Groundhog Day: Bits and Thoughts

Some bullet points about Groundhog Day the musical (specifically, the 2017 Broadway production) - favorite bits, jokes, thoughts and so on.

• “If there’s anything I can do…” “Anything?” “Uuugh, work-related, Phil.” I really appreciate, in general, that Rita does not play along with Phil’s nonsense, at all. She’s nice and friendly, because she’s a nice, friendly person and it’s her job, and at the start of the day she’s willing to give him a chance despite having heard that he’s an asshole. But her friendliness is not flirting, and every facepalm-worthy time that he starts making his wildly inappropriate advances on her, she is absolutely not there for it. It’s so common for this sort of thing to be treated as if it’s a normal way for men to behave, to the point that I find it refreshing how clearly and immediately it puts her off.
• On day one Phil goes “Think I’m gonna lose it altogether if one more person talks about the weather…” a few times, and is then interrupted by Mrs. Lancaster on “talks–” for the last one. On day two he just goes “Think I’m gonna lose it altogether if one more person talks,” and stops there without being interrupted - he’s just exasperated with any of these people talking to him, at all, especially if they’re going to act like it’s yesterday.
• “Brought to you by the world’s most groundhog weatherman.” That whole report on day two is great - Phil is so obviously frazzled and off-balance compared to the very fake but composed version on day one.
• In Rita’s first diary entry from day one, she brings up other stuff before she brings up Phil; he’s the asshole she expected him to be, and ultimately basically an eye-roll-worthy footnote in her otherwise fun day. On day two, when Phil’s been more noticeably erratic, she first brings up that she’s been working with Phil Connors, because the simply strange way he’s been acting has made him a slightly more noteworthy part of her day, compared to the first iteration.
• The sheer variety of different things they pull out to depict a car chase onstage is suuuuuuch a goddamn delight. Turntables, car exoskeleton in two halves around sitting actors, extras moving the halves around them to simulate up-and-down movement, miniatures, simulating motion through extras moving miniature backgrounds, overhead miniatures… The sheer inventiveness of it is just nuts. Throw all of the awards at Matthew Warchus please.
• The choreography of “Philandering” where Phil kind of dances along to everything, moves in time with the music, eggs on the groundhog and then makes a little thing of artfully dodging the swinging sun, etc., is just so fun. Prior to that he’s never in sync with the townspeople for all the celebrations at all, resolutely out of step with them; here he still sticks out but he is playing a fluid part in the choreography, because he’s (for the moment) actually enjoying it all and knows all the moves perfectly.
• When Rita reveals that she left the wake-up call, my favorite Phil response is, “Oh, you did that. The gift that keeps on giving.” (I also just really like that she left the wake-up call because, well, she gives him a wake-up call.)
• The sequence interlaced with the first half of “One Day”, where Phil goes through a date with Rita through painstaking trial and error, is a classic, hilarious sequence from the movie. But towards the end of that bit, when Phil starts maniacally insisting that this is perfect, the perfect day, the perfect love, is deeply unsettling. He goes from entertaining douchebag to hooooly crap no; his voice becomes creepy and obsessive and even the music in the background as he talks becomes ominous. It really drives home the creepiness of everything that just happened, how this funny sequence of time-travel antics really isn’t very funny.
• I also love how many bits in that sequence imply other iterations we don’t see. Like how Phil makes a weird point of going “I love kids!” during the snowball fight, which Rita agrees with - we don’t see it but we know that previously he said something about how he can’t stand the little bastards and got a negative reaction.
• Speaking of everything that just happened, I think it’s pretty neat how Phil doesn’t just do the same conversation, prompt her to say the same things and then vary his reactions according to what she responds well to; instead, he keeps modifying the conversation to preempt her, to take her views and opinions and ideas and claim them as his own rather than simply pretending to agree with her. It’d be easier and safer to do the pure trial-and-error thing, but Phil is enough of a douche to go out of his way so that he’s the one with the ideas and thoughts and original words and she’s reduced to “Oh, really, me too.” It’s a subtler, more insidious demonstration of his narcissism and his lack of real respect for her and I really dig that.
• Phil is getting so desperate on the last iteration of the Rita date, though. Part of the reason it’s so creepy is he’s just unable to even make any of it sound convincing anymore because his mental state has been deteriorating and he’s absolutely clinging to the idea that he must be able to win this and get anything he wants. (The powerlessness of realizing and finally accepting that he just can’t, despite everything, sort of triggers the depressive spiral.)
• The choreography at the end of “One Day” as Phil starts spiralling, pulling his coat tighter, seeming out of sync again and scared and vulnerable and then undressing and flinching away from the people and just crawling back into his bed, oof.
• The bit just after “Playing Nancy” where Phil does the report before shooting the groundhog and himself is pretty deliciously laced with double meanings: “Well, there you have it. Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow for the last time. Now let’s watch Phil embrace the darkness. That’s it for me live from Punxsutawney. Goodbye, Phil.”
• “That’s it for me live from Punxsutawney” also has just a liiiittle extra emphasis on live that is definitely intentional.
• I also really like how Rita just goes “Phil, we can’t use that.” He does weird sarcastic takes all the time, this is just one more, why can’t he take this seriously for once, and then boom.
• “He didn’t even like this holiday, and now it’s gonna be on his tombstone” is possibly my favorite joke in the entire thing.
• Phil is uncomfortable and moves away from Rita when she’s trying to comfort him by putting her arm around him on the bench after he confesses what’s going on. This is definitely because of all the times that he painstakingly tried to manipulate affection out of her - some part feeling like he’s somehow accidentally doing that again when he wasn’t even trying to and doesn’t even want that right now (and probably feels at least a bit gross about it), some part kneejerk conditioned expectation that that Always Goes Horribly Wrong and he should stay away.
• The “I am a god” conversation is funny, but my favorite thing about it is that at this point he’s clearly being funny as a defense mechanism. As we learn explicitly in a bit, there is literally no joy left in his life, he’s given up even on killing himself, he can’t remember ever feeling good anymore. But when Rita asks what’s going on, he still makes a grandiose proclamation that he is basically Jesus and that he knows everything, in much the same tone as back when he was trying to convince her to date him by declaring that his humility is legend. He doesn’t really know how to speak to someone on an honest, human level, much less how to admit that he’s suicidally depressed or ask for help (he tells Rita that he can be killed, but not that he knows this because he’s been trying to kill himself) - so he deflects it into his usual self-aggrandizing shtick to make it out like he is fine and this is awesome. This is my jam, guys.
• And after that, when he finally does manage to tell her what’s happening to him, I love how he starts listing off all the things he’ll never get to do, and they’re a few genuinely tragic things (he’ll never see the sun again) mixed in with sillier, humourous things (he’ll never grow a beard), like he’s still kind of compulsively, half-heartedly trying to make the whole thing out to be funny, and then he ends with “It’s just this one, dark, freezing…” and his voice is breaking. Damn. It takes something to take a character who is such an exquisite asshole for the entirety of Act I and then make you feel intensely sorry for him, but between this moment and “Hope”, they did it.
• Phil holds his jacket up in front of his face so Fred and Debbie won’t recognize him during “If I Had My Time Again”; I really enjoy that detail. Usually he kind of likes them to recognize him, says thanks for watching at least - he probably gets a little ego boost out of it, and he’s willing to go through the motions of it even when he isn’t feeling it. But right now he just doesn’t want the attention and is exhausted by everything and just does not want to deal with that. A little later in the choreography they do recognize him and he still signs autographs and smiles briefly (and forcedly) for the photo, clearly running on autopilot.
• For the whole first half of the “If I Had My Time Again” choreography he’s kind of trying to not enjoy himself, giving back all the festival food, etc. He takes off the pendant he’s given after escaping from the crowd, like he’s done on previous days, but that’s when Rita goes “I’d sample all the samples, look at things from different angles,” and he actually puts it back on and has a sip of the coffee. And then begins to tell her about where he went skinny-dipping in a frozen-over pond and learned to drive an 18-wheeler through a store window, warming up slightly into having fun, a little bit (that one post suggesting he’s putting a positive spin on some of his suicide attempts there is very plausible and I love it).
• The way the tilt-a-whirl bit just ends up in Phil staring at Rita in wonder as she’s having the time of her life. It’s so hard for him to remember that having fun like that at something so simple is even a thing you can do. (He could have seen that in the townspeople, of course, but he hasn’t been thinking of them as people and their joy has just been annoying.)
• “You always have a really good day, except for when I mess it up for you.” There’s a little pause before he says this, like he’s just realizing it.
• “You know, this is the, uh… This is the best day that I can remember?” has this uncertain tone to it, like he half thinks that just sounds really pathetic.
• At the end of “Everything About You (Reprise)”, too, Andy Karl tends to sing it live with a slightly different intonation, more questioning than on the soundtrack, so that it is audibly an “I know… everything?” as he starts to reconsider the idea that he knows everything there is to know about the people around him. I like that moment a lot; I love when you can tell what a character is thinking just by one small thing they say or the way they say it.
• I love how purely platonic that one day is. Romance and sex are the furthest thing from Phil’s mind, he actively rejects physical contact, they just hang out and do some kinda fun things and make jokes and that’s the first time they just actually connect as human beings, and that’s what sparks a little bit of joy for him again. And then what’s the first thing he does the next morning? Trying to connect with other people as human beings too, shed his jerkass habits and just actually treat them as people.
• He has a little chuckle at echoing the popsicle line without actually calling attention to it or anything there on the first day post-“If I Had My Time Again”, in a way that makes it seem fond, and that’s just cute.
• After taking a picture with Fred and Debbie he tells them to have fun today! No catchphrases or thanks for watching this time, just hey, I hope you enjoy your day. How lovely.
• “I was talking to Buster and he thinks we can get the best shot right about here.” So he was actually talking to people in town, getting their opinions! Like they matter! And wants Larry’s opinion, too!
• Phil’s interactions with the piano teacher. It’s the little things that really sell his transformation - stuff like how he tells her “Go ahead if you need a break” when she asks if he needs a glass of water or anything, and how he gives her flowers simply out of appreciation for the hundreds or thousands of lessons she’s given him even though she can’t remember any of them. The flashy saving of everyone’s day is cool, and his efforts to save Old Man Jenson are heartbreaking, but just being genuinely considerate and appreciative towards someone he hires for a service is real. He really has changed and this makes me believe it.
• Phil making a note of Jenson’s name, wanting to remember it, after bringing him into the hospital. Just that little “Jenson.” says so much.
• During “Philanthropy” he gets Mrs. Lancaster into the snowball fight with the kids and she loves it oh my god
• All of the dialogue when they wake up on February 3rd. Phil’s childlike wonder at the simplest of things, simply because they’re actually different, is just adorable. Such a cute and uplifting ending after a rollercoaster of just about every other emotion. A++ musical.

Page last modified April 1 2025 at 00:33 UTC

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