Playing House Gets A Citation From Tara Ariano, Marching Band Cop

When I was a teenager, I was in a very serious marching band in my hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan. I'll pause here to give you a moment to absorb all the cool in that sentence, but yes, before you ask, I basically was the Lorde of early '90s western Canada. So when I learned that Playing House would feature a plotline revolving around Maggie's marching band reunion, I was thrilled that two things I loved so much were about to converge. Alas, it seems that no one who works on the show was actually in band because this thing was riddled with errors. RIDDLED.

As we begin the episode, Maggie delights/dismays Emma by making an entrance in her band uniform. And though they don't get into the specifics, the implication is that she's dragged it out of her closet for the reunion. But in my experience, band members don't own their uniforms; the school or band organization owns them and loan them out (for a deposit) to members. There's no reason a member would buy a uniform, anyway: them shits cost like $500, and after high school you're likely to wear yours less than you would a bridesmaid dress. Maybe this is something where American schools make you buy them? But given the cost, I doubt it; if every kid had to pay $500 just to join, there would be a lot of bands with four or five members, and that wouldn't make for a very interesting halftime show.

"Maybe Maggie went back and borrowed a uniform that fits her now as a pregnant lady?" Maybe, but if this is a reunion and presumably people are coming in from elsewhere for the event, it would be a real production to outfit dozens or possibly hundreds of adults all at once -- but even if the school decided that it was extremely important for the returning students to wear their old uniforms as opposed to just some kind of easily accommodated white shirts/black pants situation, wouldn't that be where Maggie saw C.J. for the first time?

But, okay, let's say that the school did organize a full uniform re-fitting for all the students, even though that is ridiculous. Anyone who had ever been in band would never wear their uniform out to a bar! Did you see those uniforms? They had WHITE PANTS. You're going to wear those someplace you risk some idiot spilling a Cosmo on them? Hundred-dollar pants you don't own? No way. When I was in band, the uniform moms drilled it into our heads how careful we had to be with our uniforms (and we had white pants too which was terrifying for all the menstrually inexperienced girls, by the way). I realized how much I had absorbed those warnings when this week's episode cut to the bar scene and I started having a panic attack seeing those pants so close to all that brown liquor. DRY CLEANING CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH!

Then there's the matter of the show itself. When Maggie does meet back up with C.J., he asks, "You ready to get out there on that field today?" and she tells him she has to be in the pit because her pregnancy prevents her from wearing a snare drum harness. And while I appreciate that this nomenclature is correct -- "the pit" is the area at the front of the field where you park the percussionists who can't carry their instruments (your timpani, your drum set, your marimba) -- are we really supposed to believe that the band still knows one of their old shows? It takes months to learn a marching band field routine; when I was in band, we would often have full-day practice both days of a weekend to get us ready. There's no way that (a) the members of this band would still remember their choreography over a decade later, or (b) you could get this many adults together to re-learn it.

Finally: if Maggie was really a snare drum player, then Pinebrook High was about the most progressive school in America. She's around my age, and when I was in band, the snare line was the most male-dominated section not just of our band but of every other band we were ever up against in competition. I certainly hope things are better now, but if Maggie really did break the snare line glass ceiling, then I'm going to need an extensive flashback episode about it.

...But really: the uniforms. I'm writing out a ticket right now, and if anyone on the production ever needs a Marching Band Consultant to advise on future references to Maggie's extremely cool past extracurricular, I'm right here in L.A. and available most days. Until then...