My favorite episode of Teachers is one that the fewest number of people have seen: The musical.
It’s not easy to love, especially considering how hard it was to make. The show was the last episode of a 10-show cycle, so of course it wasn’t finished when we had to start production. As a result, it was written during hurried lunches and exhausted weekends. Songs were written a dozen times, other were written and thrown out. The Katies had to squeeze choreography rehearsals between scenes they were acting in and record their singing tracks late at night after shooting all day. It was crazy. And yet it all somehow came together: Certain numbers, such as the Bennigan-Hot Dad Duet and “Today,” I could watch endlessly. The scene in which Snap finds Feldman’s candy stash makes me laugh every time, and I will always regret showing the Pearson song to my children. When I watch this episode, I forget about the pain of making it. That’s how good it is.
I wish I could end this post by telling you that all that hard work paid off when the show aired, but the opposite is the case. Up until this episode, Teachers had been riding historic highs in the ratings. But when viewers turned on their TVs and saw the teachers singing in the cafeteria, they switched channels — 75% of them. As our network executive put it, the current overlap between fans of Teachers and fans of musicals is about 25%. After the musical aired, all Viacom shows were forced to abandon their musical episodes — a “no-musical” edict was put into place. All because of our little show.
Now, that’s power.
