What Makes A Musical Episode?

The other night I was discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my sister, and how it’s just One Of Those Shows that established how fandom works in ways that carry over even to this day — for example, did you know that tvtropes.org was created because of Buffy? And then out from my mouth spilled the sentence:

“It even popularised — or maybe even originated — the musical episode!”

But did it? I wasn’t sure. So what else could I do but whip out my laptop and do some good old fashioned research! Yet, in doing so I lead myself down a rabbit hole of Wikipedia pages, group texts, and excel spreadsheets, all revolving around one idea:

What even is a musical episode? 

Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Unfortunately, searching the phrase “first musical episode in a tv show” isn’t all that helpful. It’ll show you articles and reddit threads about people’s opinions on the best musical episodes, people’s custom IMDB lists of musical episodes, and even just straight up the Wikipedia page for Buffy’s musical episode ‘Once More With Feeling’.

It also showed the Wikipedia page “Category: Musical television episodes”, jackpot, right? Wrong. The thing about those Category Wikipedia pages is that they can only link to other Wikipedia pages, meaning that if your musical episode isn’t significant enough to have a wiki page, you’re not getting a feature. This is such a flawed system that it doesn’t even include all of the musical episodes from a single show; only four of the seven Riverdale musical episodes featured on the page!

And so we find ourselves back at square one. If we can’t find a comprehensive list to help us define the musical episode, I guess we’ll just have to use our brains and all the logic and pop culture knowledge inside them.

A helpful way to define something is to figure out all the things it isn’t, so with that in mind let’s go over a few categories of ‘musical episode’ that I don’t think should count!

They’re ALL musical episodes

Put simply, there’s nothing special about a musical episode if they’re all like that. A musical episode should feel like an event, a notable occasion worthy of pointing out, not the standard fare that you expect every week. 

Shows in this category include Glee, Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist, and Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.

Glee (Fox) | Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (NBC) | Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (Paramount+)

It only has one song

On the other end of the song-density spectrum, I don’t think episodes with only a single song should count either. Truthfully, this one is more vibes-based, but like… man, you gotta have more than one, otherwise that’s just an episode with a song in it!

Episodes in this category include How I Met Your Mother season 5 episode 12 ‘Girls Vs Suits’, and The X-Files season 9 episode 13 ‘Improbable’.

How I Met Your Mother (CBS) | X-Files (Fox)

The songs are entirely in-universe performances

Honestly, this one’s probably the most contentious category I have and not everyone will agree with it. But as far as I'm concerned, the mere presence of music is not what makes a musical, it’s the intention and emotion behind the songs that makes it count. 

There’s an old musical theatre adage that a song is what happens when a character’s emotions are too intense for words, and dancing is when they’re too intense for a song. It’s that sentiment that I’m looking for in my musical episodes. It’s all good and well when there are songs in an episode, but if they’re just there for the sake of performance without any of the underlying intensity, then I say we count them out of the running for Musical Episode classification. 

Episodes in this category include The Simpsons season 5 episode 1 ‘Homer’s Barbershop Quartet’, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 6 episode 20 ‘His Way’.

The Simpsons (Fox) | Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Paramount)

The episode is ABOUT a musical, but isn’t in musical format

While it might colloquially be known as a musical episode, in my heart of hearts I refuse to accept that. That’s not to say that an episode about a musical can’t be a Musical Episode™, but similarly to the previous category, it all comes back to the intention of the songs. If it’s just a performance without the heart, then it’s a no from me.

Episodes in this category include The Office season 7 episode 3 ‘Andy’s Play’, and Supernatural season 10 episode 5 ‘Fan Fiction’.

The Office (NBC) | Supernatural (The CW)

Now that we know what isn’t a musical episode, what are some real musical episodes?

Starting with the catalyst for this article, we have ‘Once More With Feeling’ from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, wherein the town of Sunnydale is cursed by a demon to have to sing their true feelings. Just by the nature of the curse, the episode embraces the aforementioned adage, even going to the next level of the saying at the end of the episode, when Buffy starts uncontrollably dancing because her emotions are too much for even a song.

Another show that truly embraced the musical episode was Riverdale. With a total of seven musical episodes, they were definitely more common than is standard, but maintained that special-event feeling by only occurring once a season with the audience looking forward to it each year. Most of the Riverdale musical episodes revolved around the characters putting on a performance for their school, but still featured the characters using the songs as emotional vehicles, allowing the episodes to escape the about-a-musical-but-not-a-musical disqualification. 

And finally, this article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the much-maligned Grey’s Anatomy episode ‘Song Beneath the Song’. Rated as the 5th worst episode of the show (an unfortunately common occurrence with musical episodes), the episode follows the hospital staff after a car crash nearly kills one of the doctors. The explanation for the musical? It’s her dying brain applying a melodic filter to her surroundings, with paramedics singing as they load her into the ambulance, and doctors bursting into song mid-surgery.

So there we have it. Even if we haven’t created a perfect definition for what a musical episode is, by knowing what it isn’t, and seeing some good examples, we are now prepared to do… something? I don’t really know the purpose of this information, but wasn’t it fun!

Now go forth and accept the whimsy of the Musical Episode™ into your heart!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB) | Riverdale (The CW) | Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)