NBC's 'Wicked' special had Cynthia Erivo taking flight. But its biggest challenge was time

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who has damaged their vocal chords trying to emulate Cynthia’s Erivo’s final “ aaaaaaaaaaahhh ” in “Wicked’s” showstopping “Defying Gravity” number.

It’s just a hop, skip and a jump down the yellow brick road before “Wicked: For Good,” the concluding film in the two-part adaptation of the original stage musical that explores the diverging roads its two unlikely friends — Elphaba and Glinda, played by Erivo and Ariana Grande — take as they become the adversaries we originally came to know in “The Wizard of Oz.” To pregame its arrival, NBC mounted a two-hour special, “Wicked: One Wonderful Night,” that aired this week. Executive producer Ben Winston and Jen Neal, executive vice president of live events for NBCUniversal Television an