Smash: Watching a show you sort of hate

God, what’s wrong with this show, and why can’t I stop watching?  Why do 90% of these people suck so much?  And why, why can’t it be better?  There’s so much wrong with it, and then there's these little flashes of “Hey, I’d watch THAT show, can we please have a show that is Ivy and Tom being bitchy and funny, with occasional appearances from Asshole British Director?”  Because that show would rule.  Mostly, the problem is the characters—I just can’t bring myself to care about any of these people.  LOST (sorry, it must be typed in all caps) wasn’t a huge hit because people loved the mystery (well, that was a big part of it, but if I don’t get to my point this post will never be done) but because you cared deeply about all the characters.  Except Kate, because she’s the worst. But on Smash, the people are assholes that we’re apparently supposed to like because they’re brilliant, but we're given no reason to like them other than their supposed brilliance.  This is going to be long, so brace yourself, because I have so many thoughts about this show it's sort of insane.  I'm not including photos in this one either, because people probably have more familiarity with Smash than Legend of the Seeker, and also because I don't have anything funny to say about the photos this time around.

First, the good:

Tom:  He’s a charmer.  At first, I didn’t like him since he’d clearly hired Ellis (UGH, ELLIS GO AWAY) just because Ellis is hot, and if Ellis were a woman I’d be creeped out, so why was Tom’s creepiness towards Ellis played off as adorable?  But they seemed to have dropped that bit, thank god, and Tom is pretty much the only mostly non-repulsive character this show has got. 

            Subcategory to Tom: The gay relationships are approached seriously and pretty much the same way that straight ones are normally portrayed on TV, with a minimal amount of back-patting.

Verdict: More Tom!

Asshole British Director:  His name’s Derrick or something, but mostly he’s just there to be a dick, and then sometimes hallucinate Karen (Katherine McPhee) as Marilyn Monroe as a substitute for meaningful character development and/or plot.  He loses points for the gross  “I tried to get you to have sex with me to get the part” thing, but then he apologized?  Sort of?  It was more of a “Yeah, sorry I thought I could get away with it because I usually do” than an actual apology, but at least he vaguely knows it was a totally horrible thing to do.  He loses even more points for passing over Ivy in favor of Karen, which was a terrible decision.  Still, he's fairly hilarious and appears to be the only person who *knows* he sucks and owns it.

Verdict: About the same amount of Asshole British Director, but with less tripping on shrooms, or whatever that was.

Ivy: She’s the best.  Seriously, can this show just be her, being sort of bitchy but also weirdly endearing? Plus, she totes deserves Marilyn more than Karen, AND she looks waaay more like Marilyn anyway, unless I’ve gone crazy and Marilyn Monroe was actually 5’10 and willowy.  She loses points for sleeping with Dev, but that's more on Dev anyway, and I like her so much I'm willing to overlook an awful lot.

Verdict:  All Ivy, all the time.

The Meh:

The Boyfriends, aka Dev and Batman-voice the bartender:  First of all, I was really happy to see that they’d cast an actor of South Asian descent to play the leading lady’s boyfriend.  Yay diversity, and yay for him not being an engineer!  But boo to his stupid subplot about city politics, because no one cares.  This is a show about Broadway, people.  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  And then he went and slept with Ivy after panic-proposing to Karen, and now I'm just straight up done with him.  As for Batman-voice, I don’t really have an opinion other than: why does he talk like that?  Is he doing that on purpose?  If so, why?

Verdict:  Either let Dev be a sweet and supportive boyfriend, or ditch him.  I don’t want to watch another episode of him getting mad at Karen for not texting him important information about her whereabouts/arrival times, because 1) responsible adults in functional relationships don’t pull that shit, KAREN, and 2) it’s boring and has been done to death on TV.  As for Batman-voice, whatever, I don’t care. 

The Bad:

Ellis:  Ellis, I hate you and your poorly defined, grasping, stupid character.  I don’t know why Anjelica Huston bothers with you and your shenanigans.  Either get a purpose, or get lost.

Verdict: UGH.  GO AWAY.

Anjelica Huston:  This breaks my heart, it really does, because Anjelica Huston is absolutely amazeballs in everything and also looks a lot like my second grade teacher (who was likewise absolutely amazeballs at everything) but she’s just boring here.  She’s…going through a difficult divorce?  Okay, maybe I’d care more if we found out why she stayed with her husband for so long, but since he’s so awful, it makes her look stupid.  And no one should make Anjelica look stupid.

Verdict:  Fix this, Smash writers.  Anjelica deserves better.

Karen:  Uh, did anybody on the show check to see if Katherine McPhee could act before hiring her?  Because it would appear that no, she can’t, which makes the whole “Ivy’s good, but Karen’s SO AMAZING” shit look really, really stupid, when Ivy’s knocking it out of the park week after week and Karen’s just… there.  Look, it’s entirely possible that Katherine McPhee is a lovely person with heretofore untapped reservoirs of talent, but if you’re going to set someone up as the up-and-comer who will knock the veteran off her perch, maybe make sure the up-and-comer *actually is* better than the veteran.  Otherwise, pick someone terrible to play the vet and make your star look good.  Also, stop hitting the “Midwesterners are so nice and naïve” beats quite so hard.  We’re not *all* nice, nor are we all country bumpkins.  Could we please have a show where the girl from the sticks is actually a conniving bitch?  Because that would be interesting.  I'm just going to pretend that she didn't end up as Marilyn, because that was ridiculous.

Verdict:  Kill her off and let Megan Hilty play both roles.  TEAM IVY!

The OMG TERRIBLE:

Everything to do with Debra Messing’s character, who my brain insists on calling Grace:  Wow, is she unlikeable.  This shouldn’t be a dealbreaker (Don Draper is pretty horrible too, but I still love Mad Men) but she’s so purposelessly unlikeable.  She had an affair because... the dude wanted her to?  And don’t even get me started on whoever-played-Joe-DiMaggio and his whole “Sure, I have a lovely family and a wife that supports me, but I’d rather dick around with this lady until she decides not to anymore” shtick.  This whole plot did nothing to add to Not-Grace’s character, unless the character they were going for is “Thoughtless rich lady destroys her family on a whim; now feel bad for her.”

            Subcategory to Not-Grace:  Her kid and that stupid adoption plot (which is now over, I think?)  What is WRONG with her kid?   I was 17 not that long ago, and I do not recognize his reactions as remotely teenage-like, or even all that human.  Nor would any self-respecting teenager I know throw those sorts of babyish temper tantrums over not getting a baby sister.  Do the writers not know any teenagers?  Were they never teenagers themselves?  Was the character supposed to be an 8 year old but they couldn’t get the right permits?

Verdict: Stop making Not-Grace so terrible.  Pretend her family all died in a firey car crash, let her have one episode being sad about it, and then NEVER MENTION THEM AGAIN.  Then, she can bang whomever she likes consequence free, and maybe she won’t seem so terrible.  This solution has the added bonus of getting rid of her son, unless they are planning a reveal where he's actually an alien, improvising his idea of human behavior. (Note: this would be awesome, but probably won't happen).

So after that whole mess, you're probably wondering why I bother to watch this show.  You're in good company, because I wonder that myself sometimes  often.  I think it's because there are flashes of awesome mixed in with the trainwreck, and the music is solid.  I do wonder why there's a number called "20th Century Fox Mambo" instead of "20th Century Fox Trot" which would make so much more sense, but whatever.  I think it's the fact that this shows promise, and I *want* it to be good (or at least not terrible).  Plus, it's not like Glee where it started out so great, and then went so completely off the rails that now it hurts to watch.

Overall verdict: Entertaining in a trainwreck but occasionally good sort of way.