Or go into a workshop of a new musical based on her. We could even dust off that “Mr. and Mrs.” number from Marilyn, except add in some lyrics telling poor people to “get the hell out of our way”.
As usual, the Abridged Version is much better than the show: SMASH Abridged: Episode 8 - Broadway Abridged
I’m still waiting for someone to bitch-slap that weaselly assistant.
So do you think they’re going in the direction of two different and competing Marilyn musicals?
Wow, what a terrible episode. The only interesting thing was the developing story about Karen’s boyfriend, the hot reporter and the Weiner photos. The rest of it was so much manufactured drama.
Agree - and this episode was so weak, my guess is he wrote it.
I so wish the weaselly assistant would come out of the closet. The scenes with his “girlfriend” are so freaking unconvincing.
I have to say, as bad as I was supposed to feel for Ivy, I just couldn’t work up to it. Especially after she rubs salt into Karen with that “stabbed Tom and Julia in the back” comment. Frankly, Ivy needed to taken down a peg or five.
I’m just concerned Karen is going to get a huge backlash from this. Tom was never really in her camp and Julia could see her participation as a huge betrayal. Granted, it would be tacky to fire Karen as she was taking orders from Derik and had Eileen’s backing; OTOH, “tacky” doesn’t stop that many people.
That bowling alley scene. Oh Dear Og. What, did they mix up the script pages from last season’s High School Musical? And Derik’s “brilliant new direction” – :dubious: Why auto-tune Karen’s voice? That’s like spray-painting dayglo colors on a Maxfield Parrish!
Seriously!
Maybe one day he’ll drunkenly kiss Derek and get himself shitcanned and blacklisted…
I just can’t summon much sympathy for Tom and Julia being “backstabbed” when they fired Dimaggio for purely personal reasons after he gave (according to the critics present) a knockout performance.
Also, how was it stabbing them in the back, really? It was a convoluted and elaborate way to pitch an idea to them. They still own the show and they don’t have to take it, and if Eileen and Derek did want to pull out and do their own different Marilyn show starring Karen it’s totally their legal right- it’s not like she’s an original character or they can use any of the songs already written for it.
Wasn’t this scenario sort of like the re-incarnation of Cabaret?
I believe the original Broadway version of Cabaret was relatively tame (like the movie), but then they came out with the edgier, sexier stage version that became a huge hit again.
At least that is what I remember and think they were trying to portray in that segment.
But with Cabaret, both the original stage version, the movie, and the second stage version still used mostly the same songs (+/- a couple between versions) – it was just changes in staging and some tweaking of the secondary plot, I think. I’m not seeing those two scenarios as the same.
Also, agree with Sampiro, I’m not entirely sure how this was backstabbing – if they (Derek and Angelica Houston) wanted to go in a completely different direction, they wouldn’t show the new song to Tom and Julia, they’d just fire them and do something different.
When I saw that Paris Barclay was directing the episode, I was hoping for much better.
On the one hand Ellis is a horrible character. He’s never going to be a producer, to do so you either need gobs of money (which he and his “girlfriend” don’t have) or need to be able to convince people to give you gobs of money and all the hiding behind furniture in the world isn’t going to get you producer levels of cash. On the other hand, if he wasn’t hiding behind things, there wouldn’t be any plot or wacky misunderstandings - and then what would the writers do?
Who sane invites the person they cheated with to the park where their spouse and child are playing? I’m hoping that it means they’ll drop that plot, and the court case means they’ll drop Julia’s son, but I doubt we’re that lucky.
The bowling alley montage was awful. It was also unnecessary, unless, of course, Ellis was hiding behind the pin resetter.
I don’t understand the whole idea with the new song. Do they ever do that? Add a new song from an outside lyricist when the original lyricist is still working on the lyrics and book without telling the original? I know new songs from other people get added in revivals or when musicals turn into movies, but pre-Broadway? That doesn’t make sense. Firing Julia and hiring someone new makes sense - this was just a bad idea.
Also, again, they showed staging that doesn’t work on a stage (like the “Bruno Mars musical”). Audiences in theaters do not get closeups and cuts and quick camera angles and they’re never looking down at the stage from the ceiling. So while whatever that song was arguably looked interesting on TV, it would look like a confused mess from the audience. (She spent a not small part of the number lying down on a bed. Half the audience can’t even see that.)
The song also didn’t fit in the musical at all. Almost all of the rest of the songs that we’ve heard are very story specific (“Let me be your star” and “History is made at night” could be exceptions, but even they still need a bit of context). That was just a 3 minute generic pop-song that anyone could sing anywhere. It sort of works for a jukebox musical but not for the type of musical that they’re trying to do. There’s a decent argument that they need more sex in the show - that number wasn’t it.
Everything with Karen’s boyfriend bores me (Maybe he should hire Ellis to hide behind things around his rival. Ellis could decide to become a mayor after a short stint underneath a desk) And Karen is still just so dumb. She never seems to understand what’s going on around her and she seems remarkably incurious about finding or figuring it out. Plus, when Katherine McPhee delivers all of the lines in the flat, near monotone voice, it just makes the character seem incredibly stupid. Not naive or innocent, but stupid. It’s hard to watch her.
I’m loving Jack Davenport. I hope he ends up in a better show when he’s done with this.
I think that was the point. The point of the show isn’t to create a realistic musical; Smash’s mission is to sell songs on iTunes. Each episode of Glee prints money by selling songs on iTunes. I don’t know the numbers but I’m willing to bet that to date iTunes sales of Smash songs have been disappointing. The sex song was a desperate attempt to be more like Glee. Auto-Tune baby!
[QUOTE=amarinth]
There’s a decent argument that they need more sex in the show - that number wasn’t it.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe a memo that said “We need more sex in the show”. Perhaps with a box of chocolates. It’d certainly be a lot cheaper and require a lot fewer cab rides.
Well, if the metrosexual producer wannabe didn’t come out at least he stayed in.
I’m more convinced than they spent all their money on And Grace and Morticia and that to spare a writing budget they really are just making this show up as they go along.
I didn’t believe much of this (4/2) episode. The husband figured out that the wife had cheated on him because of some unfinished song lyrics she left laying around? Really? And though it made for nice images, I couldn’t believe Ivy would wear her costume (which she hates) the rest of the evening, all the way to bed. And I don’t believe a word that comes out of teenage son’s mouth. I guess the song in Times Square was nice, but I haven’t been to Manhattan in a long time so I was distracted by the signage and wondering which ones were real and which ones were CGI. At first I assumed the one advertising a Fox network show was fake, but then I remembered I was watching NBC. Were we supposed to be shocked that wanna-be producer kid is bi? I remember we were kinda’ surprised when it looked like they wanted us to think he was straight.
I saw Will Chase (“No!DiMaggio”) on B’way in the Pipe Dreams revival last weekend–pretty bland show, and he did not do much with what little he was handed.
According to The Hollywood Reporter (print edition, so no link):
One thing I do like about the soap stuff – Angelica Houston knows exactly what and who she’s dealing with in the closeted weasel. Loved her smackdown over the phone call.
And Uma Thurman playing the movie star? Definitely looking forward to next week.