Even I have to admit TGIF is not a good movie... at all.  But what a brilliant soundtrack from Casablanca and Motown.

I suspect the issue is with the “gypsy curse” trope, more than anything.

Is Tom Hopper famous?  I had to look up which cast member he was...

I actually remember that New Yorker profile.
Strange that At Last is hard for you to find--you must have an older collection than I do, as I have the single volume paperback that includes it (if that’s any help--) 

I mean he WAS known to be Broadway-calibre (to put it mildly) but not for his singing or dancing...

I just came here to say the same thing.  Her (his?) name only is mentioned in that one paragraph.  And there’s no Williams in the IMDB cast page.  And doesn’t seem to be a character with that name. 

I mean I think you’re half joking, but you have a point.  An English teacher might seem to form a more personal connection with a student--you know getting them to express themselves, telling them how much their personal work spoke to them, or whatever.  You wouldn’t really easily get that from a math, or science or…

I was actually living in the UK when it premiered.  Pretty sure there it was called Miami 7.  RIP Paul--he was my crush on the show.

I dunno, both shows (the stage versions, anyway) KNOW they’re musicals, especially Chicago where each song is announced as a different vaudeville act. That seems to mean self-awareness to me?

And I liked that she wasn’t an asshole.  That woulda seemed expected and lazy.

I agree, although I did find it refreshing that Garner’s character *wasn’t* mean and didn’t hold it against him.  But I still didn’t fully buy it (IF he was able to make a decent living just as a teacher, then sure, it would make more sense.)

If they’re jumping through musical history two decades at a time, I’m not sure how they’re gonna pad it till season 10 ;)

Completely agreed.

Yeah, that was my take away with Beetlejuice too, actually (down to thinking they handled the “we know we’re a musical” gimmick well, but being underwhelmed with the songs.)

Ha I wrote my overly rambly long post before reading yours—but I’m glad someone else commented on how self-serious is really not a good term to describe this era of musicals (especially odd since the word was used here to describe Sweet Charity, especially.)

Sondheim always maintained (slightly disingenuously) that…

While, as a big musical nerd, I wasn’t completely won over by season 1, I think it plays into a number of factors that (I guess?!) made it enough of a success to continue. A big one is that it has a ton of musical theatre Easter eggs for musical fans, but its parody was on such a basic, general level that even people…

I enjoyed so much about the first season, that I feel like such a grouch for how much it also annoyed me—especially as it went on. Look, I’m a Sondheim fanatic so I don’t need my musical leads to be “likeable” but Josh, especially, was so off-putting, I have no idea why we were meant to want him and Melissa to be…

A Damn Yankees review that doesn’t mention Gwen Verdon or Bob Fosse?  Wow

No mention of the constant comparison between Henry and Mark Strong?  :D

Were you torturer or tortured?  ;)  I DO think it’s a good play, certainly one of the best (maybe along with Duchess of Malfi) of the post-Shakespeare, Jacobean/Caroline era tragedies.