The art of the "Under Pressure" needle drop

, you madman. By its final hour, the series had completely fallen off the rails and had no interest in getting back on them. Case in point: a whole cast rendition of “Under Pressure,” one which really should sound a lot better than it does, considering the Broadway pedigree of (most of) these singers. The performance should also feel a heck of a lot more earned, since the Tony Awards are imminent, and these are theater people. Instead, the entire enterprise is unrooted from reality. For Smash, that was a good thing. But for “Under Pressure,” we could do without this performance. [Drew Gillis]

John Cusack’s Peak Cusack Era passion projects, both of which he co-wrote and produced, each center on Midwestern dudes journeying through the past and feature some pretty killer needle drops to help tell those stories. I’m partial to —which, like , he wrote with D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink—as it’s, you know, the best Chicago movie ever and has the better soundtrack. (Also, Fidelity’s cranky record-store owner feels … more relatable than Grosse’s hitman?) But that’s no slight on the 1997 film, which boasts a score by Joe Strummer and ’80s cuts by the likes of the Jam, Violent Femmes, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The comedy also, of course, throws in the very appropriate “Under Pressure,” which swells as Cusack’s assassin, while at his high school reunion, comes face to face with a former classmate’s baby—and the idea of family and adulthood. [Tim Lowery]

Much like another primetime medical television series, Scrubs became well known for its needle drops over the course of its nine seasons. In the second season, still had a lot of its best musical moments ahead of it (including and especially an original musical episode), but the deployment of “Under Pressure” here does not disappoint. In the second season, the doctors are still young and figuring out how to keep their heads above water. Elliot (Sara Chalke) faces being sued by a patient, while J.D. (Zach Braff) learns a difficult lesson about the role that luck plays in diagnoses that knocks him down a few pegs. There is perhaps no more pressurized environment, nor a profession in which one regularly encounters “the terror of knowing what this world is about” than working in a hospital. Scrubs didn’t shy from the terror, but it leaned into the joy, too, which is crucial to unlocking “Under Pressure.” previously called the song choice “unimpeachable,” so we’ll let the ruling stand. [Mary Kate Carr]

Frankly, didn’t do enough to earn its own existence, let alone an “Under Pressure” needle drop. It’s clear what the filmmakers were thinking: Pink joined the cast for the sequel (replacing Brittany Murphy after her untimely death), and it makes sense given her powerhouse vocal that they would just want to let her wail. Wail she does, amid a very literal interpretation of the lyrics. Most of the penguins are trapped in a pit (“splits a family in two”) unable to fend for themselves (“the terror of knowing what this world’s about”) and the rest of the creatures have to apply pressure via rhythmic movements in order to free them from their icy prison. Glad the penguins and pals were able to once again solve their problems through music and dance, but “Under Pressure” is better than this. [Mary Kate Carr]

In , “Under Pressure” comes at the climax, a whole-body-chilling moment. As 11-year-old Sophie and her father Calum end their vacation in Turkey, reality melts away, and the adult Sophie tries to find Calum in a surreal nightclub setting. It’s unclear whether she’s trying to fight him or embrace him; the complicated, contradictory feelings she has toward him are the point. The drama of “Under Pressure” scores this scene fairly literally. The song is about a painful iteration of love, and after living with this small family for almost 90 minutes, the theatrics are totally earned. [Drew Gillis]

The true test of whether a film earns its “Under Pressure” bona fides is whether the character in question is really about to pop—and few film characters end their movies closer to contracting the emotional bends than Lance Clayton, Robin Williams’ character in Bobcat Goldthwait’s excellent, pitch-black 2009 comedy . Lance’s life sucked before his aggressively awful son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) accidentally died while performing auto-erotic asphyxiation, but the PSI only increases as a small lie meant to confer his kid a bit of posthumous dignity snowballs into a massive, life-altering fiction. The moment Lance finally embraces the truth, telling a crowd who’ve become fixated on Kyle as a sort of blank slate to project their own hurts on that his son was just an average douchebag, is the moment that irresistible bass line kicks in—and keeps going, as Goldthwait uses the full four minutes of the track to highlight Lance’s sudden freedom, the camera locking on to Williams’ face as he processes joy and grief in simultaneous moments, while Freddie Mercury scat-sings him toward catharsis. [William Hughes]

Everything in Valerie Cherish’s (Lisa Kudrow) world happens at a 10. In her head, “Under Pressure” is probably playing on a near-constant loop, whether she’s learning her character has changed from a cool co-ed to Aunt Sassy or chasing her tweenage daughter off her lawn. But in the series’ second season, those of us watching at home hear it too. The scenario? Valerie, playing a fictionalized version of herself, has to pretend to perform fellatio on Seth Rogen, who is playing the fictionalized version of her former tormentor Pauly D, in a dream sequence. Valerie doesn’t actually want to pantomime the act, so she simply squats on Seth’s lap while they film his face reacting. The whole thing is appropriately bizarre and hysterical, so we’ll grant this an “earned”—nothing is ever as deep as Valerie thinks it is, but she believes in the depth with such conviction, you have to hand it to her. [Drew Gillis]