If you find the feeling of your skin crawling all over your body exhilarating, or if you like to cringe so hard that your core gets a workout, have I got the show for you. I have been a fan of Disney+’s Encore! since it debuted along with the streaming service in November, but the most recent episode was simply such a stupendous hour of reality TV that I have to share my love for it in this space. The power of the theatre compels me. They couldn’t have created something more awkward if they did it intentionally and had Christopher Guest at the helm. It is simply breathtaking.
Let me first explain in an image, not words, just how awkward the episode that premiered Friday was.
Encore!, for the uninitiated, reunites former classmates to re-perform musicals they put up during high school, years (often decades) later. They have five days to both do this and sort out whatever residual feelings and resentment they’ve been carrying with them in the time since. It is poignant but also hilarious (I’ve cried at least once an episode but guffawed far more frequently), and probably the snarkiest thing Disney has ever produced. The show takes its subjects and their lives—both past and present—seriously, but it’s not not making fun of them at the same time. Exhibit A in this week’s episode is Laine, a server with ’90s bangs who says she is a performer first and foremost. Cut to her rapping in a musical context reminiscent to that of Mohammed’s band Midnight Voices in The Real World: San Francisco. Cut to children peering up at her quizzically from the floor.
“Annie [Oakley] and I are kindred spirits. It’s like an umbilical cord that connects through space and time,” said Laine of the character she played in her youth. Laine and her costars of the week reunited to remount Annie Get Your Gun, which they performed at their high school in 1998 in Satellite Beach, Florida. This cast, in particular, showed up to deliver, as though all these years they’ve been waiting for a high-concept reality show that would allow them to show off their perceived skills and relive their past in the pressurized environment of a quick-turnaround musical.
No one took this opportunity more seriously than Ameigh. That’s pronounced “Amy,” which was how she spelled her name until she was rechristened in a love letter by her high school boyfriend Alfie, who thought this spelling would be “cute and creative.” She agreed and changed her name legally. She showed up to the reunion in a cowboy hat and boots in an attempt to snatch the role from Laine, which: drama. Not just drama, drama drama. Ameigh literally said, “This is my moment.”
