One might also read that blogpost title as a command, "Smash the producers!" Go ahead. I won't stop you.
Tonight I am deeply in envy of my friend Glenn who took over Smash review duties over a week ago while I was in Nashville and lucked upon the best episode of the season "Opening Night". That episode was so good I even liked Karen Cartwright in it! *gasp*
But beware the fall when you reach a peak! Last week was too good to be true and this week's episode proves that Smash won't really be missed when it's finally put down despite its intermittent and blessedly unique high points. Last season's "hate watching," so widely reported because musicals are favored targets of scorn, seems to have turned into "hate-to-watch" since the ratings fall each week. Did you see Theresa Rebeck's e-mail to Buzzfeed? For all of the problematic agenda and ego that might have prompted her very late reply to their infamous Behind the Scenes expose on the troubled Season 1 show, she may well have a talking-about-herself-in-the-third-person point here:
If in fact Theresa Rebeck was the problem with Smash and the trainwreck it became, wouldn't things have gotten better rather than drastically worse - once she left?
Yeah, yeah, I'm avoiding talking about this episode.
A lot of screaming. Which is what I do whenever the show focuses on "Hit List"
2.1 "The Producers" was terrible. Can we leave it at that? No? Okay then we're racing through this one.
Best Moment: Karen gets shot. Briefly I got confused and thought the prop gun was real.
Most Indicative of the Giant Letdown Of it All: Previously we got Liza / Bernadette cameos. Now we get Kathie Lee?
Worst Moment: The "surprise" ending - spoilers ahead. For several weeks I've been bemoaning the addition of Jeremy Jordan's utterly hateful "Jimmy" character -- who the show still expects us to feel sympathetic towards despite the weekly burning of bridges and pissing on art thing -- but really he's just a sympton of a larger problem the show has in rooting against the success of its characters and even against the success of their creative endeavors and now their very lives. It's really kind of a hateful show if you stop to mull it over.
I probably wouldn't be so angry if the episode hadn't ended with (presumably) young book writer Kyle being run over by a car or bus or something just as he finishes singing Jeff Buckley's "Last Goodbye". This cheap gotcha-goosing of the already messy drama with a car crash wasn't telegraphed as shamelessly as when it happened on Glee. That other cursed musical also started off strong only to nose dive into complete unwatchability -- i stopped watching right after its similar cliffhanger. I've never missed it. This death is surely an attempt to further position "Hit List" as this fictional Broadway-world's own "Rent" -- Rent's creator Jonathan Larson died of a brain aneuryism just before his show's massive success -- but wow that's in bad taste. Especially pairing it with a Jeff Buckley classic. Uncool, Smash, uncool. F
In closing... if you're still watching Smash but are behind a few episodes, stop with "Opening Night" which was a rare great episode and would have actually worked beautifully as a series finale.