Editor’s Note: Welcome to our TV Rewind column! The Paste writers are diving into the streaming catalogue to discuss some of our favorite classic series as well as great shows we’re watching for the first time. Come relive your TV past with us, or discover what should be your next binge watch below:
I say this as someone who loves television: There is nothing quite like the magic of theater.
Of the many cultural losses this pandemic has wrought, perhaps the most heartbreaking is the decimation of live theater. The lights everywhere—from your local 20-seat theater to Broadway—have been dark for nearly seven months. Right now the Broadway League has optimistically stated that they hope shows can begin to reopen starting January 3, 2021. But who really knows what the future holds?
That’s why now is the perfect time to revisit Smash, a musical drama that ran for two glorious seasons on NBC. For those of you who somehow missed this love letter to musical theater, please allow me to give you a front row seat.
From producer Steven Spielberg (!), the drama followed two ingenues—vivacious blonde Ivy (Megan Hilty) and mousy brunette Karen (Katherine McPhee)—vying for the role of Marilyn Monroe in the new Broadway musical Bombshell, from songwriter Julia (Debra Messing) and composer Tom (Christian Borle). Ivy and (the now unfortunately named) Karen have a classic rivalry: the seasoned Broadway chorus veteran not afraid of using her sex appeal versus the often blank-stared, clueless Karen. Spicy versus sweet. Damaged versus innocent. Both of them wanting to be our star.
To paraphrase Stefon, this show had everything: big musical numbers, tons of actual Broadway stars (Hi Jeremy Jordan and Leslie Odom, Jr.!), smarmy directors, even smarmier producers, Angelica Huston, Angelica Huston flinging cocktails!, catty in-fighting, dull family drama, evil assistants and Debra Messing’s ridiculous scarves (trust me, you’ve never seen anything like them). For theater geeks like me it’s a delightful behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to launch a Broadway show—or at least the TV version of what it takes to launch a Broadway show. For those who like a little camp in their television, Smash has tons. You can love to hate it, hate to love it, love to love it, or just plain hate watch it. There’s something for every viewer.
There was also drama behind the scenes. Theresa Rebeck, the playwright who created the series, departed after the first season amid reports that she was difficult to work with, and ran the show without running a writer’s room. Josh Safran, of Gossip Girl fame, stepped in as showrunner for the show’s second and ultimately final season. The chaos behind the scenes was evident in the show’s plots (which meandered and were often repetitive), and in the characters who often not only changed from episode to episode but sometimes scene to scene. For example: Julia and Tom are coming off the success of their long-running hit Heaven on Earth, and Julia has promised her husband Frank (Brian James D’Arcy) that she will take a break from work to focus on their adoption of a baby girl from China. But then Frank goes from being the driving force in the couple’s adoption of a baby from China to suddenly not wanting to go through with it by Episode 2. Tom’s nefarious assistant Ellis (Jaime Cepero) did the same thing every episode—there was never a door or a corner he wasn’t silently lurking behind. His over-the-top, cartoonish character stopped just short of twirling his mustache and evilly cackling.
Smash also gave us a sense of life imitating art. Broadway star Will Chase also played Broadway star Michael Swift, who is cast as Joe DiMaggio in Bombshell (follow all of that?). Michael ends up rekindling a romance with Julia, taking a page from the Grey’s Anatomy playbook as the pair have steamy makeout sessions all over the work place. Some, as the saying goes, like it hot. But while the writing surrounding their affair was clunky, Messing and Chase became a couple in real life after meeting on the show.