five more songs and poems from tv shows

A while back I posted clips of five songs and poems from TV shows. That post was here. It's time for five more. Because I say it is.

To review, I noted that these have to be songs that exist within the show's universe. And I am not considering songs from shows such as The Monkees and The Partridge Family. Let me also add the caveat that these have to be songs or poems that are acknowledged within the show to be songs or poems. I am adding that rule with a mind toward musical theatre wherein songs are sung with the conceit that what's going on is normal conversation. For this reason I won;t consider Kyle's "A Lonely Jew on Christmas" from South Park.

Now, having yammered on, let me present these five songs and poems

1) "Night After Night" from Laverne and Shirley

Generally speaking, I hate talent show episodes of sitcoms. It's a cheap way for the writers to avoid coming up with a full script. I assume the actors love it because it gives them a chance to show off talents that don;t get used in the show. I've also wondered about how it is that the whole cast gets involved in the talent show. Laverne and Shirley is a case in point. The ladies get roped into putting on a staff talent show for the brewery where they work. It makes sense that Lenny and Squiggy perform, since they do work for the brewery, But Laverne's dad? Shirley's on-again/off-again boyfriend? Their landlady? That makes no sense.

Having said all that, I am willing to forgive this instance because I love this clip. Lenny and Squiggy are, far and away, my favorite characters from the show. And here they show off some real talent -- especially Lenny, who goes, seemingly effortlessly, between vocal parts.

2) "Time to Change" from the Brady Bunch

Spoiler alert. Greg decides he's a songwriter, and pens an environmental protest song called "We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter." The kids scrape together the money to book studio time to record it so they can become rich and famous. But then, one evening as they're rehearsing it at home, Peter's voice starts to change, and his singing is reduced to a warble. Because, when boys hit puberty, they suddenly go from being able to sing well to being completely unable to sing better than a croak. 

Anyway, the kids face a conundrum. The deposit for the studio is nonrefundable. They can't go in and have Peter ruin the recording. But they're a family and they can't leave him out of the act as they become stars. If it were up to me, they'd have recorded without him, but kept him as part of the act once his voice settles. But, hey, no one claimed the Bradys were brilliant.

Greg to the rescue! He locks himself in his room and writes a new song -- this one about embracing change. It's complete with a line about boys' voices changing, and parts for Peter to show off those fluxing pipes. They go into the studio, sing their hearts out and all is well.

I had a hard time deciding which song to include here. Each one is an odd combination of awful and awesome. The first is totally insipid. But the second has an odd Mr. Rogers tone to it. I decided on the latter because, in the show, they sing with full instrumental accompaniment (including great use of a wah-wah pedal).

As a sidenote, both of these songs were included on the truly dreadful record, Meet the Brady Bunch. When I was a kid and my sister bought it, I found that "Time to Change" had been subtly changed to remove all the Peter's-voice-is-changing schtick. And the line "It's even true for voices when boys begin to grow" was replaced with "clouds may turn to train and then it just might snow." That was a bitter pill to swallow.

3) "Ode to Spot" from Star Trek: The Next Generation

One of the more annoying ongoing storylines in the second series was Data's yearning to be more human. In this episode he presents some original poetry. It brought me down.

4) "Korean War Song" from M*A*S*H

Father Mulcahey decides that, what the Korean war needs is a good song. And, damnit, he's gonna write one. So he spends the whole episode trying out different approaches, all of which are jaunty and happy. Finally he realizes that, since war is no fun, the song should reflect that. Personally, I preferred one of the earlier ideas. I forget the exact words, but I remember he rhymed "eyeful" with "rifle." Something about how that picture you sent was such an eyeful / I taped it to my trusty rifle. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that clip on Youtube.

5) "I'll Blow You a Kiss in the Wind" from Bewitched

Sabrina's cousin Serena wrote a song and she wants Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to record it. The song used for the episode, one of several sitcom episodes to feature the singing duo, was an actual Boyce and Hart number. To be honest, I'm not sure if the song was written for this episode or if it had a life of its own beforehand. So including it here may be a cheat. But enough of its history was fictionalized that I'm willing to go with it.