High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Recap: “Yes, And”
“I wanna see the world in Technicolor.”
Season two, episode six of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, “Yes, And” was directed by Kimberly McCullough and written by Ilana Wolpert.
I’m beginning to think that season two of HSM: TM: TS, despite having two additional episodes compared to the first season, is trying to do far too much. The first season was a character-driven, streamlined story that resonated as an homage to and a step forward from the original Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens-led trilogy. The second season is trying to continue this homage to HSM while also developing the spring musical of Beauty and the Beast. In addition, it’s pitting Miss Jenn against Derek Hough, who is also putting on a production of BatB for Menkie awards (while also subtly pitting Mr. Mazzara against Ricky’s father for her romantic affections). On top of all of this, it’s elevating the supporting characters’ story arcs to more B-plots and, in some cases, A-plots, while throwing myriad conflicting emotions at Ricky and a rocky separated storyline at Nini, ostensibly the two main characters of the show (remember, they’re dating, even if they’ve shared minimal screen time together).
It’s ambitious, undoubtedly. And while some struggling factors (Nini’s story arc in the first half of the season; COVID-19 precautions certainly impacted the season) are out of the creative team’s control and some are noble efforts (the ensemble does deserve more attention, but it’s also important to remember that not everyone can have an A-story all the time. Meredith got, like, three of those on The Office), it’s still making season two feel less than the sum of its parts so far. Seb is a hilarious character (he truly believes in friendship); Miss Jenn remains a neurotic delight (“There are no rules except I will need you to do it correctly”); Ricky and Nini are an adorable couple. But none of the operative storylines have received enough attention to allow the show to feel driven by them. Rather, it feels like we’re hitting a checklist in each half-hour or so long episode with an ever-sprawling cast, each fighting for lines.
This also becomes a more evident struggle when the main arc the show is focusing on, especially in “Yes, And,” is perhaps the show’s least interesting. Last week, Gina hinted that she was ready to leave the school and return to her mother, who moved to Louisiana. For most of that episode, she was cryptic and dramatic and second-guessing herself. In “Yes, And,” she reveals that her mother encouraged her to wait and think it over for a little longer. Which then leads to the exact same story happening in consecutive weeks! She mopes around and ignores Ricky and refuses to tell anyone what she’s feeling. Those early moments for Gina in this episode were tough to watch. Considering the lyrics Nini delivered in “The Rose Song” (more on that later), you’d think the show would be able to recognize that Gina is less interested when viewed through the prism of her non-relationship with Ricky. Now that we’re halfway through the season, I don’t want to keep repeating myself and say, “Hopefully Gina is moving on,” but hopefully she truly is this time.
Fortunately, Gina’s arc is not a one-to-one mirror of last week’s plot, as she confesses her feelings for Ricky to Ashlyn. (It’s done in the form of a flashback to the season one finale, which reveals that Gina approached Ricky after the musical (and after he and Nini got back together) to tell him that she wished she could have made their brief coupling work.) This leads to Ashlyn performing, “Home,” a song from the BatB stage musical, which convinces Gina to stick it out at East High, culminating in an emotional hug between the two characters. (Julia Lester is a very believable crier.)
Considering Ashlyn also pointedly remarked, “It’s not that intense,” when Gina became overly dramatic because of a simple improv exercise, I’m hoping that the direct efforts Ashlyn made to get through to Gina will actually last this time. Let Gina and E.J. pine after each other. Give us more E.J. instead. Do whatever it takes to get Gina out of this rut because it’s sucking up the pacing and focus of the entire season. I hope this cathartic hug between Gina and Ashlyn will allow the season to finally move forward beyond territory that is truly tired at this point.
The allowance of Lester performing a song from the stage musical did help assuage another growing concern I had going into this episode. The season has felt pretty scattered so far, but the musical identity was abundantly messier. The first season had a dynamite balance between HSM covers and original songs. We’d been inching forward to a tighter balance with last week’s “A Dancer’s Heart” and a welcomed rendition of “The Climb,” which is from Hannah Montana (unrelated, but fun). This week might have been the strongest yet, as Ashlyn sang “Home” and Nini sang an original song (penned by Olivia Rodrigo), “The Rose Song.” Not to mention, the episode also opened with Alan Menken’s iconic BatB overture. While I may have struggled with the many storylines yearning for attention this week, I do believe the show is gaining back its musical balance and identity, which is arguably one of its most crucial aspects.
Regarding the aforementioned improv exercises, they’re part of an acting workshop Miss Jenn scheduled for the weekend (these poor kids had to give up their weekends to run through a series of half-baked drills meant to build chemistry between the cast and their characters). Aside from Gina, the character who gets the most attention during these scenes is Ricky. He’s expressed a little bit of discomfort over his distant mother and his living situation-shifting father this season, but when Nini returned from her acting academy, I was under the impression that Ricky had dealt with his feelings and was mostly just happy to not be long-distance with his girlfriend anymore.
Apparently not! Seemingly from nowhere (Ricky barely even shows any discomfort in the early moments of this episode, barring a brief moment when he says he wishes he could spend the day with Nini, rather than with the drama club), he has an outburst of dramatic tension with Miss Jenn over the fact that she is dating his father. Maybe I’m misremembering, but I don’t recall Ricky ever being bothered by that relationship. He snidely refers to her as “Mom” and storms out of the rehearsal room; the whole affair seemed really unprovoked and is perhaps illustrative of the second season occasionally manufacturing drama as opposed to the first season’s more natural conflicting dynamics.
Will this be the end of Miss Jenn and Ricky’s father dating? I expect not. We spend a scene with the two of them discussing how happy they feel to be eating shrimp fried rice in her office, so it would seem pretty abrupt to drop that story arc altogether after Miss Jenn ends their coupling so as not to make Ricky feel unsafe. Granted, it would pair her up with Mr. Mazzara quicker (the show clearly wants to do that), but I have to imagine part of Ricky’s reconciliation will be seeing him at peace with his father and his teacher dating.
I’m still just a bit confused about why Ricky needed to reconcile anything at all. I felt those ends were tied with the first season and his reconnecting with his mother, but the show has decided to unearth them as a means for crafting tension between him and Nini because he, for some reason, feels she’s “changed”? Even though all she did was go to Big Red’s pizza parlor to write lyrics for “The Rose Song”? I don’t know. I don’t understand the need to wrench tension between the two when they’ve barely spent time together all season as it is.
Instead, the show leaves us this week with Ricky’s fear that his relationship with Nini will be torpedoed like his parents’ marriage was (he wants to ask the future version of the Beast if he stays committed to Belle). It also leaves us with Nini expressing, through song, that she is her own person and not an object defined by how Ricky sees her (if I interpret the rose/Beast metaphor to be parallel with Nini/Ricky). She also asks Kourtney not to mention the song to Ricky (clearly it’s about him), but relationship drama is going to compound soon enough anyway, as Carlos was recording her first performance of “The Rose Song” in the auditorium.
I’m hoping this arc will follow the learning route and help Ricky and Nini how best to put aside their legacy baggage and just be right for each other, without worrying about anyone else. Based on some of the other arcs of this season, I fear a more unnecessarily dramatic route might be upcoming, but I’m hoping the show continues its streak of subversion. It’s earned the benefit of the doubt by this point.
Regarding “The Rose Song,” though, it comes about as the answer to Miss Jenn’s cliffhanger-y revelation at the end of last week when she needed a way to one-up Derek Hough’s Beauty and the Beast production. Rather than swap Ashlyn for Nini as Belle (which would’ve been a disastrous decision, but HSM: TM: TS is smart and empathetic enough to avoid it), she casts Nini as The Rose (the enchanted one kept in a glass case by the Beast), a new character for her production. What does this mean exactly? We don’t yet know what the arc of The Rose would be beyond petals falling to mark the passage of time, but it at least means that Nini has to write an original song for the original character.
She decides to eschew the trajectory of a Rose/Beast duet and instead write the song from the perspective of the Rose. As aforementioned, it’s clearly a way for her to write through her own feelings about the state of her relationship (which, again, seemed fine last week), but it’s also a great way to display that Rodrigo is just a masterful songwriter. (In case anyone didn’t already know.) So far, “The Rose Song” is my favorite original track of the season and a testament to how high the show can soar when it just lets its insanely talented cast members cook.
The one downside to the beautiful creation of “The Rose Song,” though, is that it once again splits Nini apart from Ricky and many of the other cast members on the series. The weakest part of the first act of the season was that the show’s main/best character was apart from the ensemble and as soon as she returns, she’s gone again, like Kevin McCallister’s parents leaving him alone immediately after they arrive home. I was hopeful that the show would shine as brightly as it did last season when Nini returned to the mix in full, but we might have to wait another week for that.
Granted, she does share screen time with Big Red (briefly) and Kourtney (they had a couple scenes with just the two of them in season one, as well), who are both at the pizza parlor where she tries to break out of writer’s block. She’s in the mix even if she’s not ingratiated into the ensemble yet. And this combination of characters does lead to a number of fun moments (Nini quotes National Treasure; an offshoot French child (superb) is dragged along by Lily to spy on Nini’s endeavor). It’s just a bit lacking at the moment in terms of how best to see the characters play off of one another. Though, we do get to see Kourtney confess her feelings for Howie (the show definitely didn’t need a fourth will they/won’t they to drag out), who claims to feel like “a Gryffindor who found his Ravenclaw.” (I’m not exactly sure what this means because the only pairing like that I can think of is Harry Potter and Cho Chang and they don’t stay together, but sure.) They’re cute together and it was a story arc that was mercifully spared from repeating itself constantly. Seeing Kourtney and Howie begin dating in this episode was refreshing; the show made the right call here.
Hopefully, that will begin to emerge as a pattern. I see some hope. Gina might have finally broken through her emotional limitations; E.J. is due for more screen time at any moment. I just hope that Ricky and Nini are also headed for a place of growth, rather than animosity. I’m not down on the season and am still immensely enjoying the experience (I want to be in the group chat with Seb and E.J.). I just think there’s room for an excellent back half of season two and I hope the show takes advantage of that, rather than settling simply for drama for drama’s sake. We’ll have enough of that on stage.
Read previous recaps:
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Recap: “New Year’s Eve”
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Recap: “Typecasting”
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Recap: “Valentine’s Day”
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Recap: “The Storm”
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: The Recap: “The Quinceañero”
