Smash: "The Phenomenon" & "The Transfer"
Friday, May 17, 2013 at 12:01AM Dancin’ Dan here, wishing I could say that I was coming here not to bury Smash, but to praise it. Truly. I have been a huge Smash apologist ever since that (amazingly, awesomely) ridiculous Bollywood number last season, but the show’s two most recent episodes, “The Phenomenon” and “The Transfer”, are just awful. I can't defend them. Any goodwill I had left for the show has gone pretty much completely out the window. Which is all the sadder considering we will soon be laying eyes on the series's final episodes.
SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP
I admit, even when the show seemingly killed off Kyle (sweet, cute-as-a-button little Kyle) at the end of “The Producers”, I held out hope. Yes, it was a cheap move, but how I felt about that moment would ultimately depend upon what the show did with that event, how the plot and characters moved forward. Unfortunately, it did pretty much everything in the absolute worst way possible.
I held out hope for the show largely because the talent behind Smash is, as pretty much everyone admits, pretty stellar. Give or take a Katharine McPhee here and there, the cast always manages to pull it out when they need to, and the writers and show runners do tend to stick the landing on the really big moments (the Season 1 finale, the opening night of Bombshell on Broadway). In “The Phenomenon”, the performers largely held up their end of the bargain, giving the unbelievably misguided material far more than it deserves.
You see, interspersed throughout the episode are flashbacks to moments with Kyle that ostensibly shed light on how the living characters are feeling about his death. These scenes are pretty good, if often extremely heavy-handed. And the sad thing is, they probably would have worked IF they had been included in the episodes during which they took place. That way, Kyle would have become a more fully-formed character of his own, and we would have been able to make the connections to these scenes ourselves, instead of being hit over the head with them in this episode. Seriously, nearly every scene involves some sort of meta-comment about killing off a character. We get it, Smash! Kyle had to die so that Jimmy could learn something!
The worst part about the decision to kill off Kyle is that this was obviously always the plan for him. Had they actually built Kyle as a character, partly by including those flashback scenes in the episodes during which they would have actually happened, this episode could have worked. It could have been moving. But instead of building Kyle’s character as the season went along, he only existed as a plot contrivance. He existed to die, so that asshole Jimmy could Learn Something, and that is the cheapest kind of storytelling. I’ve often defended Smash’s lapses into cliché and lazy plotting by saying that it’s playing by the traditions and conventions of musical comedy, but this is the type of cliché and lazy plotting that only happens in the WORST musical comedies, if at all.
The stuff not directly related to Kyle’s death is all better, even as a lot of it makes no sense. Ivy and Lee meet with Tom, Eileen, and Agnes to discuss Tony nominations, and someone has set up some of the jankiest-looking boards I have ever seen with the likely nominees for Lead and Featured Actress in a musical. But what world do these people live in? Eileen mentions two rumored/in-development-but-not-anywhere-close-to-Broadway musicals, saying that “Imitation of Life” is closing and “Harold & Maude” is “struggling to maintain the magic it had on the West End”, but Tom mentions the very real (and Tony-nominated in real life) “Drood” and “Pippin” as being contenders (not for Best Musical, since they’re revivals, but for Best Director)! And on the board for Lead Actress, instead of the actresses from "Drood" and "Pippin", joining Ivy are Audra McDonald for “House of Flowers”, Laura Osnes in “Oliver”, Kate Baldwin in “Seesaw” and Jennifer Damiano in “The Beauty Queen”, all of which are fake productions (although Seesaw is a real musical – one that was so awful it will never be revived) … AND “HIT LIST”, despite the fact that at that point it is decidedly NOT going to Broadway!!!!!
But of course, by the end of the episode, Hit List is indeed going to Broadway, under the auspices of Eileen's ex. The idea that Jerry would be the one that ends up taking Hit List to Broadway so as to be in direct competition with Eileen and Bombshell makes every bit of sense (it's just about the only thing in the episode that does). I also loved that Eileen used up her drink-throwing quota earlier in the episode, so that when Jerry dropped that big bombshell, all she could do was glare at him and stomp away.
Of course, the episode really belonged to Bernadette Peters (as all things eventually do). Despite the fact that we only get about ten seconds of her big number from Bombshell (yet another squandered opportunity, show!), she gets all the best lines, including one about how embarrassing it would be to have to beat her own daughter for the Tony (because Ivy was a hit in that Dangerous Liaisons musical, lest we forget!), and this:
Lee: “Sorry we’re late! The line at Starbucks was ATROCIOUS!”
Ivy: “The line was fine – she had to stop to sign autographs, and pose for pictures… she did everything short of bless a baby.”
Lee: “I did that yesterday!”
There were good things here (Two gay characters finally kiss! Jeremy Jordan sells the shit out of his two big numbers!), but the foundation they were all built on was damaged beyond repair. And without a strong foundation, any building will fall. It doesn’t matter how good-looking that building is, it was built on a bad base, and it won’t be able to hold up for long.
The most recent episode, “The Transfer”, is slightly better (because what could be worse?) until the most ridiculous, over-used soap opera twist in history - a surprise pregnancy! - sinks it. There’s plenty of interesting material to be mined from a musical moving from downtown to the Great White Way, but it’s all glossed over at lightning speed so that we can get to the inevitable Showdown At The Tonys in the season series finale. How did the show expand to fit the bigger space? What compromises had to be made artistically? Other than Ana missing a cue because the stage is bigger and some talk as to how she now has to do the trapeze number much higher in the air than before, we don’t really know.
Smash has always been at its best when it focuses on the creation of the art, and “The Transfer” only pays lip service to that, instead choosing to ground itself in soap operatics that are only tangentially related to the making of a Broadway show – or even transferring an Off Broadway show to Broadway. So the chorus girl Derek slept with is suddenly in the show and blackmailing him to get Ana’s part, which she apparently succeeds in doing. This despite the fact that she would have an easier time knocking out bland, dead-eyed Karen, especially since, as Karen (of all people!) points out, Ana is the whole reason the show got any interest at all in the first place, since the New York Times guy loved her performance at the benefit so much.
And I haven’t even gotten to the business with Tom and Julia’s concert (this week in Megan Hilty Is Awesome), and Eileen apparently masterminding leaking their break-up to the press in order to win a Tony, not to mention Derek and Karen's crazy non-relationship, all of which is so unnecessarily convoluted and ridiculous that…
Ugh. Whatever. I can't. I’m sad to see Smash get cancelled. I really am. Even in its worst episodes, the show always looked spectacular, and the cast as a whole (with one or two notable exceptions) was usually able to elevate the often (very) weak material. And the premise is a great one. If the show only had the guts to focus on, you know, THE ART AND COMMERCE OF MAKING A MUSICAL instead of the careless, lazy interpersonal drama, it could have been great. Instead, Season Two has been an overall failure up to this point, despite delivering some major goods in “Opening Night”, which very well might have been the best episode of the entire series.
If only it had ended there.
Grades: “The Phenomenon” – F “The Transfer” – C-
Reader Comments (23)
"(because what could be worse?)
and the tony goes to....karen cartwright
The Phenomenon was pretty blah, but The Transfer had Megan Hilty belting her face off and giving some hardcore T&A so it gets bonus points for that. Plus, there was the exceptionally lovely duet, "The Right Regrets" between Julia and Tom. I think the lyrics for "Regrets" are so meaningful when it comes to the art of writing. The Ivy pregnancy is god-awful but i'm willing to give The Transfer a pass for those two great musical moments.
I think using the story of Rent in the show through Hit List is a wonderful idea on paper but there were so many problems in its execution. A terrible character in Jimmy, a non-character in Kyle, putting the charisma vacuum of Karen in the lead and mostly blah songs compared to the flat-out awesomeness of Bombshell.
I've never watched a show like Smash with so many utterly delightful and searingly awful moments so i will totally be sad when it's all done. The finale *should* be decent because it was written as a two-hour series finale in case the show didn't survive.There's a last duet with Karen and Ivy written by Shaiman and Wittman, a number that will be done by the entire principle cast and a cut number that will debut online with Anjelica Huston singing in French. That all sounds amazing. Plus, i think i might cry if Ivy ends up winning the Tony.
I'll never watch NBC again if it ends up going to Karen.
That boxing VMA number in (s)Hit List may have been the nadir of the series. I'm saying this with full knowledge that "The Phenomenon" and Karen Cartwright exists. It was like a bad Paula Abdul video circa 89. THIS is what all the hipster douche cool theater kids are going wild for!? Thank goodness they made Jerry the producer. The show wouldn't be so inconsistent as to let him beat a character we're supposed to and actually do care about, right? Let's not even talk about the possibility of Karen winning the Tony. I'm worried about ruining something due to a violent, unconscious reaction coming to a head due to all the ridiculousness this show has made me endure.
That being said, I will miss it. For everything infuriating about it, it obviously did enough right to keep me hanging in there. I just don't understand why the show-runners didn't have the confidence to just go with what worked and that was Hilty, Bombshell, and anything else actually grown up/adult happening in the series. This season's focus on younger, but ultimately uninteresting (and in the case of Jimmy, absolutely hate worthy) characters made the overall product sink even lower than most fans probably thought possible. Who'd have ever thought that days of "Terrible Ellis" would be considered good times? Oh well, let's find a great new project for the cast from the Bombshell side of things. Hell, bring Jack Davenport too, but none for Gretchen Weiners, I mean Kat McPhee.
In "The Transfer" did anyone else notice that Jesse L. Martin had a huge "Rent" poster in his office? It bugged the crap outta me, as if the parallels between "Hit List" and "Rent" weren't obvious enough they literally have to SCREAM it in every detail.
agreed about both episodes. I'll definitely miss "smash", it didn't treat me well but I followed it with more excitement than I follow good shows (currently on air, game of thrones and mad men, and I'm behind on those, while these last two episodes of "smash" I even watched live online!).
two 'highlights' worth mentioning:
- julia saying on "the phenomenon" that the amanda character CAN'T sing after she's dead, agreeing with kyle who said it's ridiculous or something... lol have they seen bombshell?
- people's cellphones going off in the audience for "hit list", kyle's 'brilliant' idea coming to life.
actual highlights belong to megan hilty of course. I liked her saying to derek he'll always have a karen, and the "grin and bear/bare it" number was fantastic. had she killed herself with those pills last finale, I definitely would have jumped ship.
"have they seen bombshell?"
I'm not saying it worked in bombshell (I'm not a huge fan of "don't forget me"), but kyle and julia - who wrote the song! - apparently loved it, so that moment did not make sense.
marcelo - DO NOT get me started on that unbelievable texting thing. What do they do, make an announcement at the top of the show to keep your cell phones ON during the performance? Do they also encourage flash photography? On the other hand, it is exactly the sort of thing stuffy old theater critics would praise as being "new" and "edgy", so it kinda-sorta works, but it's just so stupid and unbelievable that the audience would actually go for it - to the point of actually taking their phones out IN THE MIDDLE OF A BROADWAY SHOW to check them. UGH.
Val - lol at "like a bad Paula Abdul video" So much of Hit List confuses me. A lot of those pop songs feel like music videos when we see them on our TV screens, but I can't see them playing that way onstage.
Derreck - "The Right Regrets" really is a lovely song, and Debra Messing sang it pretty well. Once everyone realized what they had in Megan Hilty, Debra became the show's secret weapon. I don't think she's ever been better.
par3182 - YOU TAKE THAT BACK! Actually, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that at the end of "The Tonys", either they cut to black right after "And the Tony goes to..." OR neither Karen nor Ivy win.
So Jesse L. Martin is never going to get to sing and his character is just shunted aside? Hey, just replace one of Jimmy's songs with Jesse.
And Anjelica Huston singing in French? Glorious! But again, happening offstage. Onstage, hideous Jimmy, dead-eyed Karen, out-moded Hitlist.
And I was amused by a previous poster's suggestion (Paul Outlaw?) that the Tony winner be Jennifer Hudson's Veronica, of the forgotten arc, doing the show Derek didn't get the job directing.
I've really revised my opinion on the story of the original show runner, Theresa Rebeck, being hard to work with. If she was digging in her heels to avoid being dragged in a Gossip Girls direction, she would have a lot to contend with.
I am still flabbergasted at the condescension of Season Two giving me the character that's supposed to appeal to me, a female viewer. Jimmy. Jimmy! That is so insulting. Every moment with Jimmy was a waste of screen time.
I'll miss the characters of Ivy and Tom and Eileen (too late Eileen was given a sidekick and they made a delicious duo) and the rest of the mostly terrific cast.
I hope Megan Hilty has a great career. I read somewhere that with the trend of TV stars getting Broadway parts, Hilty thought she had better make a TV name for herself so she could be in the running to get the good theater parts.
I just can't get over how uncomfortable Jesse L Martin and Daphne Rubin-Vega must have been with this terribly executed Larson/Rent-inspired plot line. It feels like Smash is dancing on his grave.
@ Jonny - If it makes you feel any better, there's a pretty comprensive interview with the showrunner, Josh Safran where he mentions that he had the full support of both of them in using the Rent parallels.
Here's part 1 (of 3)
http://www.leakynews.com/smash-rent-showrunner-joshua-safran/
denny, thank you for singling out Debra. I agree wholeheartedly, this is the best work of her career. She did wonders with almost zero help from the writers. I'll miss Julia.
I don't care how "edgy" it is to have live updates during Hit List. Did Patti LuPone teach them nothing?!
Disaster as the show is, I will miss it too. Because there really is nothing else like it on TV, and that's a shame.
Let me add to the praise for Debra Messing. Talk about turning something to silk from a sow's ear. Saddled with each season's storyline and character development, she managed to shine beautifully. Forgot to mention how much I loved "The Right Regrets" in my original comments. It was a very lovely arrangement.
ditto on the praises for messing. she's known as a comedic actor, but sold her dramatic moments here beautifully.
jeremy jordan, on the other hand. I know he's a talented broadway performer, but I can't blame his character ONLY on the awful writring. as an example I can remember a moment on "the phenomenon" where he could have make me only feel sorry for jimmy but I also got irritated: when jimmy was saying he was responsible for kyle's death and karen was like "don't say that, nobody is", which made jeremy go "but he was cominG to seE mE, KAREN!" in such a grating manner that I almost (almost) felt sorry for karen --- my sister actually likes jimmy for the way he treats karen lol.
maybe jordan believed safran too much when he advised: "don't worry about this character, play him like a complete asshole because the way I'm writing him I know the audience will love him", but she shoudn't have. I'm not saying jordan's a mcphee, he's talented, but he should have tone it down a bit his character's obnoxiousness, entitledness, 'angry-child'ness.
Yes, I'm still hanging on watching this show. God help me. I have been binge watching it though so it makes it easier to pass through (and forget) about a bad episode. The ONLY way this show could have survived I think is to have fired Katharine McPhee or seriously demoted her to deluded waitress or something. And having Derek still think she's anything at all ruins HIS credibility in the show as well.
I hope that Emmy noms go to the two hardest working people on the show - Christian Borle and the saving grace, Megan Hilty.
As for the Tony awards show, since the show is utterly lame and makes the most obvious choices, Megan will win Supporting and Katharine McPhee will win Best Actress. Dear Lord. Or maybe they'll have a "shocking" tie. Whatever.
Free Megan!
marcelo -- agreed that Jordan isn't faultless with how obnoxious Jimmy is. Even more disheartening that Smash being cancelled is knowing that Jordan got the male lead in The Last Five Years movie musical. It's one of the best roles for young men in musical drama and now I fear he will capsize the whole movie -- if you don't fall in love with that character the whole thing won't work but that character does have asshole moments but playing them too hard will utterly ruin the arc. and it's one of those musicals I cherish like few others. Easily in my top three original stage musicals of the past 20 years.
As a med student, I was left wondering: what doctor calls a patient and tells her she's pregnant at 10/11pm at night?!?!
I liked The Phenomenon more than The Transfer because it at least told a clear story that made sense. In The Transfer, I couldn't figure out what Jimmy was doing back on The Hit List, or why Derek thought that telling Ana that she was being fired bc of blackmail wouldn't bring him even more problems.
Nathaniel, did you see the new revival of The Last Five Years? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Yeah, Adri, that was me predicting Veronica in The Wiz to win Best Actress. And I'd be totally confident in that prediction if I didn't think the writers are likely to have forgotten that arc.
@nathanielr, Jordan was named for the lead in L5Y so soon after the start of this season of "Smash," I wonder if producers of the film might still have an out on Jordan as an option. He was unexpectedly bad throughout the season, a real surprise because he has done straight theater and a film before. It really and truly just got worse and worse. He's a fantastic singer, which Smash certainly exercised, but I'm not sure we saw anything that any number of actors can pull of as well in a film production. I'd be happy to see a replacement (though to be honest, as much as I love Anna Kendrick and want to see her succeed in a major film musical, she seems all sorts of wrong for the "Shiksa Goddess," Cathy, as well.)
Smash, oh, Smash, you were what you were, which was what, exactly? I wonder what might've happened if Greenblatt had kept the show at Showtime. I wonder what would have happened if Rebeck had been axed sooner or much later and carried on with her nut-so version of events (the Uma Thurman plot last year was more entertaining than anything we got this entire season, and it was able to sustain itself for several episodes without loosing focus, while the rest of the show floundered about). I wonder what that never-aired pilot for "The Miraculous Year" on HBO looked like -- Norbert Leo Butz, Hope Davis, Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Patti Lupone, Lee Pace, tons of Broadway talent in teeny roles, Adam Guettel's infinitely more interesting music (and veiled life story), and Kathryn Bigelow directing. I'd give a whole lot just to see that tape.
Samesies on the failed "The Corrections" adaptation -- apparently I'm no longer the audience HBO is catering too :( -- though I'm toootally on board for "Girls" and its gay remake from Andrew Haigh of Weekend and Jonathan Groff.
Joey--thank you!!! Would have loved to be in the audience that night!
Not on board the Jordan train. Something about his smirk I do not like. However, I do enjoy Sam Palladio and Chris Carmack on Nashville. Nice voices and decent acting. Plus, they are adorable.
What are Megan Hilty's chances getting anything for Into the Woods?
buh bye Smash.
Still dreaming about John Gallagher Jr. taking that role in The Last Five Years ...