A parody version of Friends is on its way in the form of an off-Broadway musical, featuring songs such as “The Only Coffee Shop in New York City,” “How You Doing, Ladies?” and, of course, “We’ll Always Be There For You.”
Here’s what we imagine other popular TV shows would look like if they made the jump from screen to stage.
How I Met Your Mother
The opening scene is set in MacLaren’s Pub, where Barney Stinson leads the rest of the ensemble in an upbeat intro called, “Haaaaaaave You Met Ted?” One by one, Barney introduces the audience to each of the main characters — Marshall, Lily, himself (of course) and minor recurring characters such as Carl, Wendy the Waitress and Stan the Security Guard, who act as fun Easter eggs for the more hardcore HIMYM fans.
After the inhabitants of the bar are introduced, everyone suddenly freezes as the lights go dim and a spotlight follows Ted Mosby onto the stage. He stands at the bar, about to order a drink, and the music slows down as he spills his hopes for finding “the one” — the “yellow umbrella in a sea of gray,” if you will. It’s way overly eager and optimistic: picture a man in his late 20s embodying Hairspray‘s Tracy Turnblad in “Good Morning Baltimore.”
Barney cuts in for one last chorus, which ends abruptly in front of Robin Scherbatsky. He spouts the infamous line, “Haaaaaave you met Ted?” and suddenly, the music breaks as Robin and Ted make eye contact in a meet-cute. Featuring other songs such as “Get Out of Our Booth,” “The Eriksen Family Baskiceball Thanksgiving Day Classic,” and Robin’s rock solo, “Guns, Hockey and Dogs,” How I Met Your Musical shares the heartwarming tale of a classic romantic searching for love and getting by with the help of his friends.
Game of Thrones
Backed by an enormous production budget to account for the cast, costumes, set, props and special effects, Game of Thrones: The Musical unfortunately shuts down just a few months in when half the stage catches on fire during a dragon stunt.
Pretty Little Liars
In the name of some kind of strange, improvisational musical theater, the cast makes up a different “A” every night. They claim it’s “mysterious” and “groundbreaking storytelling,” but we’re starting to get the feeling that maybe they’re just making it up as they go along because they never really had a plan to begin with.
The Office
We open to someone beatboxing poorly. Enter Dwight Schrute (stage left) and Michael Scott (stage right). Michael starts rapping — badly. He and Dwight proceed to perform season three’s “Straight Outta Scranton.” A couple more refrains have been added to further introduce the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company: Michael and Dwight end up in the office, where they continue to rap and dance while introducing our key characters.
The real standout song, though, is “The Receptionist” — a duet between Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly sung from their respective desks, in which Pam longs to be “more than just the receptionist” and Jim wishes he could tell Pam how he feels about her. This song will be a recurring theme throughout, most notably when Jim musters up the courage to tell Pam he’s in love with her, and again at the end of the first act when the company takes a trip to the beach and Pam, in a sudden, coal-walk-induced burst of courage, spills her feelings to the entire staff.
Orange is the New Black
OITNB: The Musical does well on Broadway and has an almost-entirely female cast, which makes it a good choice for middle and high school productions, except they also have to censor basically the whole thing.
The Walking Dead
Something, something, the “Thriller” dance.
Parks and Recreation
The show opens on an overly chipper Leslie Knope power walking through the streets of Pawnee, Indiana. In a song titled “Friends, Waffles, Work,” she shares her love for the city, but more importantly the Parks Department (and JJ’s Diner). Later on, we hear everyone’s favorite Mouse Rat songs: “The Pit,” “Bye Bye, Li’l Sebastian,” “5,000 Candles in the Wind” and “Catch Your Dream.”
There are plenty of new songs, too, such as “The Debate Song.” It features Leslie versus Bobby Newport in a rap battle homage to Hamilton, though it’s short-lived because they’re both awful at rapping. We also hear a new reprise to “The Pit,” sung by each of the characters at the end of Act 1 when all hope seems lost: Leslie’s park doesn’t look like it’ll get built, April and Andy are in love but afraid to tell each other, Chris and Ben don’t know if they should give up their lives on the road to settle down in Pawnee and Ron is threatened by the return of his evil ex-wife, Tammy 1.
To ease the tension a bit in Act 2, they reopen with “Treat Yo’ Self,” a flashy, over-the-top and extremely well-choreographed duet between Tom and Donna.
The Simpsons
It’s a horrible idea from the start, and everyone knows it, but somehow it gets pushed along anyway. There’s no way to both make the live characters look like their animated counterparts and not look completely creepy and ridiculous. The show ends up doing surprisingly OK considering the circumstances, but it’s still strange, and the people involved should feel bad about themselves for creating it in the first place.
Gilmore Girls
Musically narrated by the Stars Hollow town troubadour, this show has more of an acoustic, low-key feel than a traditional Broadway musical. Picture a cross between Waitress and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Funnily enough, both starred Tony Award winner Jessie Mueller, who’ll be further typecast in the genre here as Lorelai Gilmore. The show ends — how else? — with Lorelai and Rory sipping coffee in a dimly lit Luke’s Diner, singing the show’s original theme song, “Where You Lead.”
