Smash: "Tech" & "Previews"
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 12:03AM Smash recently announced that its creator and season 1 showrunner Theresa Rebeck was moving on. and Josh Safran (who ran Gossip Girl) is moving in for Season 2. What this means for the show we'd rather not speculate because Smash is such a fragile series. Tweak it this way it becomes a great series rather than a good one. Tweak it that way and it all falls apart. Expectations were too high to avoid studio interference but what the show needs is someone who embraces the core of its appeal and doesn't worry about appealing to every demographic. (Even Marilyn Monroe herself was hardly a universally beloved / respected movie star.) Shows that know themselves first and foremost tend to be the ones that people come to and adapt to, not shows that try to adapt to that mythical monolithic audience.
Happy Birthday.... Mr. Director ♫
1.13 "Tech"
Despite various complaints about the direction of Season 1 I think the show actually has a pretty good handle on forward momentum. more after the jump. Yes, it treads water with the "who will play Marilyn?" question but most shows have certain narrative core elements that are stretched over entire seasons. In this episode they're out of town for "tech" and tensions are running high. Uma's leading lady Theresa Rebeck is nervous and gets extra advice, extra compliments, and then some hot rutting from her director,
Marilyn was always afraid of being a joke. That feeling of not being authentic. Use it."
Set List: Originals -"History is Made at Night" (Hilty & Spaeth) ; Standards - "Another Opening" (Borle), "Happy Birthday" (Uma); Contemporary - "I'm Going Down" (Hilty)
Gay Gay Gay: "Oh Lord! Two boys kissing!!! Get a room" Tom meets Sam's family and it goes surprisingly well.
B♡bby & Dennis: get all cuddly at the sing-off and Dennis even gets a brief duet with Ivy as stand-ins for Marilyn & DiMaggio. Bobby has a wicked sense of humor.
Karen: What are you doing?
B♡bby: Waiting for Derek to have a stroke.
Anjelica Awesomeness: "You're taking this far too personally!"Huston excels at straight talk.
Best Moment & Curtain Call: Dev and Ivy finally meet (by accident) in a loaded uh-oh moment for the series. Obviously once the names are spoken they know who they're dealing with. They've both just been rejected by loved ones. What better way to spread the hurt?
Grade: B+
1.14 "Previews"
...which leads us right into the guilty morning after with Dev and Ivy waking up with insta-regret and separate walks of shame. And then Smash bolts right into its first preview in which we get a medley of the show's greatest hits plus we finally get a title song, and it's a female ensemble number featuring Karen and Ivy (naturally). A nice surprise: Broadway's popular musical comedy baritone Mark Kudisch is playing Daryl Zanuck in the show "Bombshell" within this show "Smash".
Premarital sex for Dev... only it's not with his fiance.
Naturally Karen is super nice to Ivy immediately afterwards sapping all the fun out of Ivy's wickedness. Karen ruins everything! Ivy feels terrible and so does Dev. Also feeling terrible: Ellis (but not for poisoning Uma's visiting movie star), Rebecca (Uma Thurman) because she knows she isn't good, Tom & Julia because they're fighting, and out of town audiences who apparently wanted a Marilyn myth with a happy ending. The most interesting thing about the staging of Marilyn's death was realizing that the gorgeous ballad "Second Hand White Baby Grand" is the finale making its final line ironic and potent.
I still have something beautiful to give."
"Smash!"Set List: Originals ... half the songs we're familiar with plus "Smash" (Company feat. Hilty & McPhee); Showtunes - "September Song" (Huston); Contemporary -"Stand" (McPhee & Odom Jr.)
Anjelica Awesomeness: Anjelica Huston fuses Rex Harrison talk-singing with Marlene Dietrich sultry handsome cabaretness for her first musical number within the show. Well done Morticia!
Best Moment: Julia's comic exasperation with the audience's reaction to Marilyn's death and all the movies made about Marilyn. I saw everything and you know what? In everything... she dies!
She died!
The funny thing that nobody but Ellis is noticing is that this ending could totally work IF the actress had the emotional depth in her pipes to sing that number. Tragic endings can work.
Curtain Call: B♡bby gets the final line once Rebecca quits the show. 'The real question is who is going to play Marilyn?' Cut to: close ups of Karen and Ivy and we're right back where we started.
Grade: B
Previously on Smash
1.1 "Pilot"
1.2-1.3 "The Callback", "Enter Joe DiMaggio"
1.4-1.6 "The Cost of Art", "Let's Be Bad" & "Chemistry"
1.7 "The Workshop" with Bernadette Peters!
1.8 "The Coup"
1.9-1.10 "Hell on Earth", "Understudy"
1.11-1.12 "The Movie Star", "Publicity" with Uma Thurman!
Smash, TV, Uma Thurman, musicals
Reader Comments (9)
I should give "Preview" a better grade, maybe A- for all the fun and goodies it provided. Angelica's singing! comm'on, only that was worth the whole episode. Also the Smash! number was great (kind of this show's Big Spender). In the sneak peek for next week we see the future Marilyn from the back but you can totally tell is Karen (bony shoulder and thin arms!) but what intrigues me is the song she is supposed to be singing. Is this the finale song Julia is writing? For the look of it it seems a "Don't cry for me Arhgentina" kind of showtune. I can't wait!
I'll miss Uma Thurman. She did such a good job. I really love her as an actress.I mean, if Uma Thurman and Angelica Huston were in a movie together, it would be a big deal to me. The fact that they are both supporting actors in a TV show says something, I guess, about how television offers more roles for post-35-year-old women than does the move business. I really think the combination of seasoned Broadway veterans, familiar television faces, and movie stars is pretty interesting. I enjoy this show and look forward to next season. I don't need it to be perfect; just keep it quirky, musical and fun...
No regrets quitting the series early on, but this scene with Huston singing makes me feel warm and fuzzy—nostalgic for what she meant to me in childhood—a dramatic presence of tall, dark and cool.
Both episodes started off so GREAT. I adored the opening scene of Tech with Borle singing "Another Openin". It showed that Smash can be so awesome sometimes. And then the episode progress.
Dev quickly turned into the worst person ever. After being tempted to cheat, he proposes to Karen (how romantic) even though she's very busy ("I'm in tech!"), calls her show "stupid", and sleeps with her frienemy. Even Ellis knows when to stop.
Anjelica and September Song. *swoon*. Not a strong voice, but she brought complete and utter class to her rendition. Stuff like this is why i look forward to Mondays. I just realized that i'll be SO upset that i won't get a new episode until the fall.
I'm just waiting for NBC to announce that they'll show Bombshell in its entirety. Maybe on Saturday or something? I don't care when, but i'll be there watching. It just seems to good to miss.
and exasperated Julia is always fun.
The Smash number with Hilty, McPhee and Kudisch was just awesome. One of their best original numbers.
I've really enjoyed these past two episodes, and I think the original songs are simply spectacular, which makes me wish they would stop including the contemporary pop music altogether. I honestly saw that Dev/Ivy hook up coming weeks ago, the only difference being that I assumed it would be much more malicious on Ivy's part. I have yet to understand Dev's existence, though I surmise it's to give Karen something (else?) interesting to do, in which case it still doesn't work.
I am usually not a big fan of the contemprary songs on the show, but Hilty doing Goin' Down was amazing because it was a great performance by her and also because it commented on her state of mind at the time. I hate it when they just throw a song in for no reason at all (usually with Karen just going up to a mic at a bar to sing).
Also worried about the new showrunner, this last season of Gossip Girl has been dismal, I am not sure how he will handle Smash.
Possibly even more fabulous than Angelica crooning "September Song" was the show's GENIUS composer Marc Shaiman accompanying her on the piano, with composer Scott Wittman as a bar patron looking on. Now THAT'S how you do a cameo. Sweet.
I'll add something you didn't mention: I felt the show had a really interesting way of showing the building up to and the fight between Tom and Julia. Julia is becoming an increasingly unlikeable and self-centered character and I appreciated the unapologetic way the series showed this. Debra Messing is great, also.