When looking for a good way to explore a character's emotional journey or trying to showcase the talents of a musical cast, showrunners may decide to throw a musical episode into the season to spice things up and help their characters grow. While these can be done right (see Buffy's "Once More With Feeling"), they can also go wrong (see 7th Heaven's "Red Socks"—or don't).
The CW has developed a trend of putting on musical episodes, with shows like Riverdale even making it an annual thing. However, musical episodes of non-musical shows tend to have very negative reviews, looked at as filler and gimmicky. This list breaks down which episodes are worth watching, really milking the musical episode for all it's worth, and which ones deserve to be skipped over during a rewatch.
Riverdale: Season 5, Episode 18, "Next to Normal" — 3.2/10
Riverdale's most recent musical episode was based on Next To Normal, a musical about grief, mental health, and family trauma. It fit within the story of season 5 because Alice Cooper was drowning in her grief over Polly's disappearance and death.
In general, many of the reviews were simply that fans want an end to the annual musical episodes of Riverdale. More specifically to this episode, m-47826 found that the musical moments felt forced, and jmdanley emphasized that this was a particularly big problem when "other characters unassociated with that story also break into song!"
Riverdale: Season 4, Episode 17, "Wicked Little Town" — 3.5/10
In this musical episode, Kevin wants to perform a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch in the school's variety show but is told by the principal that it's inappropriate. To support Kevin, the rest of the variety show acts all change their acts to be songs from Hedwig.
Fans continue their outrage against the musical episodes, with user-601-78794 saying, "This is the worst episode of the season. It's tied for worst of the series with the other musical episodes." A few reviewers, like rebeckaflygare, appreciated the focus on Kevin and his musical talents, but most used their platforms to complain.
Riverdale: Season 3, Episode 16, "Big Fun" — 4.2/10
This episode comes during the cult plot arc, where Bety and Jughead are trying to figure out one of the show's best mysteries, why so many people are getting involved with the Farm. The musical is funded by the Farm, and the episode repeatedly shows Betty trying to figure out why they funded the musical, how it connects to their cult, and what exactly the cult wants with the townspeople of Riverdale.
The reviews overall for this episode were negative, with many reviewers claiming that they rarely ever post reviews, but hated this episode enough that they felt a need to. Many dislike the idea of a musical episode as a whole, while others like hnt_dnl take specific hatred toward this episode, claiming "BigFundale was a snoozefest with terrible singing and odd numbers."
Riverdale: Season 2, Episode 18, "A Night To Remember" — 5.7/10
"A Night to Remember" comes amid season 2, where the main season antagonist, the Black Hood, seems to be dead. In the reprieve, the kids decide to have a little bit of high school normalcy, and all get involved in the school's musical, based on Carrie: The Musical. Along the way, the core four mend their relationships, and Cheryl butts heads with her mother over what she has the freedom to do, all leading up to a shocking final moment.
This musical episode earned the highest rating of all of Riverdale's attempts, with very conflicted user reviews alternating between calling the episode the best and the worst thing that the writers could have chosen to do. User chris-r-copeland explains that for them, "this awful high school musical garbage is an episode that really really decreased my opinion of the overall show," but others disagreed, withEd-Shullivan explaining that "the songs within this episode carry the messages of each child's/parents need to resolve their family conflicts."
The Flash: Season 3, Episode 17, "Duet" — 6.1/10
After being hit by the Music Meister's powers, Kara and Barry wake up in a musical world vaguely based on West Side Story. The pair have to follow the plot of the musical, learning lessons about their own lives and relationship problems along the way. The musical crossover episode is packed full of the Arrowverse's best singers, many of whom performed on Broadway before or during their tenure on the CW.
Most of the reviewers on IMDb found this to be a very enjoyable episode, with GomezAddams666 saying it was "really funny and emotional, [and] it manages to teach the heroes a lesson" As always, some reviewers just hate musical episodes and rated it poorly for being one, but fans who enjoy a musical episode or two should expect to have a good time with "Duet."
Katy Keene: Season 1, Episode 7, "Kiss of the Spiderwoman" — 6.8/10
While Katy tries to deal with the fallout of sleeping with one of her clients—and a royal one, at that—Jorge tries to get investors for his one-man drag performance of Kiss of the Spiderwoman. As the friend group’s secrets push a wedge between them, they use the musical’s songs to address what they want and how they feel.
Only two user reviews exist, with m-47826 and gacsogergely contradicting each other on whether Jorge should be the focus of the episode or not. The vast majority of raters looked at the episode favorably, finding most of the songs to make sense and fit the episode and show, with viewers only really being upset by which plotlines were front and center and which were thrown into the background. Because this is a show predominantly focusing on music, viewers were not as upset by having a featured musical episode as they were with sister-show Riverdale's attempts.
Legacies: Season 3, Episode 3, "Salvatore: The Musical!" — 7.9/10
The episode focuses on Salvatore: The Musical, a musical based on the events of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals which led to the creation of the Salvatore School. Some of the side characters, like Kaleb and Jed, get a chance to shine as the leads in the musical, and the core members of the show—Hope, Lizzie, and Josie— get arcs that help to push them to be more confident and comfortable versions of themselves.
This is one of the first musical episodes to get positive reviewers, with user Splarke22 claiming that, despite generally disliking musicals, this one "showed how to properly do a musical episode without it completely sucking." It paid homage to the two prior shows that Legacies is based on, as well as pushing forward character and plot arcs. Although some didn't like that so much of Hope's arc revolves around Landon, they still found the musical episode a strong way of pushing that plot, despite not liking the plot itself.
Supernatural: Season 10, Episode 5, "Fan Fiction" — 9.5/10
This musical episode focuses on a high school that put on their version of the show's in-world Supernatural books, focusing on fan-favorite moments from the show and pulling out fans' greatest gripes (like the brothers leaving their half-brother Adam trapped in the cage for years). A monster is attracted to the play, feeding off the creative inspiration of the director, and must be stopped by the brothers, preferably without ruining the show. The Winchesters have to confront how fans view them versus how they view themselves, and ultimately how many Supernatural means to the fan community.
This episode got extremely high reviews for a musical episode, with fans loving the nostalgia and the comedy present in the episode. However, there are always some who will vote down an episode simply for being a musical, and others like CubsandCulture who had lower votes for more critical reasons, finding that "the writers were being mean spirited and/or obtuse" in their approach to the very fans the episode is supposedly paying tribute to. Beyond these complaints, however, audiences enjoyed the episode for its meta-commentary and its continuation of discourse about fandom, as well as for its great songs and interesting plotline.