Many shows have been successful in integrating a musical episode into a season as a fun way to change things up without really detracting from the plot or changing character motivations. Unfortunately Grey’s Anatomy is not one of those shows. With so many examples of good musicals to work from, the show’s writers seemed to disregard all precedence and ignore some basic rules. I will admit that the episode definitely had moments where it worked, but they were few and far between.
For starters, the entire plot device that caused the singing to occur was completely unoriginal and inconsistent. Scrubs used a similar idea where a patient’s medical condition caused her to interpret everyone as singing, however there was no singing when she wasn’t present in the scene. Grey’s started off strong, establishing that Callie was having and out-of-body experience where she experienced her feelings through song. And it wasn’t even that much of a stretch since the show had already addressed the “supernatural” elements when Izzie was seeing Denny’s ghost a while back. Unfortunately the writers did not establish clear enough “rules” for how this singing was supposed to work so instead of it just being when Callie was around, the other doctors would seem to randomly and awkwardly burst into song when she was no where to be found. The most notable instance is when Owen belts out the opening lines of “How We Operate” in the middle of an argument with the other doctors.
Moving past these inconsistencies, it was really difficult to follow the actual plot of the episode because of the singing. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to have people singing over dialogue, but they should be fired. I couldn’t hear half of what was being said during the episode. This could easily have been fixed with better sound mixing, but it was still just a poor idea because you’re basically forcing people to either pay attention to the song and miss the plot, or strain to hear the plot and not enjoy the singing.
The episode did have a few good moments. I thought that Meredith’s (non-singing) breakdown in the elevator with Derek was a very moving moment. I also thought the scene with Callie and Arizona singing “Universe & U” was very touching, and a very appropriate use of the musical theme. I also largely enjoyed the song selection, however, it was widely indicated that the songs were chosen because they had been played at pivotal moments earlier in the series. Unfortunately some of the songs were very inappropriately used for this episode. For example the song “Grace” was originally used when Meredith was sleeping with Derek behind Addison’s back in season 2, but was used as Callie was being wheeled into surgery for this episode.
Something that me and my roommates all agreed on after the episode ended was just how awkward it was to watch some of the scenes. Most notably, when everyone is singing in the operating room and when Callie is singing “The Story” at the end. The former was awkward because it was just so ridiculous, almost to the point of campiness at a level that the show never even comes close to in regular episodes. The latter was awkward because of the way it was filmed. Sara Ramirez, who plays Callie, is a Tony Award Winning actress and singer, so she knows what she’s doing when it comes to musicals on the stage. Unfortunately what works on the stage comes across as very over the top on TV. I appreciated her impassioned performance in the episode, but the camera angles and scenery during “The Story” just didnt make sense and were uncomfortably framed. It kept jumping from a close up of her looking into the camera (breaking the fourth wall) to a full-body shot of her being overly-dramatic and looking off to the side. Not to mention it was sort of creepy watching her “mental projection” interact with the real Callie.
As a long-time fan of the show, and based on initial reports of the episode, I had hopes that this would be the “Once More With Feeling” of this decade and was disappointed when it wasn’t. I still love the show and will continue to watch it, I just hope this doesn’t turn into the “shark jump” of the series.