I'm pretty much a snob about this, I go looking for covers of the song and judge them harshly on "Is it possible to figure out from their delivery that Evan is making up this story as he goes along and none of this actually happened"https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1261523249910837248 …
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This particular song is a really strong example Like it's not just "a happy song" or a "sad song", the whole song is playing against, Evan lying to himself, where he's slowly letting his own desperate emotional needs take over this comforting story he's telling the Murphys
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The most powerful thing about Ben Platt's delivery is how the part where he climbs the tree is frantic, desperate, panicked -- as though he's trying to outrun his own recollection of what really happened Until the line "The entire sun shines on my FACE" is this explosive scream
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Like originally he was just taking Jared's advice to nod and smile but the story kept growing in his head He never planned to include his broken arm in the story but he suddenly HAS TO, if he can change anything about the past it MUST BE THIS, if he can only have this ONE THING
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And then he's almost in tears on "He's coming to get me... he's coming to get me..." Like the idea is that for the story that it is -- even if you really were telling the story of your last memory of your best friend before he died -- it's *too* intense, it's over the top
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Which is why the Murphys come around to Evan so quickly -- they can't deny the raw emotion there, even though it flies in the face of all their own actual memories of what Connor was like, there's something so real there it outweighs all of that
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And why the reveal later in the show (which we've probably come to suspect if we were paying attention) of how Evan really broke his arm hits so hard It all hangs together really well and it's all so dependent on this one performance early in the show
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Anyway I'm not actually going to link all the YouTube covers I've been listening to but I really do strongly feel like someone who can act this scene but doesn't have the strongest voice is WAAAY superior to someone who sings it really well but doesn't quite hit those beats
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(This is why being a "double threat" to say nothing of a "triple threat" is so impressive Like imagine if real athletes had to both play sports for real and act in movies about sports, with a closeup on their face "Now I want you to nail this three-pointer and MEAN it")
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