are you sure she has to die? musicals usually have a happy ending.

[chicafrom3]

At least it doesn't look like they slept together? Just got SUPER drunk.

Karen, WTF are you doing.

Also, director, WTF are you doing? Why do you do a close-up of Jack Davenport's WTF face and then immediately cut to apparently eager overture to sex? What kind of editing was that?

Thank you for cutting away. (Derek, you're DUMB.)

Ah, Jimmy. Still busy destroying your own life.

This may be the weirdest hallucinatory musical number the show's had yet. Which is saying something. Jeremy Jordan's got pipes, tho, can I say that enough times?

Is the minor costume difference between real!Jimmy and hallucination!Jimmy significant at all? Or is it Just Because?

See, and now Jimmy's climbing a fire escape and I'm mentally rooting for the song to turn into a mashup with Newsies' Santa Fe. Alas.

Now, for round WTF is Jimmy doing.

I care about this love triangle SO LITTLE. Except for how Derek is completely screwing up his chances with Ivy, I care about that a little.

And now Tom is phone-stalking Kyle. Who's dead, presumably. (Maybe not? Can you confirm either way, show.)

"I feel like a teenager. Maybe because you're a teenager."
TAKE A HINT, TOM. Go with an adult. Like Sam.

Ivy and Leigh! ♥

"Everybody ready to talk Tony?"

And now for a Julia/Scott scene. In which they talk the details of the Julia/Tom plot.

This is why you should date people you don't work with. (Aside from Tom and Sam. *still sailing that sad ship* Although even there the fact that they work together bit them on the ass.) (And I guess Blake/Kyle fell apart for reasons unrelated to working together and wouldn't have been fixed if they'd met some other way.)

"Drood and Pippin are our contenders."
Okay, so I'm still guessing Matilda and Kinky Boots don't exist in Smash verse, because they are the real shows to beat -- but Drood and Pippin do? This could have actual ramifications. Not ones the show will address. But for Leading Actress? Patina Miller?

Leigh Conroy vs. Ivy Lynn for Featured? That'd be a pretty excellent race. (Livestream sucs so I couldn't see what else was on the board. What other shows exist in the Smash verse?)

Why do you keep touching on the Kyle plot and then cutting away from it?

Christian Borle, you break my heart. :(

"He's gone."
So he is dead? D: D: D:

(But seriously, Tom, there wasn't a more tactful way to break that? And why is Tom the one breaking it, anyway?)

Flashbacks to Kyle working. With heavy-handed foreshadowing. (Belated foreshadowing?) "They might just dim the lights for you yet."

Oh, Blake. :( :( :( And Ana :( :( :(

PLEASE GOD NO ONE ACTUALLY MAKE THE RENT COMPARISON. I mean, it's in every line they say, but please nobody actually verbally compare Kyle to Jon Larson.

Thank you, Derek.

"I'm sorry for your loss."
... is it really Julia's loss? She worked with him for a couple days.

It's really sweet that she wants to get the lights dimmed for him. Emotionally manipulative on the part of the writers, but sweet of Julia.

Oh, Jimmy. Please stop talking. Please. At least notice the looks on their faces.

Oh, Jimmy. D:

This is like the only time in this show I've felt bad for Jimmy, but right now I want to hug him.

And now a Tom/Kyle flashback. Are you going to try to push them as an actual relationship, show? Because Kyle was IN an actual relationship. With Blake. The lighting designer. Tom/Kyle was bad-decision cheating sex.

Christian Borle should sing more. ILU, Christian.

(But, Tom, he's a BABY. Send him home.)

Why do these flashbacks feel so emotionally manipulative.

"Julia. I'm so sorry."
You need to apologize for more than Kyle, though.

"I don't know what's happening to you, Tom."

...Oh. He's actually proposing something that works out to Julia's benefit. Thank you for that, writers. Now hug. (That's not going to happen.)

And now he's going to change At Your Feet because of what Kyle said. Everything about this plotline feels so cheap and unearned.

"Should I duck?"
Oh, Jerry. Yes, probably.

"Bombshell is mine, Jerry. And I'm gonna take it all the way to the Tonys without your help. Stay away from my show. Are we clear?"

Should've ducked, Jerry.

"Yes, but they're coming anyway. They want the show. [...] Maybe we should go on tonight. Maybe it's what everybody needs."
CHEAP AND UNEARNED.

At least we get an Ivy/Derek convo.
"I'm not good at caring this much."
"What if I was there?"
:(

Oh, Ivy. Don't skip a performance to be with Derek. Bad decision. Although at least it might help him realize that she's the best thing that ever happened to him.

Oh, God, they're going all out with the Rent parallels. They'll start out as a concert and turn into a full performance, won't they? CHEAP AND UNEARNED. Jon Larson worked on Rent for years, he poured his heart and soul into it, Hit List was thrown together in five minutes.

I'm really, really bitter about the way they're playing this, if it isn't obvious. FFS, if you had to kill off Kyle, could you at least be slightly original with how you play it out, instead of going "You know who also died while his show was in development? Jon Larson. KYLE IS JUST LIKE JONATHAN LARSON AND HIT LIST IS EXACTLY LIKE RENT." It's cheap and ugly and borrowing real sentiment for fake drama, when they could've gotten more sentiment from developing Kyle as a full character and then exploring how his death actually affected the people around him.

The kid playing bb!Norma is adorbs, tho. That makes me a little less bitter. Not actually sure what change Tom made since we never saw the pre-change version.

Karen, he doesn't want to talk to you. Leave him alone.

Is anyone going to bring up the fact that Karen sent Kyle to talk to Jimmy while he was stoned and upset? I'm not saying Karen killed Kyle, because a car killed Kyle, but on the list of "dumb reasons to believe you're responsible for someone's death", that's pretty high up there.

Oh, thank God, she didn't sleep with Derek. If she's telling the truth. Wish he'd been the one to stop it, though.

Still do not care about Karen/Jimmy.

Scott lied about canceling the night's performance? Oh, great. Because we didn't have enough work-based relationship drama. Seriously, show, get a new bag of tricks. I LIKED SCOTT. WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST LIKABLE CHARACTERS.

So now she takes Gatsby and walks. Well, you were asking for it, Scott.

Karen, stop trying to endlessly hold up Hit List for Jimmy's late ass.

I don't know if I can watch this. /bitter Jonathan Larson fan is bitter

Oh, another flashback. Emotionally manipulative? Yes. Better than tonight's Hit List performance? Also yes.

"Musicals usually have happy endings."
HAHAHAHAHAHA

And then more ARRGH. But then Jimmy interrupts. Thanks for that, Jimmy.

(Show, give Leslie Odom, Jr., more to do than just stand awkwardly in the background.)

OH GOD. I called it. I freaking called it, didn't I? You SUCK, show. This isn't moving, this is cheap.

Ugh. Going to do something else until this song is over.

Another flashback.
"It's a little strange for me."
"'Cause she's better?"
Yes, that's exactly it.

Back to the present, and THANK GOD it's over.

"The show was amazing."
NO.

Although Derek admitting "technically it wasn't all me" was super cute. And now they're actually going to have a conversation about their relationship!

"I know the only reason you came to see me was because Karen rejected you."
:(

"I was at her apartment the whole of last night, and I slept on the couch, because of you."
I sincerely hope so, Derek.

"It's not Karen. It's you. You'll always have a Karen. It's just who you are. I know that now. You should do."
Oh, Ivy. :( I want, so badly, to hug her.

So Eileen's going to get Jerry to produce Hit List? o.0

"Does this mean we're friends again?"
"Ha! No."
Well done, Eileen.

OH. So Jerry's producing Hit List on his own, and that's not at all what Eileen wanted. That's, uh. Well, makes me happier about Eileen but less happy about future plotlines. (What are there, like, three episodes left? How are they going to wrap this up? Hit List doesn't even have time to design a Broadway transfer, much less design/rehearse/previews/open, in time for Tony eligibility.)

And Tom got the Bombshell lights to dim for Kyle. That is actually legitimately sweet. Not really earned, but sweet.

(Weirdly, that shot of Sam and Blake sharing an umbrella made me want to root for them to run away together, away from the dudes who break their hearts.)

Is this the same promo from last week? Also, why does it matter that Ivy slept with Derek? Isn't that already common knowledge? She called him out as a lousy lay during workshop rehearsals, Reidel overheard (and published!) Frank's accusation that he slept with every actress to put on a Marilyn wig, and she only got the Marilyn-on-Broadway gig once he wasn't attached to the project anymore. It's probably even a matter of record that he fought with Tom because he didn't believe she should be Marilyn. Who's going to care that she slept with him?

Comments

[musical-junkie.livejournal.com]

Smash took the Hit List is Rent thing too far this week. I found it extremely disrespectful to what happened with Jonathan Larson, and I'm sort of appalled Jesse L Martin, WHO WAS THERE, didn't tell them that it was inappropriate.

[musical-junkie.livejournal.com]

Also, I was really banking on it being dueling Great Gatsbys with Julia writing a play and Tom and Kyle writing a musical version. My heart was ready for that.

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

I can't blame Jesse (and Daphne, who was not directly involved in the storyline but was still there); they're actors and they need the paycheck and they don't have the clout to be listened to. I am, however, completely shocked that no one on the creative team looked at the script and went "This is REALLY FUCKING OFFENSIVE maybe we shouldn't do it".

Your target audience includes a huge number of people who remember Jonathan Larson's death and were personally affected by it, how can you think what you did was okay.

Dueling Great Gatsbys would be fantastic, though.

[musical-junkie.livejournal.com]

I think they tried to make it just different enough to get away with it, but it's not okay. They didn't need to kill off Kyle at all, really. It was just a cheap ploy to make Jimmy more likable or something, which, newsflash, Jimmy is not likable. Please do not shit on Jonathan Larson's memory in an attempt to make a character likable.

I legitimately cannot tell you how mad I am that dueling Gatsbys isn't happening. It makes my heart sad.

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

Yes! They could have just ... developed Kyle as a character. Or developed Jimmy as a character. Or realized that Jimmy was a failed experiment, apologized to Jeremy Jordan, and written him off to focus on more likable characters. Although given how much Smash seems to loathe likable characters, that last one wasn't very likely.

But instead ... nope, cheap melodrama by way of exploiting a real-life tragedy.

(I almost threw something at the screen when Julia accused Scott of exploiting Kyle's death to promote Hit List. SELF-AWARENESS, WRITERS, GET YOU SOME.)

[musical-junkie.livejournal.com]

I just read an article that said that they developed Kyle and made him likable for the sole purpose of killing him off. Ridiculous.

I don't think anyone would have complained had they written Jimmy off. (Not killed him off, but just faded him out.)

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

Absurd. Why are these people writing for television?

[musical-junkie.livejournal.com]

If I could figure that out, I'd be employed.