Don't you just love it when favorite TV characters burst
into song? We're not talking the expected, like the musical bits on Fox's Glee, but instead the non-musical
television shows that give us a song (and sometimes a dance!) out of the blue.
Check out these unexpected musical moments on non-musical TV shows.
Mad Men - "Waterloo"
The spring finale of
Matthew Weiner's AMC drama tied up a slew of loose storylines, but the 7th
season episode, titled "Waterloo," also featured an unusual sendoff
for a beloved character. When ad agency boss Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) passed
away, he came back via Don Draper's hallucination-and he was singing with a
troupe of dancing secretaries. The musical number was "The Best Things in
Life Are Free," a song written in 1927 and later recorded by Bing Crosby
and Sam Cooke. In an interview posted on AMC's website, Morse (who's a Tony
award winning Broadway veteran) dished on working with a choreographer and
recording the piece with a large orchestra: "It was just a lovely way, a
sweet way, for dear Matt to send me off," he said.
Grey's Anatomy - "Song Beneath The Song"
ABC's medical drama
is known for its eclectic Indie soundtrack, but the docs don't usually so the
singing. Until the 7th season's musical episode "Song Beneath the Song,"
that is. This Grey's Anatomy music
event featured the cast singing songs that were previously featured on the show
(example: Meredith, McSteamy, and more belting out The Fray's "How To Save
a Life"). Grey's star Patrick
Dempsey was noticeably quiet during the musical numbers (maybe McDreamy can't
carry a tune?), and he later referred to the quirky episode as "Glee,
M.D."
How I Met Your Mother - "Girls vs. Suits"
The long running CBS sitcom marked its 100th episode with a
musical extravaganza, culminating with Neil Patrick Harris' Emmy Award winning
performance of the song "Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit." The
over-the-top musical production featured 65 dancers and a 50-piece orchestra,
and the HIMYM star has even gone on
record as saying it's one of his favorite scenes from the entire series.
"It might sound glib, but I think standing on top of a taxi cab in front
of 60 people wearing well-tailored suits, spinning around like a rock star
definitely takes the cake," Harris told the New York Post.
American Horror Story - "The Name Game"
Jessica Lange was
naming names when she burst into song during the second season of the FX
anthology American Horror Story. In an unusually light
moment, her character, Sister Jude, hallucinated after electroshock and began
singing the campy 1964 song "The Name Game." Showrunner Ryan Murphy
told Entertainment Weekly his idea was to "do a musical number that was
something very '60s crossed with Jacob's
Ladder." "It was very fun to do," he said. "We spent
almost a whole day doing it. [Jessica] had a ball. I think after the darkness
of the season I think she quite enjoyed looking like Dusty Springfield."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - "Once More, With
Feeling"
And who knew vampires could sing? The Season 6
Buffy episode "Once More, With Feeling" was a
full-on musical, with all of the characters singing their lines. (A highlight:
The group song "Walk Through the Fire.") The episode was so popular
that it was later shown in movie theaters as a subtitled sing-a-long. Producer
Joss Whedon told the A.V. Club he created the musical episode because, well, he
could: "I was raised on a steady diet of Sondheim," he said.
"I'm absolutely a musicals boy. A lot of people didn't know that, because
I love horror movies …I made a musical because I was six years into a show, and
I knew that nobody was going to stop me."
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