My initial thoughts are in on this heavily hyped new NBC show. Smash premiered last night at 10:00PM on NBC to a lot of buzz. I thought almost a little too much buzz meaning it was going to be terrible and they were overcompensating. The pilot episode was pretty good start and certainly not terrible.
If you haven’t heard of the show’s premise it goes like this. It follows the backstage drama of putting on a new broadway show. Two writers, Julia Houston and Tom Levitt (Debra Messing and Christian Borle), are writing a new musical based on Marilyn Monroe. It is being produced by Eileen Rand (Angelica Houston) and being directed by Derek Wills (Jack Davenport). There are two main actresses. There’s the newbie, Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee), and there is also the seasoned chorus girl, Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty).
The plot of the pilot episode centered around the inception of the idea for a Marilyn musical, the initial writing of it, getting a producer, getting a director and casting the lead role. A lot happened and it happened pretty fast, almost too fast, but hey – they needed to pack it all in. The episode was good for a multitude of reasons.
The visuals were great. The NYC scenes, especially the ones in Times Square really popped. They have a pretty good director of photography. The acting was above par. Of course I’d expect that from Debra Messing or Angelica Houston – they’re veteran actors – but I’ll say that Katharine McPhee was pretty spectacular. In addition to being vocally talented and very pretty she nailed every scene she was in, especially the one on one scene with the director. Megan Hilty shone as well. I also loved that they cast a british actor as director Derek Wills. It’s always better to hear harsh things (as you would from a director) with a british accent.
The story and writing were pretty good too. I already talked about the show’s premise and it’s plot so I’ll only touch on a few points here. I agree that talking about Marilyn is hot right now and this storyline didn’t oversaturate the entertainment market, it just worked. They were able to interweave the disparate characters togethers easily and even focused on characters I thought were a little more insignificant. Julia and Tom’s assistant, Ellis (Jamie Cepero) had a pretty large role in the pilot episode. In fact he can really be credited with getting the whole play idea off the ground. I’ll also give a shout out to the writers for representing the impact of social media so well in the episode. They had a video of Ivy doing a rough performance of the first song post to the internet (not on purpose of course) and become somewhat of a viral sensation. If that weren’t picked up by theatre blogs then the producer may not have seen it. It goes to show you the power of social media.
I liked the opening scene. It had Karen performing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on a production stage before she was abruptly interrupted by a cell phone ringing. You then found out that she was just in an audition. This scene was illustrative of the way they’re going to mix on stage with bag stage and I liked the way they did it. When they executed this style with Ivy’s baseball song it worked as well.
The music was well done as well. I believe (you can correct me if I’m wrong) that the majority of music was original to the show. The performances were well done and the recordings they synced up were well produced. Both Katharine and Megan sounded great. At least in the pilot episode the music was not overwhelming and they used it to make the storyline work as opposed to having musical performances as the storyline. They could easily fall into what I call “Glee Fail” where the music takes over the show.
I was also very pleased on how character driven the show started out. We got to see a great glimpse into Julia’s home life (we already know she’s trying to adopt with her husband) and into Eileen’s divorce (which looks to be bitter). We’ve already met Karen’s boyfriend and her family. We got to see Karen’s strength of character when she didn’t sleep with Derek. There was so much more too and I hope they continue to emphasize the character driven nature of the drama.
I think I’m sucked in, at least for a couple more episodes. The pilot ended on a note that you want to watch more. Who’s going to get the role of Marilyn? At least that’s what they want you to think they’re going to answer. I was impressed and am glad all the promotion before the premiere wasn’t just to cover up a bad show. What did you think?
Watch the next episode of Smash Monday at 10:00PM on NBC. Catch up on NBC.com, Hulu or watch below (if the video is still valid). Enjoy!