Should schmicago have committed to actually eat an orphan? I mean… maybe?
In Season 1 of Apple TV Plus’ Schmigadoon!two modern New Yorkers, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key), got lost in the Golden Age city of music Schmigadoon, rekindled their love and left it a more progressive place.
In Season 2, the now-married couple begin the season dealing with career lows and fertility issues; so they went hunting for their Schmigadoon retreat. Unfortunately for them, the city has evaporated into dark and sloppy Schmicago, with all that jazz of soul-searching musicals from the ’60s and ’70s.. “Mystery and magic, ends so tragically,” sings the narrator (Tituss Burgess, sipping and slurping drama like wine) in a “We Got Magic to Do” Pippin pastiche. No more pastels, nor happy “Corn Puddin’.”
But it’s all good now, as the two guys also leave Schmicago a sunnier place.
That’s not to say that this second (hopefully not the last!) season doesn’t shake up the formula. Creators Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio created a musical enthusiast’s dream world, populated with stage stars and loving references, the kind whose mere presence can drive fans of the genre wild with applause in their own living rooms.
Schmigadoon season 2 (or schmicago) is a layered cream pie of confluences of both stage productions and their film adaptations. Paul crafts clever mashups that grow into origamis of influences, while choreographer Christopher Gattelli playfully spins dance homages (Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, and Twyla Tharp, to name a few).
There are too many tributes to list (hi Dream women!). Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth (from the 1999 movie Annie) reunite with ham up as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett archetypes respectively to a “A Little Priest” /Annie/Oliver! extravagance ensemble finished with Bennett’s choreo “Turkey Lurkey Time”.. Jane Krakowski was stunned with a ‘Sondheim meets Kander-Ebb meets Marvin Hamlisch’Dance: 10; Appearance: 3,’” as she showed off aerial stunts like she did in the Nine Broadway revival
But it is important to note schmicago‘s main actions are framed within the Cabaret-based Kratt Club owned by the evil tycoon Kratt (Patrick Page, who can rattle the spine and shake the funny bone too). A few other main locations round out the Schmicago map: the Hair/god game Parable telling commune and Quick Street (as Sweeney Todd‘s Fleet Street).
As cheerful as schmicago may be, the classics it draws inspiration from are largely not stories with happy endings. When she loses her only chance for love, charity from Sweet charity lives hopefully even after. Half of the dancers in a chorus line don’t make the cut and go home (replicated a bit in schmicago‘s episode 2). Sweeney Todd ends with him consumed by murder. As we celebrate parables, God spell chooses not to represent the resurrection of Jesus literally (if you don’t read the curtain call as such).
One of the few to reach happy conclusions still involves morally questionable protagonists – the Chicago murderesses Roxie and Velma (recreated as Krakowski’s lawyer Billy Flynn) as they outsmart the showbiz legal system and Hot Honey Rag dances to fame. While it’s a real treat to watch the writers piece these universes together into a fantastic Crossover Fanfic Musical Riff, it’s also just as quirky. schmicago got an exaggerated result when considering the razor blades lurking in the stories it borrows from.
schmicago negates its potential edges with an ending too effervescent for a musical landscape framed primarily within this age of musical theatre. All of his amoral or accomplice players, even Sweeney Todd-esque Dooley Blight (Cumming, injecting crazy gravitas), end up being too honorable, redeemable, and conscientious for convenience rather than through hard-earned struggles. His name is cleared and he is reunited with his daughter (Dove Cameron, who channels Liza Minnelli’s unconscious hedonism), who found love with Aaron Tveit’s Topher. While in the source material, Mrs. Lovett betrays her foster child, Chenoweth’s Lovett becomes too fond of the orphans to cook them. So this schmicago version of Sweeney and Lovett can live happily ever after. Hippies redistribute once-hoarded wealth, and even Krakowski’s amoral lawyer lends a hand. The cop (puppy dog eyes Jaime Camil) is redeemed and is rewarded with a Rocky Horror Photo Show number. And the villain dies by one ghost of the opera reference, undermining the satisfaction of the Schmicago residents’ communal efforts to stop him.
Image: Apple TV Plus
Image: Apple TV Plus
A majority of schmicago players (without Kratt, kaput gone) have net profit from the season’s events. Although this musical comedy does not have to succumb to utter cynicism or Game of Thrones bloodshed, there is hardly any lasting impact, loss or moral conflict that leaves a dent in the soul. The lack of dimension can be partly explained by from Schmicago restrictive run of six episodes. You can see that the penultimate episode was supposed to wrap up the drama in an Andrew Lloyd Webber rock pastiche. schmicago deserved more time (and more earwigs) for proper character development.
schmicago also decouples its more politically conscious predecessors from its politics. For this Cabaret scenario, Nazism swallows the Kit Kat Club cabaret (as in the Sam Mendes staging, with Cumming as Emcee). Avoiding the specific context of the Vietnam War (and any image resembling that of a soldier’s corpse on the US flag), Her is linked in the fight against an electric monopoly. It’s understandable for a coherent crossover world-building, but schmicago can feel like a missed opportunity to fully understand the sides and depth of these musicals. The solemn moment of 20 seconds of nudity inside Her caused controversy at the time; in Schmigadoon Season 2 frames the moment as “haha, these hippies are getting naked” sketch humor. schmicago ventures on the side of entertainment as it barely gives room for the sobering darkness to bubble up, flattening the layers of material it fondly alludes to.
In a feeble attempt not to avoid the material’s inherent depression, schmicago chooses to end with a message of value happy start about happy endings. Melissa and Josh accept that they live in a cycle of wanting more, but that’s okay. The ending returns the radiant couple to their gray reality made (literally) colorful by their presence in the last minute. The optimistic spin (and borrowed God spell aesthetic) is a beautiful one, but it feels more like a platitude against the dark to bittersweet density of the source material, as it lacks that note of biting loss.
I’ll begrudge myself if I spoil the appetite for the Fix-It Crossover Fanfic Musical. (“Caroline, you’re a bummer. If that’s how you crave misery, go see the source material!”). Optimists can argue from Schmicago sweep-clean ending works in part because it’s Josh and Melissa’s fantasy, so schmicago had to be molded into a paradise which they eventually reject, just as Pippin rejects the theatrical artifice of settling in the genuineness of love. But the saccharine ukulele that sends the New Yorkers on their way doesn’t quite match the gleeful ambivalence in the recorded Fosse staging, where Pepijn confirms he feels, “Trapped, which isn’t too bad for a musical comedy’s ending.” Such an ambivalent fog does not haunt happily ever after, or the happy beginning.