Crashing Pilots: Smash Part 2
Smash Knows How to Get it Right, So Why Does it Get So Much Wrong?
By Tom Houseman
March 6, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Smash is clearly going to be a show that is driven by its characters, not its action, which is a difficult task, considering it will have to make every character arc work not only for every episode but over the course of the season. So far it is not accomplishing either of those goals, and looking at what the show has attempted to do with each character makes it clear why, after five episodes, Smash still feels like its revving its engine while stuck in neutral.
I had high hopes for what was to come of the professional rivalry between Karen and Ivy when I wrote “their relationship can go in a million different directions, and the potential they have is one of the most intriguing aspects of the show.” How disappointing, then, that the show has decided to turn Ivy into the villain, making her catty, manipulative, cruel, and totally unsympathetic. Megan Hilty is a very good stage actress, which means that every emotion is played as big as possible. This means that when she is playing Ivy playing Marilyn she kills, but when she is just playing Ivy she overplays every emotion. Katherine McPhee, on the other hand, never does much with her character, which makes Karen thoroughly sympathetic but not that interesting.
Debra Messing, meanwhile, could stand as a monument to wasted potential. After spending the first two episodes focused on her and her husband's issues with adoption, that plotline seems to have been dropped entirely and the husband hasn't showed up since. Instead she walks around the entire third episode practically holding a sign that reads “I slept with the guy playing Joe DiMaggio” before she finally admits it, which is supposed to be shocking, I guess. This plotline represents everything that is wrong with Smash thus far. It is all talk, trying to create drama without having anything actually happen. True, at the end of this week's episode Julia and Michael kiss, but the moment felt so manufactured - mostly because of the truly awful song that preceded it - that it merited little more than a shrug as a reaction.
Anjelica Huston's producer character spends her time fighting with her ex-husband and desperately trying to raise funds for her Marilyn musical. Her story feels more like a plot device than an actual plot, filling the gaps in other stories and trying to add some conflict without actually going anywhere. Huston gives the part her all, but her character switches between wandering around and throwing drinks in her husband's face (it was a tired gag the second time it happened and I hope it has been retired for good), and it never feels like we need to care much about what she is going through.
I keep on hoping that the show will figure out what to do with douchebag director Derek Wills and composer Tom Levitt, but instead both characters serve their time in other people's stories, not getting much to do on their own. Tom has developed a relationship with a lawyer that feels like the TV equivalent of busy work, totally pointless, irrelevant to what's going on, but giving Tom something to do. Meanwhile, Wills' douche-o-meter fluctuates based on how much the show wants to torture Ivy in any given episode, and while his latest acts douchebaggery (there's really no better word to describe this guy) might be an attempt to drum up sympathy for our Marilyn, all it does it make me hate him as much as we hate her. Still, every moment that involves them instead of Tom's assistant, the most obnoxious, irritating, useless character on TV, is welcome.
The series works best when there is actual action, rather than just characters freaking out about something that has happened or might happen, which they spend far too much time doing. That is why the fourth episode was by far the best one. The characters all had identifiable goals, the story moved efficiently and the song breaks felt earned, not forced, which they tend to in other episodes. Plus, Nick Jonas's precocious TV star was wonderfully fresh and his interaction with every main character was thoroughly entertaining. If everybody episode could move like this, I thought, Smash would be a show worth watching. How disappointing, then, that the fifth episode reverted back to the characters griping at each other with nothing actually happening.
I'm not sure if I'm going to keep watching Smash. The show has enough promising moments in each episode that I believe it has the potential for every episode to be as good as the fourth. Also, the scenes that involve rehearsal and the show's numbers are entertaining, even if I don't love every song that will end up in the Monroesical. After episode two there was rampant speculation on the internet that both Karen and Ivy would star in the show, Karen as Norma Jean and Ivy as Marilyn, and I am still curious to see if that will be the case. My problem with Smash isn't that it's a bad dance, but rather that it hasn't settled on its choreography yet, and is still stumbling around. Will Ivy turn into a villain or become more sympathetic? There are questions about the show's direction that are still unanswered, and I'm willing to give it a few more episodes before I give up.