Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,' 'Grease,' TV Musicals

Enlarge this image toggle caption Scott Everett White/The CW Scott Everett White/The CW

This week's show had our toes tapping, you can believe that.

Kat Chow of NPR's Code Switch joined us to first talk about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the CW's musical comedy starring Rachel Bloom, who just won a Golden Globe. It has a title we'll talk about that might give you the wrong idea about its intentions, but it piles great performance atop great performance, and if I tell you that Glen Weldon and I independently provided our producer with the same clip that we desperately wanted to include of Tovah Feldshuh singing, you'll perhaps sense our enthusiasm. Now and then, we just get to talk about something we think is terrific and why we think it's terrific, and this is one of those weeks.

We may not have been quite so high on the live rendition of Grease on Fox last weekend, but we admired a lot of things about it, and we take it as an opportunity to talk about the recent efforts by networks to bring back the live musical (and the non-live musical). Do I get a little bit of young Julie Andrews warbling gorgeously into the mix? I perhaps do.

As always, we close the show with what's making us happy this week. Longtime listeners get no points for accurately predicting Stephen's pick, although I will tell you it involves fur and martial arts. Glen picks a revival that was finally confirmed and a return that he welcomed. Kat is happy about revisiting a show from her youth that she invites you to Google only with caution. And I am happy about a homecoming of sorts that got me back in a (virtual) room with some of the people I like the most and owe the most, who happily let me babble on about Superman for a while.