SMASH Season 2 Trailer

[strummergirl]

re: Glee, I know there are people who watch both, among them myself, but I really don't think there is that much of a cross-over that Smash needs to be walking on eggshells. The musical based shows (the other being Nashville) are distinctively different in what they are doing besides singing during the episodes. And although I was not into the last two episodes (I really hate Grease), I have liked this season of Glee but I feel like the show burned too many bridges with fans from the half of season 2 and the nuclear implosion of season 3. This season is much more back to basics but it may have been too late to get fans back and the momentum it had was sort of shot with the hiatus it recently had.

Back to Smash, I think the problem with the Karen/Katherine problem is Smash seemed that it was trying to give a behind the scenes open the curtain on the creative process of the Broadway show. Karen's whole character, as a wide-eyed newcomer from the Midwest with little experience, comes off as something from a completely different time period and completely against what the show was trying to do. The character herself was so Mary Sue and let's remember how much on an even plane Ivy was with Karen in terms of being somebody to root for- only for the writers to either create set of challenges or character flaws, some that came out of nowhere, to make her getting Marilyn problematic.

[Plum]

I stand by my argument that the only reason some people here would want the character of Ivy to come out on top is because she is played by Megan Hilty.

You know, I'm really glad you said "some", because before Smash I vaguely thought of Megan Hilty as a sub-Chenoweth and that was just about it. I'm still not blown away by her or anything, but cripes, she's still better than the charisma black hole that is Katharine McPhee.

There are few things that irritate me more in television than being repeatedly told one thing and shown another - being told, for instance, that the folks in Studio 60 are making great sketch comedy when the sketches we saw were mediocre at best, or all those times you're told a character is some kind of strategic genius when by any objective standard they act like a moron. Or in this case, having it (ha) smashed into our heads that Karen is a superstar in the making, a clear leading lady, the shiniest new thing on Broadway...and seeing McPhee instead. She's not terrible. She's just in no way fit to carry that kind of burden. And those kinds of disparities just end up with the show making those grandiose claims sounding idiotic.

(Seriously, I love truly nice characters. Talk to me about The Middleman or Benton Fraser some time. Karen wasn't nice; she was bland.)

[EricMontreal22]

Catching up on this thread--didn't they actually say Drew Gasparini (sp?) was one of the younger composers Shaiman had choen for this season?

Strummer, despite all my issues with Glee, I agree with you about this season--it may be partly that Murphy is a bit less involved due to all his projects :P I do have an issue with the new cast's introduction. They're not bad as performers--no better or worse really than the original cast (though the ingenue girl is pretty bland)--but when I was watching with a riend the other week we asked each other if any of us even knew the names of ANY of them--we didn't. Of course that's always a prob with new characters, but...

But yeah--I don't see a ton of crossover between Nashville/Glee/Smash, although I think many network execs DO group them together (and others do too--on this forum someone posted about Nashville that now they could give up Smash because they liked Nashville much more--which kinda confused me). Season one of Smash--and it seems nearly everyone agrees with this--suffered from someone involved obviously hoping that they could get Glee like iTunes sales by having the cast cover pop songs. I hope they mostly drop that.

I seem to be in the minority in that I don't really side with either lead. I find both characters relatively sympathetic, though I agree Katherine can be a bit bland (it seems like they're trying to change that). But I do think some Ivy supporters seem to be blind to the fact that she did things--liek perform drunk and high on stage--that really simply would make any Broadway producer question putting her shortly afterwards in a big lead.

[HumATune]

Eric I see your point about Ivy being unreliable, but instead of the show taking that angle, they go with "Karen is this amazing talent that has something Ivy does not". I think a lot of people's beef is with the show telling us Karen better than Ivy when a lot of us just don't see that.

[hyperbole_and_a_half]

The idea that someone would lose out on a role because she was a bitch, or that someone else should win a role because she is nice, is approaching lobotomy/extra-chromosome levels of naivete. Theatre has never been that way, and neither has any profession ever, period. Ivy was only (and rightfully) terminated because she got between a producer and a paycheck with her erratic behavior.

Also ridic: the idea that a spineless oatmeal of a nobody would be plucked from absolute obscurity from Moosetwat, Iowa and given the lead in a multimillion dollar Broadway musical without so much as a New York credit to her name.

Basically, what I am saying is: just give me 44 minutes of JHud and Hilty singing at me once a week for 22 weeks straight and we'll call it square, NBC.

Also, with JHud joining the cast, McPhee slips to third place on the list of qualified actresses on this show who could realistically portray Marilyn Monroe.