10’s “Fan Fiction”. The show has pulled on the heart strings A LOT lately and it needed some light relief but the episode also went through the journey of Sam (Jared Padelecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) the past ten years including multiple deaths and any other format could probably have made me just sit at home and cry for days but it didn’t.

The content of the episode should have made me cry but it didn’t, it made me smile and appreciate the show that I have been watching for 10 years. It has been an emotional roller coaster and the episode just makes me all fuzzy and want more. The musical format also makes the characters freely assess themselves and their lives in a way that a regular episode just can’t, and even though “Fan Fiction” is only musical-ish it still triumphs in this.

Supernatural isn’t ground breaking in its use of the musical, plenty of other shows have done so, one of my favourites being the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6 episode “Once More With Feeling”. On the surface it seemed more up beat and light hearted compared to other season 6 episodes but like Supernatural it gave the characters a chance to assess themselves and not have the audience delve into depression. In this episode it was revealed to the Scoobies that they hadn’t released Buffy out of Hell like they had thought, they had ripped her out of heaven.

If that had been revealed to the Scooby gang in a regular episode I highly doubt my feelings (our theirs) could handle it. It’s not just dramas and fantasy shows that could use musical episodes, they could all use them which Scrubs proves with “My Musical” in season 6 which is my personal favorite Scrubs episode of all time.

So there you have it, I think more shows should delve into the musical world because it’ll make the most depressing things more bearable and actually enjoyable to watch. Also, the musical numbers seem to be a hell of a lot better than the ones in actual musicals, I’ve stopped writing this post several times because I got caught up watching the videos so networks please switch it up a little and give me something to sing about (yes, this is cheesy but I stand by it)!. Anyone else agree with me?