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S01.E01: Pilot

OtterMommy

By OtterMommy
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retrograde

retrograde

(edited)

Ugggh, I want to love any show about theater kids putting on a high school musical but... the Josh Radnor character just killed it for me for the reasons already outlined by @Pop Tart. The whole time I just wanted to be watching an alternate version where Rosie Perez is the one who kicks that charmless, experience-less black hole of charisma to the curb and she inspires the kids (who, yes, are not walking cliches in this version) to, ahem, rise. Seems like she was doing all the vocal and choreography training anyway.

This show kept telling us that Radnor was an inspirational stifled genius but it never showed us that. Real teenagers would've smelled his inexperience and "How do you do fellow kids?"-ness a mile away and eaten him alive on day one. They wouldn't (and shouldn't) have stood for him just trashing the musical they'd already learned, either. 

10 hours ago, chaifan said:

I disagree with Paskin on her call that Radnor cast the maybe-gay kid in the gay part to help him come out.  I thought he simply recognized that this kid and his prior female leads had no chemistry (probably because he's gay?) and wanted to have someone in the lead who could.  Maybe that was a ruse to put a maybe-gay kid in a gay role, but I didn't see it that way. 

I don't know if that's why he put the character in the role or not, but there's no reason a gay actor can't have chemistry in a straight role. It's acting, and that character is supposed to be a good actor. Also, Mr Mosby's "the male lead must be taller than the female lead" is some bullshit too. 

Edited by retrograde
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Unraveled

Unraveled

Well, I'm all in. I will watch anything musical on screen no matter how bad it is. As a fan of both FNL and Parenthood, I will watch at least a full season. Pilots are not usually a good indication of later episodes. Pilots have to have a lot of exposition, and it can get tedious.

Was the coach's daughter and previous "leading girl" two people or one?

 

16 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

The short answer is: not very. They have made so many changes that the title credit for the show says "inspired by" rather than "based on" the book. Most of these changes are irrevocable but I'm going to put them under the spoiler cut just in case.

In real life/the book:

  Reveal hidden contents
  • Lou didn't take over the theater department because he was bored after 17 years of teaching English. A few months after he began teaching, he walked by the theater where they were having rehearsals for Camelot. He asked the drama director (who taught in the English department with him) if she needed any help, so he started out selling tickets and doing administrative stuff. At the end of the school year, that director moved out of state. He applied to be the assistant drama director, thinking he could help the new person and instead the principal appointed him the new drama director.
  • Tracey is his assistant director, not because he pushed her out of the job of director but because she was one of his drama students who ended up working at the school after he had already been the drama director for many years.
  • He began working with the drama club in the 1970s so rather than doing a period piece, they moved the setting to today.
  • Obviously since he began his time with the drama club in the 70s, his first production was not Spring Awakening. The first play he selected as drama director was a modern version of Antigone that had only one performance and had an audience of fourteen people. The first musical he directed was You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. His second musical was Bye Bye Birdie. He did like doing edgier plays and musicals, but it took him a little while to get there. His first somewhat edgier selection was Pippin, which was controversial at the time. He got some angry letters from parents (one of whom thought she was taking her daughter to see Pippi Longstocking).
  • After Antigone, he realized that he needed help so he started attending every local play he could and he started taking theater classes and workshops including improv.
  • He did do a production of Spring Awakening but it came about very differently. In 2001 Music Theatre International (the company that licenses rights for schools and theaters to do plays aka the people who get paid every time anyone performs a play) contacted Lou and asked him if he would do a pilot for the school version of Les Misérables. It's pretty common for MTI to have a professional version of the play as well as a school version. Sometimes the cuts are made for time constraints (like Les Mis since most kids/parents aren't going to sit through a three hour musical). Sometimes the cuts are made for content. For example, the high school version of Grease changes the lyrics of "Greased Lightning" ("the chicks'll cream" "she's a real pussy wagon," "we'll be getting lots of tit"). There is also a junior version available for which changes the lyrics to even more songs like "Sandra Dee."
     
  • Heh, sorry for the digression. After Lou successfully created the school version of Les Mis, MTI asked him to do the same for Rent a few years later. After that, he approached MTI and asked permission to create the school version of Spring Awakening. They said they had already planned to ask him to do it anyway.
  • Lou did not poach anyone from the football team. He had athletes who participated in the plays and musicals but voluntarily without any blackmail on his part. One of his first athletes did inadvertently create a conflict because the coach didn't want him to do the play but Lou did not pressure the kid to choose. He told him that he could do whatever he wanted, whether that was try to do both or just quit the play.
  • In real life, Lou is gay. He was married to a woman for a long time, but they eventually separated and remain good friends (when they sold their family home, they bought two separate townhouses in the same development so they're a three minute walk away from each other). They have one son (not three kids) who is now a sixth grade teacher in the same town, which means often his students end up later becoming his father's students. The show runners have said that the Lou on the show is NOT gay.

 

Thank you so much for the highlights of the real-life Lou! It might be best to forget about the real-life Lou and what he did because it so different from the TV show. RL Lou made slow steps in his 40 year career as director, and clearly TV show Lou will not go through these steps. RL Lou did indeed do a high school production of "Spring Awakening," but his career was already seasoned and had a lot of "cred." By that time, I think the high school was known for their drama program so there must have been a long line of students wanting to audition. I'm sure by then, some parents transferred their kids to that school strictly for the drama program.

11 hours ago, BonnieD said:

One nitpick that REALLY bugged me was the switch to Spring Awakening in the middle of working on Grease. Everyone who knows anything about theater knows how expensive it is to rent a show.

Yes, every production must pay a fee to in order to perform a play. Obviously it differs from show to show and audience to audience. (A high school is going to pay a lot less money than a professional production for the same show.)

There are "junior" productions of a lot of plays. There are many reasons besides the "adult nature" subject of the play. High schools and other smaller productions have a lot less people so there are actors that play multiple roles. Or it's shortened for time. However, you can't change whatever you like without permission. Once they pay the fee, you have to do the production as it's written. You can't decide to cut a song or change a line. I also believe there are limits to who can do what every year. For example, whenever "Hamilton" is available for local productions, it's going to be limited in number and will go to places that have a proven track record.

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Higgs

Higgs

(edited)
3 hours ago, J-Man said:

So ... what's the consensus:

Friday Night Glee?

Friday Night Smash?

or Friday Night High School Musical?

A gritty Glee, not a Smash. Talented kids, not proven pros. Covers, not creations. 

But..., it should have been Groff, not Radnor. It's helpful when the majority of the audience roots for the protagonist. (See Berry, Rachel or Taylor, Eric)

Edited by Higgs
addition
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Higgs

Higgs

59 minutes ago, Unraveled said:

Once they pay the fee, you have to do the production as it's written. You can't decide to cut a song or change a line.

Fun fact: remember Glee.S6 and the suppoosed gay version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" starring Klaine?  Albee (who was gay) had a legal prohibition against any such production.

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Duke Silver

Duke Silver

Lots of legitimate gripes about the pilot, and many smart posts laying bare those problems.  However, I'm gonna stick with this one unless it just turns horrendously ugly.  I wasn't a Glee watcher, beyond an ep. here or there, so I'm not really hip to the basic genre, but I find this show's concept intriguing.  I think some of the characters will grow on me.

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chaifan

chaifan

9 hours ago, retrograde said:

I don't know if that's why he put the character in the role or not, but there's no reason a gay actor can't have chemistry in a straight role. It's acting, and that character is supposed to be a good actor. Also, Mr Mosby's "the male lead must be taller than the female lead" is some bullshit too. 

I agree, there are many many gay actors (male and female) who just ooze chemistry with opposite sex partners on stage/screen.  I was just saying that for this character, Simon, who seems to be being played as a "I'm trying to figure it out" teenager, it could be a big factor as to why he doesn't have chemistry with any of his female leads.  Of course, in real life, there are very few high school kids who can decently fake chemistry with someone they're not really into. 

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Unraveled

Unraveled

It seems like based on spoilers (don't read any articles!) that the Simon character

Spoiler

is supposedly gay? I got it from this article.

That character got everything. Between being one of the very few male students willing to sing showtunes and belonging to a religious household, he got everything. I assume based on the pilot, he's even in denial with himself at this point.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Stephanie J Block (a very well known Broadway actress) appear as Simon's religious mother. I had heard she was in a re-occurring role, but I wasn't aware of what it would be. I assume we won't hear her sing.

19 hours ago, Higgs said:

Fun fact: remember Glee.S6 and the suppoosed gay version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" starring Klaine?  Albee (who was gay) had a legal prohibition against any such production.

Based on MTI's website, you really can't without permission from them. In terms of casting (in many high schools, there's a shortage of male students), I'm not sure if that constitutes a "change" that needs permission.

Also Glee is not a show that I would trust in its realism. There were so many unrealistic and far reaching things on that show.

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whiporee

whiporee

(edited)
17 hours ago, J-Man said:

 

So ... what's the consensus:

Friday Night Glee?

Friday Night Smash?

or Friday Night High School Musical?

 

I'm going with Friday Night Stage Footlights. 

I thought it was better than Glee and better than everything but the pilot of Smash. Not as good as FNL, but if you look back at FNL's pilot it had a lot of the same exposition issues. I would have preferred to see more set up (just like I would have preferred to get to know Jason Street before he got injured) and I think they're rushing past a lot of good material as the kids adapt to a new kind of musical, but if you've got one chance to sell a show, i can understand getting to the plot points as fast as possible.  

I don't know whether they could actually put on Spring Awakenings -- certainly not in Texas, but I don't know where this is set. But a lot of the casting stuff rang really true. We're involved in local theater, and finding boys to perform is hard. When you do, the boys who often show up are a lot shorter and less adult looking than the girls. And the girl who had always been the star not being the star ... man, that's a lot more true in high school than any of us would like to admit. 

I don't think the kid everyone is assuming is gay is really gay. That would be a cool twist. 

It was a little moody and a little contrived, but since The Good Place and Crazy Ex Girlfreind are off for a while, Shameless is over and Counterpart is only on once a week, I'm in. 

Edited by whiporee
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sacrebleu

sacrebleu

Quote

I enjoyed it, but I was surprised that the principal read the play after Mr. Mazzu (... Really, show?) had cast the thing. That seemed unrealistic. Surely any faculty advisor/program head would need to have the play approved first? 

 

Yeah-- as a former high school drama nerd-- the inaccuracies involving the drama program really really bugged.

Had Rosie already held Grease auditions -- that's why gay kid and mean girl were rehearsing as Danny and Sandy? Did the school already pay for Grease? Did Ted Mosby: Theatre Director really hold auditions and cast a show without paying for the rights for Spring Awakening? Did he really hold auditions without running the choice of show past the principal? 

(again-- from past experience-- our theatre director had a hell of a time getting approval and money for musicals he wanted to do-- because my high school was heavily into sports, and the only musical our principal ever wanted the program to do was Damn Yankees-- because it was about baseball)

And back to those rolling auditions? Did he really post half a cast list-- then recruit more people to try out because he didn't like the people that did? The hell??  What's that doing to the fragile egos of those kids? 

Has Ted Mosby: Theatre Director really had this passion for drama the entire decade he's been at the school and never once offered to take a supportive role with the drama department?  (his son hasn't been a problem for that long-- I'm guessing) 

I want to like this show-- I loved FNL-- but you'd expect show biz folks to get this stuff right.

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Neurochick

Neurochick

14 hours ago, CelticBlackCat said:

I'm sure that when the original shows have adult-themed scenes and subjects, that the high school puts on a sanitized version, especially in this very PC world.

I agree.  I went to high school in the 1970's and...well let me put it this way, my school was a lot like the school in the original film version of "Fame."  

As for Grease being "clean," I guess they never sang "Greased Lightning."

But I like the kids so I'm in.

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Neurochick

Neurochick

(edited)

I don't like that football coach or his nasty daughter.  I wish the drama teacher would tell him something like, "well at least with ME he won't have to worry about getting a concussion."  I can't stand the football coach because what percentage of high school football stars go pro?  And of that percentage how many make the big money, and how many walk away without serious injuries? 

And the devout Catholic family?  Shit, if they feel that way, send your kids to a Catholic school.  See, I figured it out for you.

And all these folks freaking out about Spring Awakening seem foolish to me.  I mean do they not know what's happened in this country in the past five years?  The school/mass shootings?  And folks are worried about a play?  Need to take several seats. 

Edited by Neurochick
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Sandman

Sandman

(edited)
On 3/15/2018 at 10:08 AM, Unraveled said:

I was pleasantly surprised to see Stephanie J Block (a very well known Broadway actress) appear as Simon's religious mother. I had heard she was in a re-occurring role, but I wasn't aware of what it would be. I assume we won't hear her sing.

Unless she has a BIG change of heart (and possibly personality?) for May sweeps? I've never seen Block in anything before, but I'm already convinced she's among the better actors on this show. The piercingly self-righteous tone of Simon's mother's voice when she said the play was "very inappropriate," (or whatever her wording was) was enough to make me loathe her instantly. 

To answer your question, retrograde: Yup, pretty much.

19 hours ago, Neurochick said:

And the devout Catholic family?  Shit, if they feel that way, send your kids to a Catholic school.  See, I figured it out for you

Is Simon's family Catholic? I was assuming some stripe of fundamentalism/Pentecostalism or other.

Edited by Sandman
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CelticBlackCat

CelticBlackCat

1 hour ago, Neurochick said:

Simon mentioned that his family were devout Catholics.

Not all devout Catholic families can afford to send their children to a private Catholic school.  To say if you are Catholic you should not enroll your children in public school is ridiculous.  Perhaps Simon's parents thought the high school was a good one, providing their son with a proper education, until this issue came up.

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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

On 3/13/2018 at 8:27 PM, RogerDodger said:

Friday Night Lights was one of my all time favorite shows.  This isn't Friday Night Lights.

Neither was Friday Night Lights in the pilot episode. And then it grew into one of the best shows on TV.

I liked Glee until it got too....much. I think the nuts and bolts are here, and look forward to seeing what they do with them.

On 3/13/2018 at 8:48 PM, tennisgurl said:

Wow, I thought Lea was a bit older when she started with that part. And I didn't know the show was based on a true story, thats quite interesting. I wonder how close this follows the true story? Damn, my small town high school choir had to cut the word Gay out of "Deck the Halls" in our Christmas concert, and had to cut the word Beer out of one line of Beauty and the Beast! 

My daughter's drama teacher changed a scene in Almost, Maine - the scene where two dude friends realize they're in love which each other - and made it a heterosexual couple instead. The dynamics of the dialogue made no sense. It would have been better just to cut the scene entirely than to go forward with that crap.

On 3/14/2018 at 7:35 AM, Sandman said:

Agreed; but, on the other hand, I've never understood the appeal of Grease -- seriously, never. I think the whole premise is awful, and I never been able to sit through more than a few minutes of any of it. So, yay! Grease-cutting! (But why would the production have already started only to have the principal, horrified once he actually got around to reading Spring Awakening, announce that the school wouldn't be putting on Spring Awakening, because Eeeek! or Grease, either, because it was too expensive? That didn't make sense.) Poor Principal: I think he only exists in the story to spoil everyone's fun.

I don't think Mosby-Mazzu blackmailed the kid, exactly: if anyone was blackmailed, it was the coach, the principal and Robbie's father, after they tried to strong-arm Mr. Magoo -- er, Mazzu into bending the rules in their (not Robbie's, necessarily) favour.

Except for the ending message - that a woman should change herself completely for a man - I quite liked Grease (the stage play, not the movie).

I agree that it was the coach and principal who were really being blackmailed. Or, from a different perspective, it was a mutually beneficial negotiation.

On 3/15/2018 at 9:07 AM, Neurochick said:

I agree.  I went to high school in the 1970's and...well let me put it this way, my school was a lot like the school in the original film version of "Fame."  

As for Grease being "clean," I guess they never sang "Greased Lightning."

But I like the kids so I'm in.

That's the song I immediately thought of - or the relevant lyric. ;) In my school (in the early 70's) we put on the anti-Vietnam war play "Summertree" - which isn't too remarkable except that the surrounding area was full of military bases and most of us were military dependent. Most of us had fathers or brothers who'd either been in 'Nam, or were there. Yet, not a peep from the parents.

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Glade

Glade

On 3/14/2018 at 2:06 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

The short answer is: not very. They have made so many changes that the title credit for the show says "inspired by" rather than "based on" the book. Most of these changes are irrevocable but I'm going to put them under the spoiler cut just in case.

In real life/the book:

  Reveal hidden contents
  • Lou didn't take over the theater department because he was bored after 17 years of teaching English. A few months after he began teaching, he walked by the theater where they were having rehearsals for Camelot. He asked the drama director (who taught in the English department with him) if she needed any help, so he started out selling tickets and doing administrative stuff. At the end of the school year, that director moved out of state. He applied to be the assistant drama director, thinking he could help the new person and instead the principal appointed him the new drama director.
  • Tracey is his assistant director, not because he pushed her out of the job of director but because she was one of his drama students who ended up working at the school after he had already been the drama director for many years.
  • He began working with the drama club in the 1970s so rather than doing a period piece, they moved the setting to today.
  • Obviously since he began his time with the drama club in the 70s, his first production was not Spring Awakening. The first play he selected as drama director was a modern version of Antigone that had only one performance and had an audience of fourteen people. The first musical he directed was You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. His second musical was Bye Bye Birdie. He did like doing edgier plays and musicals, but it took him a little while to get there. His first somewhat edgier selection was Pippin, which was controversial at the time. He got some angry letters from parents (one of whom thought she was taking her daughter to see Pippi Longstocking).
  • After Antigone, he realized that he needed help so he started attending every local play he could and he started taking theater classes and workshops including improv.
  • He did do a production of Spring Awakening but it came about very differently. In 2001 Music Theatre International (the company that licenses rights for schools and theaters to do plays aka the people who get paid every time anyone performs a play) contacted Lou and asked him if he would do a pilot for the school version of Les Misérables. It's pretty common for MTI to have a professional version of the play as well as a school version. Sometimes the cuts are made for time constraints (like Les Mis since most kids/parents aren't going to sit through a three hour musical). Sometimes the cuts are made for content. For example, the high school version of Grease changes the lyrics of "Greased Lightning" ("the chicks'll cream" "she's a real pussy wagon," "we'll be getting lots of tit"). There is also a junior version available for which changes the lyrics to even more songs like "Sandra Dee."
     
  • Heh, sorry for the digression. After Lou successfully created the school version of Les Mis, MTI asked him to do the same for Rent a few years later. After that, he approached MTI and asked permission to create the school version of Spring Awakening. They said they had already planned to ask him to do it anyway.
  • Lou did not poach anyone from the football team. He had athletes who participated in the plays and musicals but voluntarily without any blackmail on his part. One of his first athletes did inadvertently create a conflict because the coach didn't want him to do the play but Lou did not pressure the kid to choose. He told him that he could do whatever he wanted, whether that was try to do both or just quit the play.
  • In real life, Lou is gay. He was married to a woman for a long time, but they eventually separated and remain good friends (when they sold their family home, they bought two separate townhouses in the same development so they're a three minute walk away from each other). They have one son (not three kids) who is now a sixth grade teacher in the same town, which means often his students end up later becoming his father's students. The show runners have said that the Lou on the show is NOT gay.

 

Wow, I had no idea they steamrolled so much of the actual story only to replace it  with...cliches from other tv shows.  Not only did they straightwash the main character, they also borrowed the whole 'we need a straight/macho football player who's never sung before to replace the qualified/talented gay kid as our lead' from Glee, and it's pretty insulting.  I didn't catch exactly how/why he wound up taking the job away from the former drama teacher, but the whole thing was completely ridiculous.  Sad.

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

5 hours ago, Glade said:

I didn't catch exactly how/why he wound up taking the job away from the former drama teacher, but the whole thing was completely ridiculous. 

On the show, he essentially went to the principal and said he wanted the job and the principal gave it to him.

Lou: Well, long story short, with Ms. Cordoza gone, I know you need a new head of the theater program, and, uh well, I want to throw my hat in the ring.
Principal Ward: You want to run theater?
Lou: I know I'm not your typical charismatic theater guy, but I love theater. I always have. I know I don't have experience, and Ms. Wolfe's been here over a decade-
Principal Ward: It's yours.
Lou: I'm sorry?
Principal Ward: Theater. It's yours. Have at it.
Lou: What about Ms. Wolfe?
Principal Ward: Ms. Wolfe was a pain in the ass when she was my student here, and she's still a pain in the ass.
Lou: So that's it? I don't have to be approved or anything?
Principal Ward: I just approved you. I like this. Even-keeled Lou Mazzu. I like it.

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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

(edited)
13 hours ago, Glade said:

Wow, I had no idea they steamrolled so much of the actual story only to replace it  with...cliches from other tv shows.  Not only did they straightwash the main character, they also borrowed the whole 'we need a straight/macho football player who's never sung before to replace the qualified/talented gay kid as our lead' from Glee, and it's pretty insulting.  I didn't catch exactly how/why he wound up taking the job away from the former drama teacher, but the whole thing was completely ridiculous.  Sad.

The issue of straightwashing is a little complicated in this case. The teacher this is based on was married, with children, during the timeframe this show is presenting. I am going to give it some time before deciding they straightwashed the main character. (well, I guess I don't have to give it time - Katim's isn't going to explore that. How disappointing.)

The basic setup, though, is a bit too much like Glee, I agree. Still, a dramatic version of those challenges is interesting to me.

Edited by Clanstarling
new information (on my part) which changes my opinion
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Glade

Glade

3 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

The issue of straightwashing is a little complicated in this case. The teacher this is based on was married, with children, during the timeframe this show is presenting. I am going to give it some time before deciding they straightwashed the main character.

Sadly, the showrunner has explicitly stated that his version of the character is really 100% straight and will remain so in spite of the backlash. 

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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

26 minutes ago, Glade said:

Sadly, the showrunner has explicitly stated that his version of the character is really 100% straight and will remain so in spite of the backlash. 

Yeah, I just read that a few minutes ago and came back to revise my post. That does disappointment me. I expected better from him.

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Lady Calypso

Lady Calypso

So, I finally got around to watching this. And honestly? I'm not so sure if I like it yet. It is definitely more Friday Night Lights than Glee; I'd say more 75% FNL and 25% Glee, with the miserable Languages teacher who takes over the performing arts club and is kind of manipulative toward the football player turned lead star. At least Lillette isn't really Rachel Berry-lite, so she's not exhausting to watch.

I don't really know everyone's names yet. I know Lou's, Lillette's, and Simon's for sure. Everyone else is going to have nicknames until I know them, or I'll have to keep looking them up. 

Yeah, I'm not really fond of Lou...at all. Rosie Perez's character says that she wants to continue running theatre and Lou shuts that down. Simon tells Lou that he is uncomfortable with his role because of his family stuff, and Lou gives him a "pep talk", which is really more about Lou's ego that Simon's apparently too short for the role and he has a hard on for the football player, I guess? Lou manipulates a convenient situation to get what he wants? He's very pushy, and I don't buy that it's because he cares about the kids. At least, not yet. I'm hoping the next few episodes get better.

However, other than Lou, I like most of the other characters. I felt bad for Rosie Perez's character, who had started on a production before abruptly switching. I mean, a thousandth production of Grease is boring and safe, but coming in to change it all up while they're underway? I get why she got pissed. I liked Lillette and the daughter of the football coach. Of course, the daughter is a mean girl, but we'll watch her soften up and become besties with Lillette, right? I also like Simon, even if his story is predictable. However, they are all teenagers, so discovering yourself is a big part of it. The football player has an interesting backstory, I guess. It was also nice to see Lou ask Michael what he wanted to be called and then moved on afterward.

Overall, I'm going to need some more episodes before I decide. But since I have a feeling this series will go on for a few seasons, I'm going to stick around until I get bored or frustrated. There's a LOT of stuff in character's lives, though. It's probably going to get much darker. 

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ElectricBoogaloo

ElectricBoogaloo

On 3/14/2018 at 9:47 PM, Unraveled said:

RL Lou did indeed do a high school production of "Spring Awakening," but his career was already seasoned and had a lot of "cred." By that time, I think the high school was known for their drama program so there must have been a long line of students wanting to audition. I'm sure by then, some parents transferred their kids to that school strictly for the drama program.

Interestingly, that was not the case in either of those situations. The real high school is what the author referred to as "second tier." Their test scores are not great. There are a lot of kids getting subsidized lunches. Many of the kids in the play they did while the book was being written (Good Boys and True) came from single family households where the kids had to work after school aka when they should be at play rehearsal. This was not a school that parents would be trying to get their kids to transfer to.

The school's drama program is well respected among other high school drama programs. At the time that the book was written, the Truman drama program had been to a very prestigious national drama competition several times (and won). Only a handful of Lou's students have gone on to act professionally or work in the arts. Some of them have been very successful, but this isn't the kind of program that's the equivalent of a high school with pages and pages of alumni who became pro athletes. Lots of kids participate in drama but most of them don't pursue acting as a career after high school.

As for the popularity of Spring Awakening, when they did the pilot version in 2011, about 70 kids showed up to audition, which is a decent amount. In contrast, when they did the pilot for Rent in 2007, 300 kids tried out (that's one in every five students at the school). RL Lou pointed out that this was probably due to the fact that at the time they held auditions, Rent had been on Broadway for over a decade and the movie version had just come out in 2005 so it had a lot of mainstream popularity. The show played for two weekends and all the tickets sold out over a month in advance. He admitted that the entire school just went nuts over this show.

On 3/16/2018 at 1:24 PM, Clanstarling said:

My daughter's drama teacher changed a scene in Almost, Maine - the scene where two dude friends realize they're in love which each other - and made it a heterosexual couple instead. The dynamics of the dialogue made no sense. It would have been better just to cut the scene entirely than to go forward with that crap.

ITA - why even bother? Coincidentally, the real Truman High did a production of Almost, Maine and the students didn't like it because it wasn't as edgy as the plays they normally do. Lou, on the other hand, remembers it fondly because of all the Christmas trees and lights they used for the set.

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HoneyBadgerJr

HoneyBadgerJr

On 3/13/2018 at 11:12 PM, Laurie4H said:

....oh and throw in a transgender as well.  

 

If I may, please be aware that using the word "transgender" in that manner (using it as an adjective, not a noun) is problematic, and many people who are trans, or are allies, find it offensive. Thank you for understanding and being respectful. 

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wayne67

wayne67

This pilot was a bit dense with cliches and stereotype teens, we got closeted teen boys, a transgender teen, a mean girl with a troubled family, a girl on the wrong side of the tracks, a jock with hidden depths and a problem son of the main character. 

I don't really care about any of the kids, I'm just going to watch to see the soap opera explosions of love triangles and revelations of gayness, adultery and substance abuse. Going to be low grade entertainment. 

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satrunrose

satrunrose

On 3/14/2018 at 1:59 PM, BonnieD said:

One nitpick that REALLY bugged me was the switch to Spring Awakening in the middle of working on Grease. Everyone who knows anything about theater knows how expensive it is to rent a show. A poor school like this would not be able to afford to just change their minds. Plus it takes time to contact the company, sign a contract, and get the new scripts sent. They aren't just lying around willy nilly! The school was financially committed to Grease. Not to mention the cast would have gone berserk if someone pulled the rug out from under them by cancelling. They would have had their parents involved so fast Teacher Better-than-Grease's head would spin. Imagine the divas in your local high school being told, "nope. Forget it. Your role is gone."
Also, the parents would have to be contacted about the serious subject matter and waivers would have to be signed. Period. 

It's too bad, because it does happen before the auditions are done and the contracts have been signed. I helped out with a show where the director had his heart set on Evita, but our frontrunner was a lovely, talented, head-working, sweetheart of a person... and nothing like Eva Peron. Luckily it was early enough that we could switch to Into the Woods as cast her as an awesome Cinderella. 

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KaleyFirefly

KaleyFirefly

On 3/14/2018 at 8:06 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

The short answer is: not very. They have made so many changes that the title credit for the show says "inspired by" rather than "based on" the book. Most of these changes are irrevocable but I'm going to put them under the spoiler cut just in case.

In real life/the book:

  Hide contents
  • Lou didn't take over the theater department because he was bored after 17 years of teaching English. A few months after he began teaching, he walked by the theater where they were having rehearsals for Camelot. He asked the drama director (who taught in the English department with him) if she needed any help, so he started out selling tickets and doing administrative stuff. At the end of the school year, that director moved out of state. He applied to be the assistant drama director, thinking he could help the new person and instead the principal appointed him the new drama director.
  • Tracey is his assistant director, not because he pushed her out of the job of director but because she was one of his drama students who ended up working at the school after he had already been the drama director for many years.
  • He began working with the drama club in the 1970s so rather than doing a period piece, they moved the setting to today.
  • Obviously since he began his time with the drama club in the 70s, his first production was not Spring Awakening. The first play he selected as drama director was a modern version of Antigone that had only one performance and had an audience of fourteen people. The first musical he directed was You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. His second musical was Bye Bye Birdie. He did like doing edgier plays and musicals, but it took him a little while to get there. His first somewhat edgier selection was Pippin, which was controversial at the time. He got some angry letters from parents (one of whom thought she was taking her daughter to see Pippi Longstocking).
  • After Antigone, he realized that he needed help so he started attending every local play he could and he started taking theater classes and workshops including improv.
  • He did do a production of Spring Awakening but it came about very differently. In 2001 Music Theatre International (the company that licenses rights for schools and theaters to do plays aka the people who get paid every time anyone performs a play) contacted Lou and asked him if he would do a pilot for the school version of Les Misérables. It's pretty common for MTI to have a professional version of the play as well as a school version. Sometimes the cuts are made for time constraints (like Les Mis since most kids/parents aren't going to sit through a three hour musical). Sometimes the cuts are made for content. For example, the high school version of Grease changes the lyrics of "Greased Lightning" ("the chicks'll cream" "she's a real pussy wagon," "we'll be getting lots of tit"). There is also a junior version available for which changes the lyrics to even more songs like "Sandra Dee."
     
  • Heh, sorry for the digression. After Lou successfully created the school version of Les Mis, MTI asked him to do the same for Rent a few years later. After that, he approached MTI and asked permission to create the school version of Spring Awakening. They said they had already planned to ask him to do it anyway.
  • Lou did not poach anyone from the football team. He had athletes who participated in the plays and musicals but voluntarily without any blackmail on his part. One of his first athletes did inadvertently create a conflict because the coach didn't want him to do the play but Lou did not pressure the kid to choose. He told him that he could do whatever he wanted, whether that was try to do both or just quit the play.
  • In real life, Lou is gay. He was married to a woman for a long time, but they eventually separated and remain good friends (when they sold their family home, they bought two separate townhouses in the same development so they're a three minute walk away from each other). They have one son (not three kids) who is now a sixth grade teacher in the same town, which means often his students end up later becoming his father's students. The show runners have said that the Lou on the show is NOT gay.

 

Thanks for the info about the book. I kind of wish they had gone with some of that instead.

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KaleyFirefly

KaleyFirefly

On 3/14/2018 at 9:24 AM, MelineB13 said:

I remember my high school drama teacher REFUSED outright to even consider doing Grease because she decided it villainized Sandy being a good person who did well in school and obeyed her parents and didn't drink or smoke and made her change to become more like the boy she liked. Even though he made a half assed attempt to change, he quickly went back to his greaser/bad boy ways the minute she put on those leggings and started smoking. She decided those were not messages she wanted to teach teen girls. 

I had always thought that it taught a problematic message, like telling girls that they sometimes need to change themselves for a guy. 

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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

11 hours ago, KaleyFirefly said:

I had always thought that it taught a problematic message, like telling girls that they sometimes need to change themselves for a guy. 

I did too. Even when I saw it on stage in my late teens, I thought that was strange. As I got older, I became more firmly against the message of the show. It does reflect a mindset that was certainly present, but not one I'd want my daughters to emulate. (my litany for them as children was: college, career, marriage - and damned if that's not the order they're doing it in).

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wayne67

wayne67

On 3/28/2018 at 12:43 PM, KaleyFirefly said:

I had always thought that it taught a problematic message, like telling girls that they sometimes need to change themselves for a guy. 

Isn't most romance movies these days end with a guy changing for a girls approval ? The bad boy is tamed by the girl's love and becomes a better person or some such rubbish.

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Clanstarling

Clanstarling

(edited)
2 hours ago, wayne67 said:

Isn't most romance movies these days end with a guy changing for a girls approval ? The bad boy is tamed by the girl's love and becomes a better person or some such rubbish.

Well, there are lots and lots of layers to this subject, but basically - that's a bad message too, in my opinion. To both men and women.

Edited by Clanstarling
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