Meghan O'Keefe

Meghan reviews NBC pilots that were released early on iTunes -  Entry One: Smash

Oh, boy…

Before I say anything else, let me just say that I will be DVRing this show. You should also know that I DVR America’s Next Top Model and documentaries on baby sloths, so being put on my DVR queue is less of a vote of confidence and more of an admittance that this show is the kind of thing I’d want to watch half drunk and exhausted at 11:43 pm on a weekday night or hungover and eating a bagel at 11:43 am on a weekend day.

Here are my thoughts on the pilot (some spoilers):

• I hope Debra Messing gets some acting lessons.
• Jack Davenport is so good at sneering.
• I wish someone would make a show that was just Angelica Houston. She could be drinking coffee, she could be smiling or she could be reading National Geographic next to a fish tank with no fish in it. ANGELICA HOUSTON.
• Whenever I saw Megan Hilty’s bare arms, part of me was like, “Good for her. She has real arms and didn’t feel the need to do crazy amounts of bicep curls before her television debut.” The other part of me picked up the dumbbells that have been sitting unused in my room for a year and started doing bicep curls.
• Katherine McPhee was better in this than she’s been in anything before. Meaning, she’s okay.
• Okay, so there’s this writers’ assistant character who’s played so poorly that I have to believe that the actor playing him isn’t an actor, but an actual writers’ assistant who was put in the show as some sort of weird meta commentary on ruthless and manipulative and “All About Eve”-ish assistants.
• How does Katherine McPhee’s struggling actress character have a hot, supportive, Anglo-Indian (Indian-Anglo?) boyfriend in New York, and I just have an unhealthy obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch?!?! Isn’t there some sort of on-set adviser advising people on how struggling performers actually live?!?!?
• Is Ivy supposed to have an eating disorder or a nervous stomach?
• I wish there were more scenes with Debra Messing and the other actor whom I know is a big Broadway deal but who’s name I don’t know actually writing the songs. Because I’m totally confused as to how they work together (like, who writes music and who writes lyrics). It seems to me they talk a lot to other people about how hard writing songs are and then someone comes in and they’re like, “Oh, let me sit at this piano and improvise a jaunty number that will be GENIUS.” That can’t be right.
• Why does Debra Messing need to adopt a baby when there’s a teenage boy in her apartment she’s already ignoring?
• Speaking of the teenage son, is he supposed to have a mental disability? Because I couldn’t tell if he was or was not. Either that’s bad acting or that’s bad acting and bad writing.
• I like song and dance numbers.
• These people can all sing. That’s refreshing.
• This show will either end up fixing its issues and will be awesome, or it will devolve into madness avec les jazz-hands. Either way…I’M GOING TO DVR IT.