NBC's SMASH, Season 2 -- Discussion- Page 36

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 10:32pm

I just rewatched the scene in episode 3 (about 40 min in) where Jeremy explains the plot of Hit List.

You definitely made up the part of him killing people, Phyllis! :)

To flesh out what I wrote before, in the opening number the young songwriter's mother gets remarried to a horrible guy who beats the crap out of him. He ends up on the street and gets mixed up in drugs and lots of bad stuff. He has nothing but his songs.

He meets the rich UES girl and falls in love with her. She doesn't give him the time of day until she hears his music and then spends the night with him. In the morning she's gone and the writer doesn't hear from her again until he turns on the radio and hears her voice singing his songs!

The songs are his way of taking revenge on all the ways people have wronged him.

Now the girl is a junkie, but for his songs. She's obsessed and can't get enough- plus she loves the fame. It's destructive, but he keeps writing songs for her.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 10:36pm

Wow, I must have been super high that night. Thanks for clearing it up!

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 10:39pm

Do you want to share some of what you've got before the next episode?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 10:40pm

Only if I can angrily roll a joint on the table like JJ.

[beensince1987]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 10:51pm

I have no idea of any of these cause I always fast forward the scenes with MacPhee so I haven't heard any songs from Hit List. I thought La Boheme (Luhrmann) with a big sign.
So are these songs any good?

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 11:06pm

Phyl, Only if I can be like Karen and find you high in an alley afterward.

beensince- We really haven't heard many of the songs from Hit List, nor understand the characters very well. I certainly don't know how the numbers we have heard would be any sort of revenge against those who've wronged him. They haven't compared Hit List to La Boheme at all, except during Derek's dream fantasy of how he envisions the show. But that didn't have anything to do with the plot.

[beensince1987]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 11:12pm

Thanks Whizzer.

Anyone know if they changed the this season finale (well... series finale now) and reshot scenes? I thought they were done few weeks ago but I heard they finished last week.

[FireFingers]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 11:28pm

I read somewhere in here that they did some reshoots to remove an ambiguous ending and complete some story lines.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/13/13 at 11:39pm

"Maybe network tv should focus on creating the best reality tv possible and leave scripted tv to the cable channels. Even a wonderful show like Community might be better served by being on TBS on TNT. "

I really think that, given a decade, that's the direction network tv will be almost completely in. There may be exceptions (procedurals, which CBS does very well with rating wise, and the CW seems happy with their tiny niche but really it's pretty much on par with ABCFamily which is basic cable anyway.)

I wonder if that means we'll still get two (I thinkit's two with one bumped) episodes on Tuesdays before the April move or they'll just wait? To be honest, it is a sign of viewer kindness, as you mentioned Whizzer, that they are doing this at all--while it's happened before (especially with shows that a network is embarassed to just drop after promoting so much--like NBC did with Studio 60,) often nowadays they don't even bother burning off episodes, and you're lucky to get them on a DVD release or online.

Which makes zero sense to me--if they paid for the episodes, and considering Saturday has officially become "nobody watches-rerun night/very very cheap reality tv night" it never made sense not to burn off their hits on that night. The ratings will definitely be done, though I assume most of the people who still watch are loyal and it'll show in the _+3 DVR ratings as pretty much the same.

They just didn't want to waste the huge The Voice lead in they're expecting on a show they obviously see no future life in.

It's funny how Saturday is just a "not bother" night for networks (with Friday on its way there, too) given how apparently in the 70s and into the 80s it used to be one of the top nights. I know part of the change is they didn't care as much about demos then--surely nearly as many people went out on Saturdays then as they do now--but you had things like the hugely successful Sat Night program block built around Mary Tyler Moore, which I assume had a fairly youngish audience, etc.

[Zinone]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 7:46am

Leslie Odom Jr. has put his cover of Justin Timberlake's Mirrors online featuring some backstage footage - 1:32 looks like a fully-staged Touch Me, no?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeyX0ClVCfo Updated On: 3/14/13 at 07:46 AM

[beensince1987]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 1:54pm

I noticed many times they shot in Jerry/Eileen's office (s), pretty much all the posters are from non-profit productions. She Loves Me, Carousel, South Pacific, etc, etc, etc,...
Were they mostly producers for non-profit companies?
Maybe that's why Jerry is ALL about $?

Updated On: 3/14/13 at 01:54 PM

[Kad]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 2:19pm

Or maybe the set dressers were told to find the cheapest posters possible.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 3:21pm

Eric, as I understand it, a network promises certain ratings when they sell advertising, so in fact burning off episodes of a failed series CAN cost the network extra money if it fails to meet its guarantees.

If, instead, NBC can slap together another episode of DATELINE (usually true crime), it may actually cost less than burning off an episode of SMASH and having to repay advertisers in cash or future ad slots.

***

beensince1987, I like the music for THE HIT LIST, but, damn, if I can follow the lyrics. Which makes it quite a bit like RENT to me.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 4:17pm

The songs from HIT LIST are so generic and forgettable. I don't fault the writers, I imagine that's what the network wanted, the songs sound like an older person's idea of what "young" sounds like. RENT is a terrible show but I always felt that at least the songs were able to hit some emotional chords (as manipulative and surface as they are) and they were catchy. I wish they had been more original about what they envisioned young composers to be doing today. Why does it have to be a "serious," "deep" musical? Why can't it be a fun show, again, something that RENT manages to be throughout?

[beensince1987]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 5:33pm

Are there some sites that follow the timeline of this show? I saw fringe was taking in winter, but few episodes ago when they had semi-reading of Hit List, they were on the rooftop in t-shirt. So I guess at least 4-5 months between these episodes.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 5:59pm

OT but speaking of which, GIRLS seems to take place during an eternal New York summer. I blame global warming.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/14/13 at 6:28pm

Gaveston, I am sure that's true. I know for daytime tv, which works similarly but differently, networks give their affiliates a certain number of hours to air what they want (local stuff and syndicated talk shows mainly), and a certain amount of time has to have their programming (an amount which is getting smaller and smaller as affiliates demand more daytime time.) Back when more soaps were on the air, Guiding Light had been doing so badly that because it was getting under a certain demo (the 18-49 *female* demo--the ONLY demo they pay attention to on daytime which is kinda too bad since that demo is so rarely home then) the affiliates were allowed to simply not air the show and find a more profitable alternative--which is one GL was seen in so few markets its last few years.

Girls' timeline confuses me (but not so much that it interrupts the show). A few episodes back they mentioned that one couple had only been dating 3 weeks--and yet in that span you see another character become an instant businessman with an office due to an app sale. But I thought the whole series, both seasons, was still only meant to have taken 3-4 months by now...

Back to Smash and Hit List--many of the writers they hired are talented and I liked the idea of giving less well known, younger songwriters the chance. That said the song they "wrote" for "Veronica"'s concert was another SHaiman/Wittman song (and their most generic on Smash,) and this week's Heart Shaped Wreckage at the Fringe show has some 4 songwriters connected to it, the only two I recognize being British pop writers who have worked with One Direction types, and I don't think any musical theatre, even pop musicals.

Out of the other three ones I guess Caught in the Storm by and Pasek and Paul is the only one that's stuck in my memory, and I tend to like their stuff (OK Christmas Story mainly aside,) but I definitely get the sense they were all asked to make the lyrics as generic as possible. Because Smash still wants to sell to "all those kids" iTunes downloads the way Glee does. Fair enough, I suppose, but it doesn't convince me that Jordan as the composer lyricist could within a week write sung dialogue joining them to the story.

And yet they STILL have their obligatory pop cover song which, the show admitted again recently, is in hopes of online chart success again like Glee. This year they've tried to not go so much for top radio hits--I mentioned how thrilled I was to hear one of my fave obscure Zombie songs, Our Year, on the last episode, no matter how the performance was, but it further makes me wonder "why"--do they really think they're gonna fire up the charts with a cover of a 1960s song few have heard?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 8:24am

They tried it with a minor Billy Joel song, so why not?

Just to be clear, I am totally hooked on GIRLS. I just don't remember New York being so damn sunny!

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 11:53am

I find it funny that a musical called Beautiful is now planning for Broadway.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 11:56am

I hate and try to avoid everything about Girls. One would think a SMASH thread would be safe.

Updated On: 3/15/13 at 11:56 AM

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 12:08pm

It's funny how Saturday is just a "not bother" night for networks (with Friday on its way there, too) given how apparently in the 70s and into the 80s it used to be one of the top nights.

Even during the 90s, I think. I mean, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman did pretty well!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 12:13pm

In its last two seasons ('76 and '77), "Mary Tyler Moore" didn't even crack the top 30 in ratings for the season. We shouldn't kid ourselves that it has ever been a heavily viewed night. Relative to today, of course, it was the Super Bowl.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 1:47pm

LOVE the new Pasek and Paul song "Rewrite This Story" that is going to be in next week's episode. I can actually see it being on the radio.

https://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Sneak-Peek-Katharine-McPhee-Jeremy-Jordan-Perform-Rewrite-This-Story-on-Next-SMASH-20130315

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 2:05pm

http://tvline.com/2013/03/15/smash-season-2-series-finale-spoilers/

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 3/15/13 at 2:14pm

I'm not going to read that spoiler so please no one discuss it unless the appropriate "**SPOILER**" proceeds it. Thanks in advance :)