Review: Schmigadoon, "Welcome to Schmicago" & "Bustin' Out" | Season 2, Episodes 1 & 2
Apple's star-studded musical comedy returns with the confidence you love to see from a second season
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of the second season of Schmigadoon!, which debuts its first two episodes today on Apple TV+. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers. You can find out more on our About Page.
The first season of Schmigadoon! had such an ironclad premise combined with such a seasoned cast of performers that it was always going to be at least reasonably entertaining. But those performers covered up some of the weaker spots in the show, which could occasionally feel like a dynamite concept in search of a sharper application. The musical theater kid energy practically seeped off the screen, but the story following modern-day troubled couple Josh and Melissa as they stumbled through a generic brand version of the classic musical Brigadoon on their way to a happy ending lagged in places. Jokes didn’t quite land. Talented performers were occasionally stranded in draggy roles that didn’t give them room to shine (cough cough Kristin Chenoweth). It was hard not to wish the material was just a little bit more honed, although the general can-do spirit emanating from the whole thing more or less made it worth your while. What other show could boast Keegan-Michael Key, Cecily Strong, Alan Cumming, Jaime Camil1…the list goes on.
Thankfully, season two bursts out of the gate with such a clear sense of purpose and so much zest that it feels like the show has worked out exactly what it wants to be, and exactly how its goofy premise works best. We get through some table setting about why the gang is back together—sure, Josh (Key) and Melissa (Strong) have recommitted to each other and decided their love story is worth saving, but they still have to return to the humdrum world outside of Schmigadoon. They’re blissfully happy, and then less and less so, in a montage that documents their slow descent into depression caused in part by fertility struggles that plays like a less brightly colored Up. Desperate to recapture some joy, they try to find their way back to Schmigadoon, only to discover that their current struggles are more suited to a different era of musicals: the sexy, violent worlds of Sweeney Todd, Chicago, and Cabaret.
The show establishes this in an opening number that absolutely nails what works best in this show. It’s catchy, it’s clever, and it allows Josh and Melissa to comment on the proceedings with a modern eye. The meta commentary works exceedingly well, as in the moment when Josh, acting as an audience surrogate, tries to greet Alan Cumming, last season’s mayor, when he’s self-evidently in costume as Sweeney Todd. No, Melissa points out with an eyeroll. That’s obviously not the mayor anymore, and he’s playing a new role.
Apple TV+ launched the new season with two episodes, and it’s hard not to notice that the proceedings sag a tiny bit once they have to get into the particulars of what’s going to happen to Josh and Melissa in this universe. The premiere is such a nonstop barrage of jokes and references that at one point I paused the episode twice in about five seconds to make a note of two separate jokes from Tituss Burgess that both made me laugh out loud (telling the audience to look up the definition of the slightly clunky Schmicago rhyme “farrago” and then the moment the lyric “endings that are tragic” aligns with him holding up Melissa’s split ends). This is partly thanks to the always-wise choice to cast Burgess as one of the Season 2 newcomers, but it’s also because the show is so sharp about setting the scene here. Sure, the jokes are rapid-fire, but it even takes time to pause for an entirely pointless bit in a nightclub where the phone at Josh and Melissa’s table rings and she answers to discover two big weirdos trying to do a “we like your vibe” at her from across the room. Oh, you thought they weren’t serious about how extremely SEXUAL this world is? Well, that’s how sexual!
The on-the-nose efforts to prove how shocking things are in Schmicago turns into one of the better running gags of the season. If season one was full of cracks about how innocent everything was, season two finds a lot of comedic pay dirt in very dated attempts to shock Josh and Melissa with such generally mainstream behavior as bisexuality, tattoos, the female orgasm, and in an unfortunate real-world analog, drag. Plus that one old lady who appears at random to say “I’ll drink to that!”
As the story leaves the realm of exposition, though, the plot suffers from a certain sense of checking boxes. This time through, Josh is accused of killing one of the club’s dancers, Elsie, and Melissa becomes a dancer at the club to figure out who really killed her. Aaron Tveit will appear, because he’s one of the series regulars. It’s all a bit dutiful—the show doesn’t even try to make Elsie into a character before immediately offing her. And locking Josh up in prison negates one of the more fun aspects of the early going, which is watching the two of them engage with the world of Schmicago as a duo instead of in completely separate plotlines.2 But separating them does mean Josh, the less musically-inclined of the duo, is stuck making judgment calls on his own, since he depends on Melissa to explain the rules and etiquette of musical theater to him. And there’s already interesting material to mine in the joy Melissa gets from performing at the nightclub as a relief from the heartbreak of another failed IVF cycle.
And that’s without even diving into the wealth of performances that make the whole thing spark to life. Dove Cameron gets the standout number, in her role as Sally Bowles stand-in Jenny Banks, with a hilarious, physics-defying song-and-dance piece about various lovers disappointing her, but Ariana DeBose pops up for a few minutes to ham it up, fake mustache and accent in tow, as an emcee for the club. Jane Krakowksi returns as a Billy Flynn-style lawyer, Bobby Flanagan, who plans to play the press like a fiddle to help Josh beat the charges—if the line, “Mr. Flanagan is my father, after he lost his medical license,” didn’t give you a warm wash of nostalgia for the perfect Jenna Maroney delivery, then, well, you probably just didn’t watch 30 Rock.
It’s all very promising stuff for the new season. The notion of a show taking a season to find its footing feels positively quaint these days, but it’s exciting to see Schmigadoon return with such confidence.
Stray observations
I know I’m not the most committed musical theater fan in this particular show’s audience, but other references I caught were Hair (obviously), A Chorus Line for the audition number, and just the briefest of nods at Bye Bye Birdie in the jail callout to Conrad. I’ll try to catch these as I can, but definitely speak up in the comments if you catch some of the deeper cuts.
The line “Would you wave to Sutton Foster in The Music Man because you remember her from Thoroughly Modern Millie” is such a succinct way to establish what’s going on this season, while also serving as a tip of the cap to the show’s musical-loving audience. One of multiple lines that made me laugh with delight.
The nod to Sondheim’s overlapping dialogue being a little hard to follow if you’re actually in-world was cute, as well.
For you, I looked up farrago, since I wanted to make sure I was spelling it correctly in my review. It’s a “confused mixture,” per Merriam Webster.
Caught myself making the exact same facial expression as Cecily Strong in reaction to the line in “Kaput” about “Soon I tired of his…cockamamie talk.”
Everyone noticed that the dude in the hallway on the way to the bathroom was reading Mein Kampf, right?
Just a hint of it so far, but I am very excited for Jaime Camil’s character to embrace his secret love of song and dance.
MM here to clarify that the official Episodic Medium style guide requires Jaime to be referred to by his formal title of Empty Cup Awards Ambassador Jaime Camil, but for the sake of ease of reading I would ask you to just imagine it’s there, thank you.
MM here to wonder aloud if some combination of COVID protocols and the challenge of working around busy schedules might be part of why the story separates the characters as well.
Great review! One of the other musical references I delighted in was one of the jaded performers in the Chorus Line audition being Leisl von Trapp (her military father had a whistle, made her and her siblings perform at dinner parties, one night she asked for a glass of champagne). And Aaron Tveit’s face makeup nodding at Godspell!
A lot more Pippin than I would have expected, but the gag of Topher making it all about him as “Corner of the Sky” riffs on the piano is just perfectly era-specific. The jouney-to-selfhood theme is dead-on, as we also saw in A Chorus Line and in Bobby Flanagan’s brief dive into “Roxie.” Josh and Melissa will have to embark on their own.
My favorite gag so far, though, is taking the Elsie verse from “Cabaret” as the main plot of the season. The press conference! “Well that’s what comes from too much pills and liquor.”
Lots of Stephen Schwartz, Kander & Ebb, and Fosse so far. But there’s Sondheim in store, right? Cumming and Chenowith were dressed in Sweeney garb, and they just have to give Kristen a version of “Send in the Clowns.” Very possibly with actual clowns. Coming for a shave.