Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! lets its hair down this week as Josh goes on the lam and Melissa goes on the hunt for clues. Plus, Jane Krakowski will get an MVP second that caps a really enjoyable outing for the solid and writers.
The musical numbers on this week’s episode, entitled “Bells and Whistles,” show stellar. And Schmigadoon! delivers extra laughs per minute than common, which suggests the second season of the feather-light present completely discovered its groove.
Schmigadoon! recap: ‘Bells and Whistles’
Season 2, episode 3: Josh (performed by Keegan-Michael Key) has damaged out of jail (positioned there after being accused of murdering a showgirl), due to his cellmate, Topher (Aaron Tveit), and his band of singing hippies.
Melissa (Cecily Robust) is heartbroken to listen to it. As his lawyer, Bobbie (Jane Krakowski), tells her, it seems a lot worse now that Josh has fled from the regulation. He can protest his innocence all he needs, however he seems very responsible now.
Josh regrets breaking out, and he’s not likely loopy about all these hippies, both. They begin singing a tune about being a lot freer, however he doesn’t get into the spirit. (“Everybody’s gotta get bare!” is the funniest line of the tune, and Josh freaks out.)
Melissa lately landed a job on the membership owned by Otavius Kratt (Patrick Web page), filling in for the useless showgirl. She will be able to’t dance, however Kratt has a crush on her, so he gave her the job anyway.
Among the many useless dancer’s possessions is a datebook with an deal with in it. Melissa heads over there and finds an orphanage run by Miss Coldwell (Kristen Chenoweth) and a butcher store owned by the ill-tempered Dooley Flint (Alan Cumming).
Flint is the daddy of Jenny Banks (Dove Cameron), the useless woman’s former roommate and Melissa’s present roommate. Kratt had Jenny’s mother/Flint’s spouse killed, and despatched Flint to jail for the crime. Whereas he was gone, Kratt pressed Jenny into service as a dancer and his girlfriend.
Now, Flint needs revenge, however he hasn’t been capable of reintroduce himself to his daughter since he went away. He calls for that Melissa hold his existence a secret, and he or she agrees.
What’s not humorous about hippies and dope?
Photograph: Apple TV+
Ultimately, Melissa finds Josh — and by the point she does, he’s excessive as a kite. She tries to show to the hippies that she’s cool, however fails miserably. The hippies find out about Kratt, too, and have been attempting to cease him unsuccessfully.
“We’ve been getting bare and reciting parables for months and nothing has modified!” Topher says, in a sly rewrite of one of many nice jokes from The Simpsons.
Melissa takes Josh again to face trial, and Bobbie’s protection is all sung and danced. (It incorporates nods to large musicals together with Firm, A Refrain Line, Candy Charity and Moulin Rouge — a really spectacular quantity.) The showstopper will get Josh acquitted. Then, he and Melissa attempt to go away city, however in fact Kratt isn’t going to allow them to simply stroll away. It’s only a matter of how he’ll cease them.
Jane Krakowski steals the present
Photograph: Apple TV+
Julie Klausner wrote this episode of Schmigadoon!, and her acidic contact is way appreciated. Josh’s preliminary discomfort across the hippies feels very private and delivers numerous the most effective materials within the episode.
We nonetheless get the anticipated jokes of Josh and Melissa breaking the fourth wall when individuals hit them with songs and concepts culled from musicals, however they’re a minimum of funnier right here than they had been within the first two episodes of the present’s second season. The little play they placed on about sheep is a wonderfully silly encapsulation of not simply the ludicrousness of a lot of ’60s counterculture in America however the way in which it was portrayed on the stage and display screen.
Particular point out should be given to Jane Krakowski and her episode-stealing quantity within the third act. The wire work and curler skating, the Sondheim-cribbing final bar jammed with about 10,000 phrases for her to get via in 15 seconds, the seductive stroll — she nails each little problem the tune throws at her with out showing to interrupt a sweat.
… and the remainder of the Schmigadoon! solid members are not any slouches, both
Krakowski is hardly unheralded or something, but it surely’s nonetheless nice to know that she’s with writers who need to make the most of each considered one of her strengths. The Schmigadoon! solid is being fairly inconsistently utilized this season, which is sensible: These are busy performers, it’s a six-episode season, and writing a couple of tune for therefore many performers takes an terrible lot of labor. However I’ve been most impressed by Krakowski’s dedication.
I additionally favored Alan Cumming’s Sweeney Todd pastiche. Cumming’s acquired a nice singing voice that, whereas diametrically against the register of the extra well-known Todds like Len Cariou or Michael Cerveris, goes superbly with the Sondheim melody.
All in all, this week’s episode of Schmigadoon! may be very, very superb outing from this solid, and a reminder why, regardless of not factoring centrally into Josh and Melissa’s storyline, these guys had been all very fastidiously chosen.
★★★★☆
Watch Schmigadoon! on Apple TV+
New episodes of Schmigadoon! season two arrive each Wednesday on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-14
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay sequence The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Evaluation of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the creator of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 30 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which will be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
