On any given night, watching television usually revolves around fighting housewives, bachelors or bachelorettes, dancing celebrities and a Kardashian or two. If you don't count reality, the rest of the television landscape is usually full of procedurals, dozens a week featuring every possible way to murder, maim or decapitate a body. Every 'creative' way to sexually assault torture it, and any other type of pain these tv writers can dream up. Even my favorite shows are full of Mothers abusing their children, heads in boxes, zombies and vampires.
Last night NBC tried something different. Something huge and difficult and not done in decades. Something I wish we could more of. A musical, and live at that! It was far from perfect, there issues with casting, nerves and production. As a person who spent time in the theatre however, especially in musicals, I could relate to every issue that popped up. Weak voices and casting (Olivia in Grease, Whitney in The Bodyguard) where singing voice trumps acting chops when it comes t the lead. I doubt Streisand is planning a live version of Funny Girl or Lapone a live Sunset, especially if they saw the way Undewood was ripped to shreds last night.
I still enjoyed it however. Not great, but good and when the nerves settled, the show got better and better as it went along. It had that incredible score, beautiful orchestration and mostly stellar vocals (which took up about 80%) of the musiccal. Just the fact something new was being tried should be applauded. I am becoming decreasingly depressed at the internet who users seem to be more and more made up of people whose main goal is to tell people they are too fat, too stupid, too untalented to be as successful as they have become. The hate last against some parts of the show was another example of how we are all turning not just into critics, but nasty critics, trying to one up each other with our witty ways of saying something SUCKS. Although the production was flawed, most night what's left in my head after watching tv is the visual the latest way someone was offed. Last night, and today, it is The Lonely Goatherd I can't get out of my head. Thank you NBC for trying something not only different, but also needed within the television landscape.
4 comments:
I agree. I enjoyed watching it last night. Not even close to being as good as the movie but there were many aspects of it that made it worth watching. I would love to see NBC make this a yearly tradition with maybe different actors and actresses playing the roles. Or even try different musicals each year. Rocky Horror would be fun during Halloween.
-Chris
yeah, it was bad at times but still fun to watch. Reminded me of event shows I watched as a kid
Since the ratings were huge, does this mean everything, even the Evening News, on NBC will be done as a musical? It is the one network that once they hit gold (after many years of mostly misses), they immediately start stripmining and ruin it all.
I have to agree, it was not perfect, but it was enjoyable, with some very good moments. I only hope that this is the first of many programs like this. We need more of this and less of the Kardasians and Honey Boo Boo!
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