Up next: a drama that's ALL musical montages

Seriously, does anyone else think the musical montage has gotten out of hand? They used to be a rare, once-a-season thing, and usually cool as hell - a virtual music video set in the world of the show. Then it was a couple of times a season. Then every episode. Then it was the last episode of Sons of Anarchy, which worked in two.

It went from cool to useful to overworked to cliche in about four years, to the point where I groan as soon as I hear the soft-rock guitar start riffing.

As a show-ender, they maybe have the occasional place. As just a filler somewhere in the middle to show off the director’s lack of originality…

They should have been outlawed after one of the first (that I recall) - the searing montage late in The Shield set over Dropkick Murphys’ take on “Amazing Grace.”

Not a drama, but one of my gripes with Scrubs is that it felt like every single episode ended with one of these.

David Simon uses these to great effect at the end of various seasons/episodes. Usually ended each season of The Wire with one, and I know he had a good one to Louis Prima’s “Buono Sera” at the end of the pilot epsiode of Treme.

And lens flares! You ain’t a cool cutting edge drama without streaks of light blocking half the screen. Add Scandal type perpetual reflections with the music and it’s Disco Drama!