I have often feared the people who come up to you on the street and ask “What are you listening to right now?” Mainly because it is always a ride range of embarrassing options. The most embarrassing being my playlist titled “musical bops.”
Now, I have a great many playlists on Spotify with titles that I would rather not share but my musical playlists are unique and fun. I just don’t need the world knowing when I’m listening to “Dead Girl Walking” from Heathers the Musical. But what I loved about episode 4 titled “Fourth Quarter” of Chad Powers was that Danny (Frankie Rodriguez) represented all theatre kids in one moment.
Episode 4 had a lot of Danny and Russ (Glen Powell) fighting back and forth with each other. Both about glue for the Chad mask, about life, and finally about Danny feeling like he needed one moment to himself. Their fights led to the two on the outs with each other for a moment before they both came together to rebuild Chad at the end of the night.
All of this was underscored with music from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. As a Stephen Sondheim girlie myself, I do have to admit to listening to Phantom of the Opera from time to time. You can find me singing “You will curse the day you did not do all that the Phantom asked of you” in the privacy of my own home.
But it made Danny that much more relatable as he sat on a bus with his fellow Catfish teammates and just zoned out to the musical. Who among us, as theatre kids, have not been there?
It is a rite of passage for theatre kids
The older I get, the less I listen to musicals out in public because I have a need to sing along but I am someone who will put my playlist on the minute I am home alone or, unfortunately, beg a man to sing “Suddenly Seymour” from Little Shop of Horrors with me while out at karaoke. That is the curse of a theatre kid.
But what I love about the underscoring of Phantom of the Opera in Chad Powers is that it was both a hilarious nod to what is literally going on on the show while also being accurate for a character like Danny. He would listen to musicals while on the bus but also listening to Phantom of the Opera, which is all about the man behind a mask, is kind of iconic.
I am sure that someone out there probably hated this because they are of the uncultured mindset that musicals suck but hey, at least I get to have my fun with a show like Chad Powers. And it is a show that I think is genuinely hilarious and hearing “All I Ask Of You” while two men cook a prosthetic face makes it that much better in my eyes.
(featured image: Disney/Daniel Delgado Jr.)
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