Blogging Smash: Pilot

Writer Josh Perilo is blogging the new show Smash. And yes, there will be spoliers!

Okay, I’ll admit it. The relentless ad campaign finally reeled me in. But it’s been a battle from the beginning.

I started with the typical, cynical reaction when I saw the first commercial, three months ago.

“Oh great. That’s just what we need. Another Glee.”

Then I went through phase two: intrigue.

“You know what? This does look like nothing that’s ever been done on TV before. I am intrigued!”

Then, when I thought I couldn’t take anymore: repulsion.

“If I ever hear Katherine McPhee singing ‘Beautiful,’ or Deborah Messing say ‘She glows with it’ ever again, I’ll take out my eyes with an unsharpened pencil!”

Then in the end, after complete saturation, I found myself where the rest of the US population probably is right now: acceptance.

“Yeah, I’m kind of a musical theatre nerd at heart. Yeah, it looks interesting and maybe even fun. And yeah, there’ll definitely be plenty to lovingly poke fun at. Alright, NBC. I’m in.”

So join me, if you will dear Sparklers, on my blogging adventure through Season One of NBC’s Smash.

We open, as any good musical does, on Karen Cartwright (Katherine McPhee) singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in a beautiful sparkly dress on a beautiful sparkly stage. Of course, that isn’t what’s really happening. A cell phone ring pops her fantasy bubble and we’re back in reality: a tiny audition room, where the casting director interrupts Karen’s song by taking a phone call.
Clearly, it’s a hard knock life for this wannabe Broadway baby.

As Karen leaves, dejected, pouty, and dejectedly pouty, Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty) enters for her audition. Oh my gosh! Will she get this part!? I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you (she doesn’t)!
Then it’s a quick hop, skip, and ball change over to the more successful side of town where Broadway musical writer Julia Houston (Deborah Messing) and her collaborator, Tom Levitt (Christian Borle), are also pouting about how Broadway is full of nothing but revivals and “based-on-movie” travesties. It isn’t until Tom’s new kind of creepy, hangs-around-a-little-too-long-in-the-background personal assistant, Ellis Tancheroen (Jaime Cepero [who Tom is also crushing on, big time]) suggests that they think about doing a Marilyn Monroe musical, that this creative team “on a break” get the creative spark to start the wheels turning again.

I bet Spielberg got the idea for Saving Private Ryan from his housekeeper, too.

Back in the real-ish world, we meet Karen’s successful, British boyfriend Dev Sundaram (Raza Jaffrey) who works for the mayor (?). He’s dropped into the coffee shop where Karen works as the world’s laziest waitress. She complains about not being successful, and he complains back about how it sucks to be successful, and then he feeds her some pudding.

By the end of the day, Julia’s back home with her hubby Frank (Brian d’Arcy James) and her predictably Glum McSadderton teenage son Leo (Emory Cohen). The conversation immediately veers to adoption, and how Julia and hubby are getting ready to take in a new adopted baby. But, of course, Julia’s one track mind can’t help but going back to the seed that was planted earlier. She turns to her son and says:

“When I say Marilyn, who do you think of?”

“Marilyn Manson.”

Oh right. I forgot. Because this is 1998.

Frank gets all up in arms about how Julia promised that she and Tom were taking a break. But she’s totes obsessed. And to be honest, Frank seems a tad complain-y and a little too yell-y for somebody married to a successful Broadway playwright.

Meanwhile, Karen has more to worry about. Her parents are coming next week from Iowa. (Don’t you know all down on their luck, New York actresses are from Iowa?) Brit boyf assures her that she’ll be fine, but the fact that this scene even exists assures us all that she will not.

Julia, in the meantime, is like a dog with a bone. Up in the middle of the night, Netflixing old Marilyn movies in bed. She sees unlimited dead people… for $7.95 a month.

Tom is down in the theatre district visiting his current “successful” Broadway musical, “Heaven on Earth,” which, from what I can gather, is about tap dancing angels who buy their clothes at Spencer’s Gifts. Tom runs into Ivy, who’s one of the chorus girls in the show, and wouldn’t you know it, Ivy’s in a bad mood because she didn’t get the part from the audition at the beginning of the show (I hope I didn’t ruin that for you guys earlier). She’s the chorus girl who wants to be the star, and you can see the wheels turning in Tom’s head trying to figure out how he can make that happen for her.

So, fast forward a week… or two? Maybe four. It’s not entirely clear how long this is all taking, but Julia’s on the phone with Tom now talking about how they have to get Ivy to come and cut a demo of a song they wrote for their new Marilyn musical. Her husband walks in and finds out that she’s working on the musical and gets all complain-y and yell-y again. Which makes sense on so many levels!

First of all: How dare you work while you’re trying to adopt a child, because those two things definitely can’t happen simultaneously. Also: Do these people not speak to each other? How has she committed to writing a Broadway show without mentioning it to her husband?

Guys, come on. Buy a dry erase board. Or Post-its. Something.

Finally, it’s the big day! No, not the one where Karen auditions for Marilyn. We haven’t even made it to the first commercial break, yet. The one where her parents come to town. And it goes exactly the way you think it would: terrible. Her parents think she’s crazy for pursuing her dream of acting, but her boyfriend defends her choice, telling her father that he thinks “she’s a stah!”

Things are going much better for Ivy, as she finishes recording the new Marilyn song. Everything’s going great and…

Hey, wait a second. What’s creepy Ellis doing? Why, he’s filming the recording session on his iPhone and posting it to “YouLenz” (the pretend world version of YouTube). I knew he was too creepy to be trusted!

Julia and Tom scream their faces off at him, but he swears he didn’t post it! His mother, who he emailed it to, did. So, this guy emails his mother clips from unreleased Broadway musicals? He keeps getting creepier and creepier.

And, of course, it goes viral. Cute puppies, skateboarding accidents, and songs about Marilyn Monroe… that’s all anyone’s trolling on the intrawebz for these days. And instead of getting hacked apart, the song is SO good that Michael Riedel (an actual man who actually does tear apart Broadway musicals for a living) loves it!

And as we sail off into the first commercial break, we watch as Karen sits in front of her computer, singing along to the song which she has, of course, already memorized.

Is everyone in this show an obsessive psycho?

Now, why it has taken twenty minutes for us to meet Eileen Rand (Angelica Houston), I have no idea! Maybe because she’s been busy divorcing her jerk-face husband, who forces Eileen to put her assets in escrow (nutshell: she can’t do anything with her money) so she can’t continue producing a new production of My Fair Lady, which is supposed to go up on Broadway super soon. So she’s super screwed and needs a new project to work on, ASAP.

And Ellis won’t go away! He shows up at Deb and Tom’s doorstep with croissants (this kid is always trying to ply them with food… double creepy). He tells them all about how he worked on one of their shows in high school and, somehow, it charms them into hiring them back. Personally, at this point I would have a restraining order. I don’t know how this doesn’t end with him tying them up and dressing up in their clothes. Hide the knives, gang. And the iPhones.

Before you know it, Eileen has Deb and Tom over to her office and is practically begging them to let her produce the Marilyn musical. They don’t think it’s ready, but Eileen clearly needs a new project to work on since jerk-face-ex-husband made her throw up Eliza Doolittle under the bus. So Eileen strong arms them into giving a blowhard director, Derek, who Tom hates, a chance at “auditioning” with one choreographed number. And Derek, who says he won’t audition for anyone… of course auditions.

And we finally have our first big number! It only took a half hour.

It’s a big, flashy “baseball number,” where Marilyn and the Yankees dance around and talk about how she and Joe DiMaggio were an item. Lots of baseball players in sequins, lots of flips and leaps, and lots of awkward innuendos.

In the end, Deb and Tom think Derek’s work is “genius,” but Tom hates Derek so much that he can’t see anything but red. He finally huffs out of the room, screaming “Derek’s a horrible human being!” while in the following scene, Derek tells Eileen that “gay men are annoying.” THEN WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO WORK IN MUSICAL THEATER!?

But the project goes forward and we find ourselves at the moment before Karen is about to enter the audition room and sing Christina Aguilera. She’s the only one not dressed like Monroe, which in and of itself would have made me give her the part.

Tom and Derek go a couple more rounds arguing about who should play Marilyn. Derek wants ScarJo. Tom wants Ivy, who is coming in to audition. At least, she’ll hopefully be coming in to audition. Clearly not feeling her best, she makes a pit stop at the porcelain throne first to toss her cookies. So, Karen gets to audition first instead of Ivy…

Dum, dum, duuuum!

And she finally sings the Christina Aguilera song.

So glad we got that out of the way.

And, of course, she kills it. Everyone loves how great she is (and how not-dressed-like-Marilyn she was) and she gets a callback. This time, they want her to “sex it up,” though, so English boyf digs through her clothes to find sexy Marilyn duds and starts schooling her on old Marilyn movies…
Wait a second… He’s English, knows a lot about fashion, and is obsessed with Marilyn? Hmm.
Meanwhile, Ivy gets a callback too and calls her mom, who can’t stop talking about her brother who’s just started night school. Clearly, she must hang out with Karen’s parents.

Then, out of NOWHERE, at ten o’clock at night, Karen gets a text from Derek.

What the what!? So she tells her English, fashion conscious, Marilyn obsessed boyfriend “Excuse me, I’m going to the director’s apartment,” and he’s fine with that? Hmm.

Once at his apartment, Derek says that he wants her to prove that she’s not just a “scared bird” and wants to see her really become Marilyn. So she has a quick panic attack in the bathroom, straightens herself up, and reenters as a confident not-that-Marilyn-y Marilyn and sings a sultry “Happy Birthday” to Derek.

And, apparently, that’s enough to convince him. The competition is set. It’s Ivy versus Karen in a battle for the blonde wig. Winner takes all. And the loser has to hang out with Ellis. Creepy, creepy Ellis.

Did you watch Smash? What did you think?