Musicals are most often confined to the stage or the big screen. In recent years, however, television has become a more welcome front for musical numbers as part of a series. Shows like Riverdale or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend regularly incorporate music into their storylines. Even non-musical television series have a musical episode every once in a while.
These episodes run the gamut from imagining music to spells creating songs to outright hallucinations. There’s no limit to what can cause characters to burst into song. These ten episodes are the best of non-musical TV.
The Song In Your Heart (Once Upon A Time)
Initially inspired by the same fairy tales used to create many Disney animated movies, Once Upon A Time, surprisingly, didn’t incorporate a musical episode until season six. As one of the most recent musical episodes of TV, it leads off the list because it had a lot of stiff competition from the decades before it.
In the episode, the present-day timeline saw Emma and Hook tie the knot, but the music came primarily from flashbacks to the Enchanted Forest. A wish made by Snow White and her Prince Charming led to characters singing their feelings. The songs were catchy and the episode was fun, but it was something fans had been expecting for a long time, and it didn’t live up to some expectations.
Brown Betty (Fringe)
As a science fiction series dealing in parallel universes and experimentation with psychic abilities, Fringe isn’t the kind of show anyone would have expected to do a musical episode. “Brown Betty” somehow fit right in while providing a fresh hour for fans.
While under the influence, Walter recounted a noir story featuring Olivia and Peter in the lead roles to Olivia’s young niece. It didn’t feature as much music as most of the other musical episodes on the list, but it has a special place in the heart of Fringe fans.
The Bitter Suite (Xena: Warrior Princess)
Xena: Warrior Princess had some pretty bonkers storylines, but the musical episode might be one of the strangest.
After Gabrielle’s daughter killed Xena’s son, the best friends were on the outs. The solution was to have the two of them transported to Illusia where they could sing and dance while they fought about their problems. Definitely a product of its time, the episode wasn’t visually great, but Renee O’Connor and Lucy Lawless carried the hour with their voices and their emotional performances.
My Musical (Scrubs)
One of only two sitcoms to have a musical episode make the list, Scrubs used an easy enough idea to introduce musical numbers: a patient hallucinated the songs due to a medical condition. The episode had a little Broadway help as Avenue Q writers Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx created the music for the episode.
One of the best aspects of the episode is that it took long-standing issues in the series, like Turk not recognizing Carla’s Dominican heritage, and brought them to the forefront with song. It also featured the great “Guy Love,” which the show honored by making the music Turk and J.D.’s ringtones after the episode aired.
Influenza (Even Stevens)
There are a lot of Disney Channel series that feature music these days, but when Even Stevens aired, that wasn’t the case. The family sitcom brought its musical to life thanks to Ren coming down with the flu and dreaming of a day where she forgot to do her project about the first men on the moon.
Disney had an incredibly talented cast in Even Stevens, which is why the episode worked so well. All of the young cast members could sing and dance well enough to participate in the numbers without getting “filler” lines in songs. It remains a fan-favorite episode decades later and still ranks as the best one according to IMDb ratings.
Variety (Oz)
Would anyone have expected a prison drama to feature a musical episode? Probably not, but for Oz, it was a creative solution to a behind the scenes problem.
Cast member Harold Perrineau couldn’t return to the series to do his voiceover work as the narrator because filming on The Matrix sequel had been delayed. The production team decided to use songs from the prison’s variety show to fill those narration gaps instead. It created an hour that stayed true to the gritty drama and violence of the series while taking a creative leap.
Psych: The Musical (Psych)
Anyone who watched the first few seasons of Psych was probably certain that a musical episode was only a matter of time. Shawn Spencer liked his pop culture references - and he liked to sing them.
The musical episode wasn’t simply an hour with a few imaginary musical numbers sprinkled in. Instead, it was a double episode in which Shawn and Gus attempted to pitch a musical. It might not be the best musical episode of television, but it’s fun, and right in line with Psych’s comedic solving of murder mysteries.
Duet (The Flash)
Though it wasn’t a crossover spanning all of the Arrowverse, “Duet” did begin its events in a Supergirl episode before The Flash picked up the story. With Glee alumni Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin in the lead, the vocal performances were sure to be great.
The Flash had a bit of an advantage over the other shows on this list. In addition to the titular heroes, Jesse L. Martin, John Barrowman, Victor Garber, Jeremy Jordan, and Darren Criss all had experience in musicals long before this episode, which saw the Music Meister trap Supergirl and Flash in a musical coma. It’s probably one of the best performed musical episodes of TV ever, though there are a couple of hours that edge it out for the top spots.
All That Josh (The Magicians)
Taking the second spot on the list is an episode that marks a tradition on the fantasy series The Magicians. Every season features an episode with a musical number, but “All That Josh” ranks as not just the best musical episode so far, but one of the best episodes of the series.
The episode saw the questing magicians all in different directions, but needing to find a way to unite to maintain the magic of their quest. They had to rally around their forgotten quester and find literal harmony with one another. The episode capped off with a fantastic cover of Queen’s “Under Pressure” by all of the main cast.
Once More With Feeling (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
One day, there will be better musical episodes of non-musical shows, but for now, Buffy The Vampire Slayer reigns supreme. Buffy was not a series anyone expected to use music to tell a story, but in season six, the characters sang their innermost thoughts.
The episode was a pleasant surprise for fans, especially since it brought so many emotional stories to the front, like Buffy revealing she went to heaven and was having a hard time adjusting to life again. It provided a perfect balance of fun numbers and emotional ones while still moving the story along for the next episode.
