"Schmigadoon!" Year Two

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

I'm much better acquainted with the musicals of the '60s and '70s than I am with their Golden Age counterparts, so "Schmicago" had more of my interest from the outset.  Josh and Melissa return, now married and seeking their way back to Schmigadoon on purpose, after hitting a rut in their real lives.  However, they end up in Schmicago, which parodies darker, more transgressive musicals like "Chicago," "A Chorus Line," "Sweeney Todd," and "Sweet Charity."  Many of the actors from the first season are back, but in different roles.  Dove Cameron is playing Jenny, a burlesque dancer, Alan Cumming is Dooley, a vengeful butcher, and Kristin Chenoweth is running the orphanage from "Annie." 

There are a couple of new faces in the cast, including Patrick Page as this year's big villain, the evil tycoon Octavius Kratt, and Tituss Burgess is the new narrator, who becomes more and more fed up with his job as the season goes on.  We also get a lot more Jane Krakowski, now playing a hotshot lawyer, Bobby Flanagan, with thrilling results.  She gets one of the big highlights of the season, the "Bells and Whistles" number, patterned after "Razzle Dazzle" from "Chicago," that has her on roller skates and a trapeze in the courtroom.  The musical numbers are bigger and wilder this year, and there are a lot more of them.  Melissa is maneuvered into becoming a cabaret performer as part of her character arc this year, so Cecily Strong gets to sing more too.       

"Schmicago" is a lot looser and more free-form than "Schmigadoon!" with a less formulaic plot.  The magic leprechaun simply charges Melissa and Josh with finding a "happy ending," and leaves them to muddle through a murder mystery that almost immediately gets cast aside so we can get to know a bunch of other colorful characters.  This season is trying to mash some very different, incongruous influences together, and not even trying to make them all feel consistent.  The hippies led by Aaron Tviet's Topher, a spoof on the leads of "Godspell" and "Hair," aren't remotely from the same era as the flappers of "Chicago," and the music is constantly swinging from Stephen Sondheim to Stephen Schwartz to Paul Williams, and somehow it all works.  There are opportunities for delightful mashups like "Good Enough to Eat," which is an unholy combination of "Sweeney Todd" and "Annie," and room carved out to pay tribute to "A Chorus Line," because you've got pay tribute to  "A Chorus Line," don't you?

The material this season also feels more accessible, probably because its much more recent.  Everyone's still playing wild caricatures, and Melissa and Josh are still pointing out their tropeyness, but the world feels bigger and everyone's worldviews are broader and more complex.  Seeking self-fulfillment is in many ways more relatable than seeking romantic love, and I'm not surprised that Josh and Melissa take more of a shine to "Schmicago" faster.  I like the humor this season better too.  There are still the silly running gags, like a sloshed Karin Konoval continuously popping up with a martini glass to shout "I'll drink to that!" but also a lot of darker bits and meta humor.  There are some great surprises and payoffs in the second half of the season.  The references for fans of musicals have also been ramped way up, to the point where I was even catching little things in the orchestrations.

I really want "Schmigadoon!" to continue into the Andrew Lloyd Weber era, and I'm already mentally working out who should play the Phantom analog, and who should play Rum Tum Tugger.  And could they get away with calling it "Schmanadu"?  I mean, it's less of a mouthful than "Les Schmiserables."     

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