39,327
edits
The Show Must Go On: Difference between revisions
m
Mass update links
m (Mass update links) |
m (Mass update links) |
||
Line 18:
Note that the full phrase is something like "the show must go on tonight" (i.e. whatever personal tragedy happens during the day, everyone must be in place and ready to perform when the curtain rises).
Compare [[Throw It In]]. See also [[All Part of the Show]], [[Dead Line News]], [[Pushed in Front of
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* When Takako's dress is being ripped off in ''[[Otome wa Boku
* In ''[[Macross Frontier]]'', the stunt extra aerobatic team messes up at Sheryl Nome's concert, causing [[The Hero|Alto]] to [[What the Hell, Hero?|knock Sheryl off her several story high stage]]. Alto manages to recover and [[Catch a Falling Star|catch her]], saving her from a fatal fall. Her reaction? Annoyance, and she tells him to get flying and make it look good while she continues singing, because the show must go on.
** Later in the same concert, an air raid siren sounds ushering everyone to the nearest shelter. Sheryl's reaction: "But I'm not finished singing yet!" The trope is subverted, as Cathy drags her off stage.
Line 28:
* Thanks to this trope, in the ''[[Slayers]]'' universe it is assumed that anything that occurs on stage while a play is being performed is part of the play. That includes spontaneous script rewrites, duels with real swords, and massive explosions. Lina and Co. got an award for their ad-libbed play (which, while completely nonsensical, was much more entertaining than the original story they intended to perform).
* In the [[Ace Attorney]] manga, during Turnabout Showtime, after Flip Chambers, who plays Twinklestar in the Sparklestar show for Sparkle Land, is stabbed inside his costume, he comes out on stage as scheduled before collapsing and dying. Toward the end of the trial, Phoenix speculates that "Maybe he thought the show must go on. Or maybe he was asking for help."
* Similar to the ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' example, ''[[Yes!
{{quote| '''Nozomi, Rin, Komachi and Karen:''' "Not going to happen."}}
== [[Fairy Tales]] ==
* ''[[The
== [[Film]] ==
* The [[Marx Brothers]] ''A Night At The Opera'' where the brothers throw an opera into total chaos and the theatre crew and police still bend over backwards to avoid disrupting the show themselves, even when things are bad enough that logically they might as well simply and openly march out on stage to grab the brothers since it would not make any difference.
* ''[[
{{quote| '''Jason Nesmith:''' You ''will'' go out there.<br />
'''Alexander Dane:''' I won't. And nothing you can say will make me.<br />
Line 52:
== [[Literature]] ==
* The name of a chapter in a ''[[The Berenstain Bears]]'' book in which Brother and Sister bear attempt to help a horseback riding teacher save her building by means of a fundraiser to pay the mortgage. In the chapter, {{spoiler|the villains have been defeated and prevented from sabotaging the fundraiser in their bid to gain control of the building, but despite the problems they have, they still have to hold the event to get the necessary money}}.
* In ''[[Discworld
* This is Rachel's motto in ''[[No More Dead Dogs]]'', even as early back as kindergarten. At the end of the book she convinces everyone to remain performing the play with these words after {{spoiler|the Old Shep dog is blown up with a cherry bomb.}}
Line 58:
* A standard trope in ''[[The Muppet Show]]'' whether it is using a petrified Ms. Piggy as a prop or shoving a wardrobe on stage with the guest star, Chris Langham, trapped inside to sing "Hawaiian Cowboy" (complete with a cowboy hat on top of the wardrobe).
** One exception is when during the Glenda Jackson episode when Kermit can't take anymore and goes on stage to say "They say the show must go on, but they never explain why. The show's been taken over by pirates, the theater's sailing out to sea and ''I'm losing my mind''..."
* The entire show ''[[Dark Shadows (TV series)|Dark Shadows]]''. What is that lurking in the dark shadows of Collinwood manor? Is it a ghost? A vampire? or is it just the sound man again?
* The British soap ''Crossroads''. Someone flub a line in dialogue? Did the other person flub a line right back? Did a piece of the ceiling fall down during a scene? Is that a boom microphone two inches from Sue Hanson's hair? There's no time for editing!
* ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]'' of course typically plays through any missteps but the show also has a game built on this trope where the players are in a theater production and all but one of them (typically Colin) have dropped dead leaving the one living player desperately trying to continue the show dragging around the corpses of the other players.
* "Ham Radio," one of the funniest episodes of ''[[Frasier]]'', is all about this trope. Frasier tries to do a live radio drama, and his tyrannical direction leaves him with a cast of Bulldog, stricken with stage fright; Roz, who has an emergency root canal just before the performance; Gil, who is determined by hook or by crook to say his character's big speech when Frasier decides to cut it; Bulldog's dyslexic girlfriend; and Niles as the rest of the characters, which Frasier neglects to tell him until the show has already started. Add in some rather unfortunate sound effects and you've got one whopping [[Crowning Moment of Funny]].
* In the [[Pilot]] of ''[[30 Rock
* In [[Glee]], during the sectionals, they find that someone leaked their setlist and that the other two teams, who were performing before them, had copied their songs. They realised that if they went with that setlist they'd be accused of cheating, so they end up having to pick, practice and choreograph four new songs in an hour. Of course, they still win.
* One story arc on ''[[Schloss Einstein]]'' had the sixth-graders putting on a production of ''Die Räuber''. The kid who's playing Karl gets sick right before the performance, which leads to the brainstorming of increasingly ridiculous ideas to save the play (the replacement Karl has no time to learn the lines, so they try pinning a copy of the script to another kid's back, for instance). They finally realise that Lilly, the prompter, knows the entire text by heart, so she goes on as Karl and saves the play in spite of her incredible shyness.
Line 80:
* In ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]'', the station pledges to do an all-nighter live broadcast about the mayoral election until the decision is made. Unfortunately, a blizzard cuts off their connection to the voting booths after the first set of numbers come in, leaving everyone to flounder desperately for something to do until they can somehow get word of who won. The best part comes when Ted completely runs out of ideas and just stands in the studio, doing and saying nothing. "I don't believe I've ever seen that before."
* ''[[Family Feud]]'' host Richard Dawson said in an interview that he absolutely ''hated'' stopdowns, and would demand that the staff work around anything that they possibly could. This led to such oddities as the [[Bonus Round|Fast Money round]] being played on cue cards because the electronic board went on the fritz.
* A ''[[Jeopardy
== Music ==
Line 93:
== [[Real Life]] ==
* During a 1973 concert in San Francisco, drummer Keith Moon of [[The Who]] passed out due to a drug reaction. Rather than stop the show, the band recruited an amateur drummer (the late Scott Halpin) from the audience to replace him and finish the show.
* Similarly, a 2002 performance by [[Counting Crows]] in Los Angeles saw drummer Ben Mize fall ill mid-show, requiring his hospitalization. After a brief intermission, the band switched to acoustic instruments and performed several songs without a drummer, before drummers Randy Guss of Toad the Wet Sprocket (their opening band) and Todd Roper of [[CAKE (
* Naturally, anybody who has appeared in live performances can testify to problems involved in cast members, problems with props or any number of unforeseen difficulties. The universal rallying cry is, in all circumstances, the Trope Title.
* Comic Red Skelton, on a live 1950s show, was doing a sketch with a cow, which started defecating, for a very long time. Needless to say, the audience was in stitches, and Red spent the interval pulling faces, holding his nose, and telling the cow "No ad-libbing!"
| |||