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.