Smash - Recap: Wardrobe Malfunction
Recap and review of Smash - Season 2 Episode 11 - The Dress Rehearsal:
It's episodes like this that make me particularly sad that Smash is leaving, while also reminding me why it is. Seriously, had the show been this incisive about the backstage process of mounting a Broadway show, I genuinely believe a much larger audience would have gravitated towards it over time. I also feel the audience they did have would have been far more engaged in the series itself. Sure, it's great to explore the occasional soap opera storyline or two, but this always should have been a show about processes: dramatic, musical, auteurial, authorial. Creative processes. Occasionally, it was. But far more often than not, it was buried underneath the morass of personal drama: relationships, shady double-dealings, personal squabbles that didn't amount to much at all. "The Dress Rehearsal" is everything that this show should have been from the start, a show about the compromises necessary to make magic happen. Yet even as it mostly hit the right notes, there was still the odd personal squabble, and more relationship drama. I can certainly understand why Tom (Christian Borle) would be upset to learn that Julia (Debra Messing) served as dramaturg for Hit List, since the rave New York Times review of that show's "stumble through" adversely impacted the perception of Bombshell as the Broadway event of the season. But I couldn't help the feeling that Tom was blowing things wildly out of proportion. Not two months ago, there were doubts that the show would even make it to Broadway, and now he's getting upset that it won't be perceived as the biggest and best show of the season? This is just one example of the kind of conflict that impedes the episode's stumble towards greatness. However, this doesn't change the fact that "The Dress Rehearsal" basically manages to be the best episode Smash has ever put together.
Credit: NBC
The creative processes come from two fronts. Tom is stressing over technical issues in the dress rehearsal for Bombshell, as they're presenting an invited preview show. Things go spectacularly awry on the big night, with technical gaffes, left and right. Yet one malfunction actually proves a huge hit with the audience. During "Our Little Secret", as JFK unzips Marilyn's dress, Ivy's (Megan Hilty) bra gets taken to the floor with the rest of her clothes. The accidental nude scene is considered a daring display of Marilyn's vulnerability in front of the one man who treated her most like an object. For the rest of the episode, Ivy wrestles with the decision of whether or not to go nude, leading up to the next preview. It's an interesting dilemma for reasons that go beyond its mildly salacious nature, as it builds to the big night, where Ivy ultimately decides not to go through with it. The audience applauds, though the promised nudity seems to dull the enthusiasm of their reaction to the scene. However, in the following scene, Ivy plays Marilyn as a wounded creature on the offensive, attacking JFK with threats to take their affair to his wife, before enticing him with what he's missing out on: she drops the bed sheet covering her body, presenting a full-frontal view that shocks the audience, but also punctuates the scene. Marilyn was a sexualized being who, in that moment, knew how JFK saw her. In her desperation, she played to that image. It was a powerfully effective choice, and what was particularly great about it was the fact that it was hard to know whether Ivy withheld her nudity earlier to save it for that moment, or if it was a spontaneous choice. Regardless, either rationale paints Ivy as a total pro.
Credit: Will Hart/NBC
On the Hit List front, Karen (Katharine McPhee) and Jimmy (Jeremy Jordan) worry that Derek (Jack Davenport) is going to punish them for their relationship by giving Karen's numbers to Ana (Krysta Rodriguez). Ana swears she won't let this happen, and it doesn't seem like it'll be a problem anyway, since Derek insists to Karen that everything is gravy between them. But during a full run of the show, Derek has a stroke of inspiration. He sees the opening playing as a sort of murder mystery, in which the Diva, having fallen from grace, sings an unsettling, a capella rendition of "Broadway, Here I Come" while moving towards the stage with a gun in hand. She fires at the audience, the identity of her victim withheld, and the rest of the show plays as a flashback of how we came to this point. It's a very basic, even rote, development. Yet it's also kind of genius, as Krysta Rodriguez plays the hell out of the scene, which is actually staged in exceedingly haunting fashion, with the dancers grabbing at the ruined Diva. Karen pleads with Derek not to give her character's anthem to Ana, yet Derek won't hear it. Jimmy turns to Kyle (Andy Mientus) for help, but Kyle sides with Derek. It could easily be interpreted that Derek is being petty, but it's just as easy to see how one might think of him as being in the right, on this one. Karen might throw a hissy fit about her anthem being taken away, but creativity is often a process predicated on compromise, and even though we haven't seen much of Hit List, I would imagine Derek knows what he's doing better than Karen.
Credit: Will Hart/NBC
Yet Karen confronts Derek about his choices, an act which prompts Derek to tell Karen about Jimmy's shady past. According to The New York Times' background check, "Jimmy Collins" doesn't exist. Moreover, Derek tells Karen about the loan he gave Jimmy to pay his drug debt. Disgusted, Karen leaves, vowing to never work with Derek again after Hit List. However, when Karen confronts Jimmy with what she's learned, he can't bring himself to tell her the truth. And like that, they're Splitsville...again. And this is hardly the only romantic business of the episode, as Ivy and Derek are now casual, with the director stopping by at the end of the episode for another hookup, following the reveal that last week's cliffhanger resulted in a one night stand. Meanwhile, in less promising romantic news, Sam (Leslie Odom, Jr.) officially quits Bombshell, telling Tom that he'd rather be unemployed than work for him. It's a far more resonant scene than I would have expected it to be, given how scarce the investment in the Tom-Sam relationship has been, yet Leslie Odom, Jr. does such a great job selling why Sam would be upset with Tom: he'd worked for years to make it in the business, only to give up a featured role in a touring production, on the promise of a starring role in a Broadway show -- a promise that his friend couldn't keep. It's a development that works far better than the "romance" between Richard (Jamey Sheridan) and Eileen (Anjelica Huston), who breaks things off with The New York Times arts editor after he writes a review that paints Hit List as the real Marilyn show, while depicting Bombshell as a relic. I've always found it hard to care about Eileen's love life, even when it directly related to the business of Bombshell, and this time is no different.
Credit: NBC
That said, I do like the brief hint that Kyle has a crush on Jimmy, and that he's jealous of his partner's relationship with Karen. But this is brushed aside by a quick reconciliation after the Hit List preview goes over like gangbusters. However, the same can't be said of Karen's friendship with Ana, as Ana resents having had to play second-fiddle to Karen for so long. She also takes offense at Karen's intimations that her enhanced role in Hit List has nothing to do with her talent, and everything to do with Derek's jealousy. Again, this is a conflict that, while melodramatic, actually comes from a place where both sides have a point. To Karen, Derek does appear jealous and petty. And to Ana, Karen does appear equal parts thoughtless and self-absorbed. It's a conflict that's far richer than its parallel in Tom and Julia, who squabble when The New York Times review reveals that Julia has been working on Hit List in her off-time from Bombshell. Tom barely holds back his tears before downing a martini and storming off, because we're all adults here, I guess. It's a development that somewhat undermines Tom's progress as a serious director this week. He spends the majority of the episode imbued with a sense of purpose and drive, believing that Bombshell is his one chance to prove himself as a director. (His fear of failure leads to an amusing nightmare to open the episode, in which he dreams he's naked, onstage, with everyone laughing at him. He wakes up to find himself in bed next to ELLIS! He then wakes from THAT dream, shouting hysterically, as Julia comes to check on him. It's a rare bit of genuine hilarity from Smash, and most of it is Christian Borle's delivery. But kudos are in order, all the same) We also get one last cliffhanger on the friendship front, as Jimmy's ex-dealer, Adam, re-enters the picture, looking for Jimmy after the Hit List preview. Don't know where that's going, but the sooner we find out a little bit more than nothing about the real Jimmy, the better.
Credit: NBC
"The Dress Rehearsal" is top-notch, and delivers on Smash's earlier signs of promise way back in late 2011-early 2012. It's an episode that illustrates the real drama they could have had here in a series about the business of Broadway, and the trials of creativity. For all I know, the remaining episodes (which have already been shot), continue in that tradition. But it's too late for that level of quality to turn the show's ratings around.
Oh, and one last amusing tidbit: Karen groused about Ana taking away "her" song, when "Broadway, Here I Come" is actually a song that was originally Krysta Rodriguez's. Check out Krysta Rodriguez in the first-ever public performance of the song in January 2011 at The Laurie Beechman Theater, embedded below:
