What May Or May Not Have Happened So Far On Smash
By Thoughtis
Every once in a while it’s fun to just go ahead and judge a book by its cover. Not an actual book though, they’re far too important. And obviously not a person — that’s just plain ignorant. But in a safe-space with a television program, sometimes I like to throw caution (facts) to the wind and just decide for myself, based on the commercials, the main plotlines and other important information about a certain show. Yes, without even watching it.
I know it’s very terrible, a pedestrian folly, and not at all what the writers intended. It doesn’t always make me dislike the show though. Sometimes I even enjoy my inaccurate, imagined version of the show that is based solely on TV/print/internet advertisements much more than I enjoy the actual version when I finally do watch it. Sometimes I don’t. It turns out I’m no better at predicting my own tastes than the tastemakers. Without further ado, I give you my interpretation of what has happened so far this season on the new hit smash“Smash” — which I have not watched one minute of — based entirely on their exhaustive pandemic of a marketing campaign.
1. It’s based on the movie Center Stage (2000).
2. It’s set 50 years in the future after Facebook is melted by lava and the majority of the American public starts caring about Broadway shows again.
3. It’s adult Glee.
4. Angelica Houston plays a sophisticated, devious person who is out to destroy the main character.
5. It is a massive hit. It is such a tremendously brilliant television show, that no one even needed to watch a single episode first in order for it to be a hit. Not even any television critics.
6. It is groundbreaking.
7. Grace from Will & Grace is in it. Not Debra Messing, but her character, Grace, who has sold her interior designing business to Karen Walker and now, living off the profits, devotes her time to wearing glasses and her biological daughter, Katharine McPhee.
8. This show was written by the writers of NBC’s The Voice. Or it was written, in collaboration, by singers on NBC’s The Voice. Or it was written by NBC’s The Voice after NBC’s The Voice anthropomorphized.
9. NBC’s The Voice wrote the entire first season of Smash in two days using the same pills Bradley Cooper took in Limitless. (Spoiler Alert! I know, but sorry, if you haven’ t seen Limitless by now, you are actively avoiding it. I think it came out on Netflix Instant the same day it opened in theaters. I saw it for free on a plane — it was on a Caribbean Sun flight and that airline’s been defunct since 2009. What I’m saying is Limitless is so pervasive it somehow gained the ability to time-travel to before it even existed. Anyway back to Smash.)
10. This is a reality show about Katharine McPhee.
11. The main character, Katharine McPhee, who sometimes goes by Karen, has a lot of growing up to do if she’s going to make it in this business.
12. Katharine/Karen has some difficult decisions to make, like how much to neglect her doting and supportive boyfriend in order to chase him away so she can have an ill-advised affair with one of the Jonas Brothers — and then ultimately return to the boyfriend.
13. It is also kind of based on A Face in the Crowd, The Imitation of Life, Coyote Ugly, Morning Glory, Felicity, The Devil Wears Prada, All About Eve, The L Word Season Five, The “Country Mouse” half of Aesop’s fable, and the all the boring parts of Julie and Julia.
14. Katharine McPhee/Karen’s adoptive parents are jealous of her talent.
15. It may or may not be a phenomenon. By this, I’m pretty sure they mean that Smash is the benign tele-visual reincarnation of the medical condition suffered by John Travolta in the 1996 fantasy-drama Phenomenon and it is causing Travolta to see illusions of light and experience dizziness.
16. There have been numerous misunderstandings that defy logic and perhaps at least one whimsical switcheroo.
17. The British judge director is a sharp-tongued truth-teller who deflates ego, but his mean quips often go a bit too far.
18. Katharine McPhee/Karen is a triple threat.
19. Those three life-threatening skills are yet to be determined, but she also seems to be good at singing.
20. A lot of people (double-threats) are about to be very unhappy with their non-speaking yet facially emotive, background dancer roles but, hey, somebody has to support Katharine McPhee/Karen on her quest from rags to riches and into our hearts.
21. It’s definitely getting a second season.