High School Musical and Grease: You're the One That I Want

Recently, the Einsteins in charge of television programming at NBC decided to ruin Broadway as well by introducing a game show-more often called a reality show-that turns viewers into casting agents with the power to decide who will get a part in a Broadway revival of the ubiquitous high school musical Grease. Alert readers will have picked up on a particular phrase in that sentence that reveals the vast chasm that exists between television execs who are creative in their lack of ingenuity and television execs who are mere hacks desperately hoping to grind the last penny out of a genre that has already outstayed its welcome by about a decade.

The people responsible for coming up with the idea of Grease: You're the One That I Want should-in addition to being fired-be forced to meet with those folks at Walt Disney were are responsible for coming up with the idea of High School Musical. Aside from the fact that Grease: You're the One That I Want is putting the fate of a Broadway musical in the hands of a country that elected George W. Bush President once and sat by and did nothing while he was appointed by the Supreme Court over the will of the people another time, this show may very well prove to be NBC's biggest embarrassment since allowing itself to be bought by Jack Welch, one of America's biggest embarrassments. More to the point, however, is how Grease: You're the One That I Want stands in such stark contrast to the Disney Channel's original movie High School Musical.

In the event you don't get to mix it up much with the younger set, let me explain that High School Musical is a Disney Channel original, meaning a TV movie made especially for the Disney Channel. High School Musical is an old-fashioned musical where characters just suddenly start blurting into song, with a plot that bears a passing resemblance to Grease in that it brings together two students from different worlds, though unlike Grease it doesn't force its female lead to dress like a slut in order to be accepted. High School Musical is really more like one of those old Frankie and Annette musicals; it has charm, catchy music, appealing actors and thoroughly refrains from taking the FX network approach to being edgy, by which I mean introducing sex and offensive language. (For those of you convinced that Nip/Tuck and the rest of the FX lineup is edgy, I might inform you that "edgy" used to refer to provocative or controversial subject matter, not to merely getting your cast to strip naked and spout four letter words; St. Elsewhere was edgier in its tamest moments than any original FX series has ever been.)

The Disney Channel first aired High School Musical in early 2006. By late 2006 it had spawned the number one selling CD of the year, several best-selling singles, one of the biggest selling karaoke CDs of all time, multiple DVD versions, a stage adaptation to be used for real high school musical productions, and a live tour featuring most of the incredibly popular cast. And that's not even to mention the many times it has been successfully rerun on the Disney Channel with one version even containing pop-up information ala VH-1's lamented Pop-Up Video gimmick. In short, High School Musical is less a TV movie than it is a phenomenon. It is also exactly the kind of thing that network executives fantasize about.

Naturally, there was talk of a sequel practically the day after its huge premiere. The folks at NBC can only dream that Grease: You're the One That I Want will have legs like High School Musical. Even assuming that audiences do somehow manage to buck the odds and pick a cast that can turn Grease into a big hit-and that's one mighty huge assumption-what happens then? Do you take that game show cast from Broadway and remake the movie? Ooh, did you feel that? That was the collective shudder of several million fans for whom even the idea of a Grease remake is treason.

But consider what Disney has on their hands. The potential for sequels goes well beyond the first one. And then there's the move to Broadway. Of course, the live show at Disney World. A big screen version with a brand new cast is not out of the question. And, of course, the ABC series!

What can NBC do about it? Well, I suppose there's always the potential for a new reality show: Who Wants to Become an NBC Programming Executive?