To each his own, of course, but I'm really not the biggest fan of Grease's score. It's catchy as hell, but I find very few of the lyrics complex or clever (even just in their rhyme schemes) and there's a simplistic feel to the music that drives me crazy. If a musical isn't going to use its songs to advance the plot…

Genuinely curious: Do you think not addressing the intentional diversity of the cast would have been the better choice?

It's a weird, charming little number.

Sure, but I think something like Hairspray, for instance, manages to celebrate 1960s culture and music while still providing more substance and commentary on the era.

Well thanks for listening! And since these live TV musicals are so new, I feel like critics are still trying to figure out how to review them too. For instance, a theater review of a popular musical is likely to compare it to other productions of the show and discuss what it brought to the table in terms of elevating…

I think the key thing about the scene is Sandy's reaction (at least in
this version). If Danny had misread the mood, made a move, and been
rejected it would have been one thing. But the fact that Sandy felt the
need to literally flee the car and (apparently) walk home from the
drive-in indicates that she felt SUPER…

I still can't believe MTV broadcast the "Legally Blonde" musical on TV. What a magical time. I wish networks did more stuff like that.

These are all very valid points. I think, ultimately, the cinematography was so consistently stellar that it made the whole thing a breeze to watch, which is where the positive grade comes from. But personally I was just more interested in some of the weird choices this production made so I talked about those more…

Okay, that makes a lot more sense than what I wrote.

I so desperately tried to find a video of that sketch to include in this review (it's one of my favorite things SNL has ever done), but apparently they took it off YouTube.

Are you trying to tell me your high school didn't have two sets of bleachers in front of the school entrance? Then where on earth did you watch your public cheerleading auditions?

Maybe it was all a nod to Grease Live's true star: Mario Lopez.

To be honest, I'm more bothered by the simplistic music and lyrics than the gender politics. "We made out under the dock." / "We stayed up til 10 o'clock." It genuinely feels like a seven year old child wrote that. I like my musical theater to have musical complexity and Grease basically has none.

I don't understand why Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey made Jepsen's new number a contemporary pop ballad instead of a 50s pastiche. It was really jarring.

I agree with all of this. As much as I like using "Those Magic Changes" to underline Danny's character development, there's a reason the show puts it much earlier in act one (after "Summer Loving," in fact, when the show really needs a boost).

To be fair, I listed a lot of reasons Grease is terrible. Yes its says some weird stuff about women, but I'm equally annoyed that its music is generic and its lyrics are annoyingly simplistic.

The ripping sound during "Freddy, My Love" was really distracting. And I wish they had somehow been able to keep the close-up tight enough so that we didn't see the red straps of her new dress before the big reveal.

I mean, they all felt way too old in the movie. Watching Grease for the first time as a little kid I genuinely didn't understand they were supposed to be high school students.

Honestly, sexism is like 10th on my list of things I dislike about
Grease. Yeah it bothers me a bit, but the simplistic lyrics and generic music bother me *way* more.

It's weird because Marty is a very performative character (a teenage girl who views herself as a mature adult), so it was a little hard to tell how much of Palmer's heightened performance was a character choice for Marty vs. an acting choice for the TV musical medium. I went with the more charitable assessment, but I…