So, last year, I was pretty excited for the premiere of Smash. I obsessively watched the online trailer for the first season, I continuously listened to Katharine McPhee's version of "Beautiful." I was ready. When it premiered, I was not disappointed. It was one of the best pilots I had ever seen. The writing was great, the performances were phenomenal and the final duet between McPhee and Broadway diva, Megan Hilty, made promises of stellar things to come.
Unfortunately, in subsequent episodes, Smash lost it's way. It became less and less about the struggle to bring a Marilyn Monroe musical to Broadway and more and more about the interpersonal conflicts between characters that were becoming more and more unlikable and naive with each passing episode. Some of the gripes about the first season were a little dumb. Julia's scarves were hideous with a capital H, but did they really deserve the amount of vitriol that were heaped on them by fans. Probably not. Some of the problems were glaring and obvious. First, there was Ellis, a sexually ambiguous assistant/loser who wanted desperately to be a part of the production somehow. I think Ellis was conceived to be a villain that you loved to hate, but he was more just a villain you wanted to shove in front of a moving bus. Debra Messing's husband and son were whiny and unsympathetic and really two dimensional. McPhee's fiancé, Dev, went from being supportive and sweet, to a jerk who couldn't handle her budding career for no reason. By the time McPhee's character, Karen, had a Bollywood fantasy as a reaction to bad Indian food, I was about done.
The thing about Smash is that even though there was lots of bad, there was good too. You could see the potential it had, so that made it hard to give up on. Megan Hilty, who plays troubled diva, Ivy was amazing. You felt for her and wanted her to wake up to the bad decisions she was making. And, seriously, can Anjelica Houston do any wrong? The songs for the Broadway bound Marilyn musical, "Bombshell" were great songs. Earworms that you were still humming a week after you heard them. Side note: would you really send a play to Broadway with the word "bomb" in the title?
Shortly after the show was renewed for a second season, reports started surfacing that showed that maybe Smash was going to be able to course correct. First came the news that the actors that play Ellis, Dev, and Julia's husband and son would not be returning for season two. Then, the shows creator and executive producer, Theresa Rebeck, announced that she was stepping down. She was replaced by Joshua Safran, who had just finished guiding six seasons of Gossip Girl. As the season premiere neared, I started reading articles suggesting that the people behind Smash had identified the issues and were going to change them. They also hired Jennifer Hudson to play Broadway diva Veronica Moore, to be a sort of mentor to Karen. Jeremy Jordan from the Broadway adaptation of Newsies is joining the cast as a love interest for Karen. The changes intrigue me and make me hopeful that in season two Smash will finally live up to the promise that the pilot showed. I just hope that enough of it's audience will give it another shot.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the most important change, they ditched the scarves. So, are you going to be tuning in to the second season premiere? Let me know in the comments and if you are still on the fence, take a gander at the extended season two preview and see if that gives you a nudge in either direction.
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