1) Debra Messing with a gay guy BFF!
2) Anjelica Huston stalking around like Joan Crawford!
3) Broadway-like vignettes!
Two things I think SMASH needs to reconsider:
1) That worn-out chestnut of the dewy faced, wide eyed innocent fresh off the bus who has big, Big, BIG dreams of making it on the Great White Way because she was so pretty and so talented she locked all the leads in her high school productions...in Iowa. (And, in this case, luckily lands in the bed and heart of a British-speaking Mayoral assistant who has plenty of money to care for her while she's being turned down at auditions because otherwise, she would be living in a studio apartment with three other girls in Astoria, but instead gets to live in a HUGE ASS apartment somewhere in Manhattan. One would assume in Tribeca.) This might have worked before the advent of the internet, but when Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black can become part of the zeitgeist for a couple of YouTube videos, Kim Kardashin and Paris Hilton can have whole careers based on nothing but sex videos, and reality TV has given 5% of Americans 15-episodes of fame, the naive waif from Nowheresville is just kinda ridiculous. Even Iowans have the World Wide Web. Don't condescend, Hollywood.
2) Debra Messing's home life. I'm not sure what's going on there. Unfortunately, Brian d'Arcy James gets the awful character position that is usually left to a woman to play as the wife, but here we get the groundbreaking, role reversal of a man as husband taking on the trope: The shrill spouse who married an obsessive, but who now erratically swings between encouraging the raging workaholic in her endeavor and yelling at her for never being available, listening, paying attention, forgetting, etc. "Oh, fame-inducing, money-making success! Why must you exact such a price on the family life?! It's a curse - a CURSE! - I tell you! I preferred it so when we had no money and you were just a neurotic shell of a person and only MY love could salve your wounded vanity...." Stop! Please, stop. If you want to do something innovative, take this trope and really, psychologically dissect it and give the actor something to do.
One thing I think SMASH did disastrously wrong:
1) Casting Katharine McPhee. I know. I know that Steven Spielberg suggested her, his royal self. However, Bob Greenblatt, you are not "introducing" Katharine McPhee to anyone. I know you've been toiling over there in cable and probably looked down at network -- which was kinda evident when all you could do was talk about cable at the recent TV Critics Association -- but, you see, Katharine McPhee was on the only television show outside of the SuperBowl that Americans watch. It's called American Idol. And Ms. McPhee did very, very well on that show. And after she did that blockbuster show, she decided to dye her hair blond and marry some Hollywood player twice her age before being cast in a successful movie called The House Bunny. But let me tell you something about Katharine McPhee that you don't know and perhaps should have used a focus group to figure out before pulling the trigger: Katharine McPhee is bland. Seriously. Evidence?
Exhibit #1: She lost to Taylor Hicks. Taylor Hicks! Despite how successful she was on American Idol, she cut an album and it flopped. (BTW: Starting the show with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," her AI breakout song? Passe. Don't ever do that again. All you did was serve to remind us that we saw this girl already...six years ago. When she lost to Taylor Hicks.)
Exhibit #2: While I remember she was in The House Bunny, I don't remember her actually *in*House Bunny. Do you know who I remember? Emma Stone and Kat Dennings. Hell, I even remember Rumer Willis, vaguely. But I don't remember Katharine McPhee.
Exhibit #3: When the cast of SMASH was announced, everybody's reaction was the same: Debra Messing! Anjelica Huston! That guy from Pirates of the Caribbean! ...Katharine McPhee? Then people started laughing about the "introducing" tagline. Then Bob Greenblatt tried to say how wonderful it was to "introduce" Katharine McPhee *again.* Reader, have you ever been to a dinner party where you've met everyone, but some people have forgotten who you were so you had to be introduced *again*? It's embarrassing. No matter how you spin it, and they've been spinning it, it's weird. You should be "introducing" Megan Hilty.
While SMASH does not want to be compared to GLEE, I think it's relevant to point out what GLEE did right: They hired Broadway vets to portray the leads. Who knew Matthew Morrison before GLEE? Well, I saw him in the Tony-winner A Light in the Piazza up at Lincoln Center. Who knew Lea Michele before GLEE? Anyone who saw Spring Awakening. These people could sing and act and dance. But unless you were living in New York and taking in the theater for the last ten years, you wouldn't know 'em. Which is why I think Megan Hilty will do gloriously on this show if they would only push Katharine McPhee and her big, brown eyes to the side to let the woman shine. And, by the way, I think it's fairly obvious that McPhee is going to "get the role" after that weird pyramid where Oscar-winner Anjelica Huston is at the bottom(!) while McPhee is holding it all together. If you had two unknowns portraying Karen and Ivy, I might be willing to go all fifteen episodes to find out Who Will Get The Part?! But, I kinda know, don't I? You're not going to give it to the real Unknown, you're going to give it to the unknown that we all know.
Is it a smash? That's hard to say. Ratings were good last night, but dropped a chuck of The Voice's lead-in, and will probably drop further next week. They can't afford to drop much, however, especially not with the overhead that a show of this size -- with these kinds of names both in front of and behind the camera -- must cost (pilot was 7.5 million). I, for one, don't know if I'll be checking-in back in long term. I might watch for the next four or five weeks on DVR, but I'm going to need more than what I saw in the "upcoming" package that aired at the end of last night's episode. If SMASH goes the way of GLEE -- hoping that the musical numbers are enough to keep eyes glued to the TV while we watch warmed-over plotlines -- then my days are numbered. And if you lose too many women and gay men, this one will go the way of the original "Marilyn" Broadway tuner.
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