NBC's SMASH - Series & Broadway Adaptation Thread- Page 61

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 7:19pm

But yes lazy--still I felt it had a lot more connection, and was more interesting, to the stories of the show than, say, singing at a bowling alley, or two "frenemies" singing some drinking song to a homeless man's keyboard in the middle of Times Square.

As so often happens, we agree here. I know everyone is praying SMASH won't turn into GLEE, but GLEE at least has a premise in which any genre of music is possible with the flimsiest of excuses. Frankly, that's also a problem on GLEE, but never mind that now.

Thus far on SMASH, we've seen songs from BOMBSHELL, of course, and then a much narrower range of middle-of-the-road, contemporary pop music. That isn't a bad thing as far as it goes, but when you suddenly burst out with a Bollywood production number, you might as well draw a giant arrow pointing to the the show's one, random Indian American character (a character who suddenly seems to be a TV cliche, BTW).

[anthony95401]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 7:36pm

I found the Bollywood number pretty inane, but it did give me a laugh-out-loud WTF moment, so that's not all bad! What gets me is that apparently "Bombshell" is going into it's out of town tryout next week and, from what we have been shown, the show doesn't look any closer to completion, or even coherence, than the workshop the potential investors saw. Very little book progress has been made, just songs and scenes staged and worked on haphazardly, and we are supposed to think it is ready for its first mounting?

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 8:15pm

Ha, it's true... Poor Boston.

Gaveston, you're forgetting the "edgy Marilyn" Ryan Tedder penned pop/dance song :P But I do get your point. Maybe this can be a regular thing though and we can explore numbers from whatever ethnic restaurant is visited each week.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 9:34pm

I know I'm in the minority but, I...

HATE:
- Ivy
- Tom
- Sam
- Ellis

LOVE:
- Karen
- Julia
- Rebecca

Love at the end, after Ivy sings and everyone's lauding her, Rebecca suggests she should sing the song instead, winks, and the final look by Ivy before blackout. Bitch got pwned!

[dramamama611]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 9:39pm

I'm pretty sure most people hate Ellis.

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 9:44pm

I thought this was interesting in relation to last week's episode. Jane Fonda talks about attending Actor's Studio classes with Marilyn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0gLczsxAQ

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 9:44pm

Very little book progress has been made, just songs and scenes staged and worked on haphazardly, and we are supposed to think it is ready for its first mounting?

Great point. Especially since one of the ongoing plots is that their star is rewriting the show at every rehearsal. Maybe Rebecca is actually the show doctor! (Didn't we see Julia quitting in one of the previews? Perhaps she realizes that Rebecca is the better writer.)

[anthony95401]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 11:17pm

Ha! Rebecca is the show doctor! Hey, her suggestions are crazy, but at least someone is trying to doctor the thing! Actually, Rebecca is a bright spot for me lately. Uma is bringing the fun at least.

[BroomstickBoy]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 11:20pm

My theory, from what I've seen of the show and previews (I thought of this before I remember Rebecca's "peanut" thing :

Dev proposes to Karen. She turns him down. He has his a-hole "after all I've done for you" moment, they part. She quits the show to show her love for him. She catches him with his co-worker, they call it quits. She's out of luck.

Ivy catches Derek with Rebecca, turns out Rebecca came on to Derek and he fires her. Ivy gets Marilyn. She pops some pills out of nerves and has a reaction and has the emergency "SHE CAN'T BREATHE", therefore being unable to go on.

And just when you think Lil Miss Iowa is out of luck, she's MARILYN!

If it seems highly unlikely, look at how this godawful show is written. Just a thought.

[sephyr]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 11:25pm

I did find it strange that tech is next week. There hasn't been much progression and I'm still kind of confused to what the show is exactly about??? I know it's about Marilyn but what is it trying to really say?

That said I did enjoy the Bollywood number! Also Karen's pop number with the band was amazing, she sounded so clear and beautiful. Ivy's number was really nice too!

Glad they found Leo and I thought he did well in the scene when he came back. He just needs to learn how to let his emotions go. He contains himself a little too much in emotional scenes.

Ellis worked my nerves yet again and I can't believe Ivy trusts him. He's a snake in the grass lol I'm waiting on him to get what's coming.

All in all, it was a nice episode. Rebecca is definitely bringing the drama and I don't hate her. She's kind of awesome lol I can't wait to see how things turn out next episode.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 11:25pm

I really like this show.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/24/12 at 11:36pm

You don't say...

sephyr, I don't think Ivy trusts Elis exactly, it's more that she knows she can use him...

[kyl3fong2]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 12:59am

Gossip Girl's Josh Safran will be the new showrunner for "SMASH" season two.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/smash-gossip-girl-josh-safran-showrunner-315983

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 5:09am

Kalimba, thanks for the connection. It is very hard to resist putting a "hierarchy" on the meta-journalism around the show...that's human nature that some of us prefer one writer's take over another's. i have ordered both Shukert previous books to see if her tone jibes with how i view the world, as her take on SMASH certainly does....she makes fun of what she cherishes, as do i.

i currently don't watch much of GOSSIP GIRL, but others i trust do, and i think that showrunner makes good sense. That being said, even for a new series...the pedigrees of the WILL&GRACE/CHICAGO THE MOVIE producers, Speilberg, Rebeck with TV and Broadway experience, and Michael Meyer didn't exactly result in a coherent vision. Much like musical theatre, sometimes the collaborative effort is the hardest part...perhaps particularly when the disparate elements are all from such strong artists (SPIDERMAN TURN OFF THE DARK, anyone?)

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 5:45am

Well that's a... weird fit. I guess, going by his only credit which is Gossip Girl, we are gonna go for full on soap? Hrmm

That article says one change made between it being a cable show for Showtime and now on network tv was the decision about who gets the role of Marilyn... Wonder why.

TxTwoStep, I think it's also the kind of show that would have been served better on cable where usually one or two voices are allowed to have the most say, unlike network TV which has so much interference about every detail.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 6:18am

i agree, EricMontreal. The lit agent i'm doing the courtship dance with right now reps a lot of TV screenwriting clients (not my genre at all, though i have two sitcom pitches that get a bit of buzz) and he was just saying yesterday that the focus=group and marketing component of a network show is so much stronger than cable...so he pushes voices toward cable if he can. Somehow, however, despite networks no longer being really "broadcast" (maybe because of premium channel bundling) still mainly network shows reach the broad culture. i track in Entertainment Weekly what draws comments and it's still larger networks in most basic cable packages and not the smaller boutique houses or channels. OY.

[abitoftap]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 12:18pm

The Bollywood number didn't sound very Bollywood to me..more like a 1980s boy band song.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 12:48pm

Agreed, abitoftap. This is how it should be done:


Hindi Sad Diamonds

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 12:49pm

sephyr - IMO - think the show is basically the story of Marilyn Monroe and how she could not handle fame. Forget the song name but remember the song was about Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio wishing they could be a normal couple (Mr. & Mrs. Smith).

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 12:58pm

I thought the Bollywood number blew.

Also, the Marliyn show has to be a mess. Has one actress played the role from the beginning of the show through the end. I don't think theres been one run-thru with one actress in the role.

Karen's not here-Ivy you play it. Ivy's not here-Karen you play it. Rebecca wants Karen-you sing it Karen. Karen's upset-you sing it Ivy. In what universe does this fly?


At this point I hate both of these girls and I could care less who gets the stupid part. I feel no tension leading up to who gets the role. I really don't care. I don't feel many viewers are invested in who gets the part.

Posted: 4/25/12 at 1:17pm

Smash is a no-win show. If you talk about Dev's Indian heritage and then roll out the Bollywood fantasy, you're beating a dead horse. If you don't and just have his GF have an errant fantasy number in her head, well somehow that's racist. If you show the actual rehearsal process for a musical, well, no one would watch except for those haters who'd bitch how boring that was. When you telescope it down and just focus on the numbers...well, you get my drift.

I do get a kick out of reading how much you guys hate watching it week after week. I still giggle at whoever it was that said the score is unbelievable because the songs all sound alike, which is to say, the songs sound completely different and could never fit into the same show.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 3:28pm

Joe, the posts here are no different from conversations behind the scenes when any show doesn't really work: there are dozens of opinions, many of them contradictory. Check out any post-play critique session to see what I mean.

If fixing a broken (or, if you prefer, not-quite-there) show were simple and easy, every show would get fixed. On the contrary, few ever do. (Network reliance on focus groups may well be the culprit.)

But as for outright hatred, I think most of us gave that up pages ago.

As for my response to the Bollywood number, my point was merely that Dev had never had a musical moment before, and the character has been portrayed as entirely Westernized, from his job to his tailored suits. (I did notice one Indian print in the apartment he shares with Karen, so to be fair, let's give the show that much.)

So when a scene comes along that literally shouts "INTRODUCING DEV", setting it in an Indian restaurant and jumping to Bollywood seemed more than a tad ham-handed to me.

But there's no need to light the torches. The villagers aren't storming the castle over this. In fact, it seems to have been a problem for no one but me.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 3:40pm

Updated On: 4/25/12 at 03:40 PM

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 3:59pm

Oh, Phyllis! You know that when you leave a post blank, I always assume you posted something nasty about me and then decided to delete it. (This is a joke.)

[rjm516]

Posted: 4/25/12 at 4:00pm

I'm kind of excited about this show possibly going crazy soapy next season. At least that could be more interesting!
Thanks for posting the Moulin Rouge scene above. It's so amazing.