Smash 's unsympathetic lead characters, oddly placed musical sequences, schizophrenic tonal shifts, cartoon-like villains who literally say, "You haven't heard the last of this," and strangely accessorized actors all became fodder for Twitter jokes.
Comedian Julie Klausner even devoted a podcast to Smash , which she called "the best television of all time. Rebeck had made it clear that Smash was her vision, and when that vision turned out to be laughable, she was shown the door.
Despite all of Smash 's problems, it did well enough in the ratings to be renewed for a second season — it aired after hit The Voice , and benefited from that lead-in. It has a two-hour premiere on Tuesday. How does a lovingly looked-after show with such high stakes for all involved become a joke? Smash is a case study: in how megalomania and television can clash unproductively; in how high expectations can crash immediately; and in how intense network and studio oversight can result in a paranoid show creator who causes workplace misery and, most importantly, a bad TV show.
NBC would not participate in this story. Instead, I spoke with more than a half-dozen people who worked on the first season — all of whom would talk to me only under the condition of anonymity out of fear of angering NBC, DreamWorks, and a number of other people — to try to figure out what went so horribly wrong with Smash.
The network had been down so long, it had become a punch line. One bad season had followed another. Then the well-respected Greenblatt arrived. Then, as the entertainment president at Showtime for six years, he turned the identity-less HBO imitator into a prestigious, growing pay-cable channel.
NBC was lucky to get him. In addition to his talents as a television executive, Greenblatt is a devoted theater geek. While at Showtime, he also produced a theatrical adaptation of 9 to 5 with Dolly Parton, which had a short Broadway run in Greenblatt originally bought Smash for Showtime in November It had been Spielberg's idea; the star director wanted to create a scripted series about a musical, and if all went well, the fictional musical would actually be developed as a real one on Broadway.
It was an ambitious project. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producing team who specialize in musical theater adaptations for film and television, were already in place as executive producers; Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Tony winners for Hairspray , were also on board to write Smash 's original music.
With Glee having so much success at Fox, the timing seemed perfect for a show for adults about the behind-the-scenes drama of making a Broadway musical. Rebeck had been involved since Smash 's inception as well. For years, Rebeck had wanted to create a TV series about a Broadway production, and no one had ever bitten.
Then she was hired to do exactly that on Smash. According to a story in Variety by Cynthia Littleton, it was Rebeck's off-Broadway play The Understudy , a backstage satire about how theater has been ruined by stunt-casting and celebrity, that sold Spielberg on her.
It was directed by Michael Mayer, who had won the Tony for Spring Awakening , but had never directed television before. At Greenblatt's first upfront presentation in May , when the broadcast networks unveil their new shows to advertisers and the press, he announced that Smash would premiere in midseason and be paired with the second season of the surprise hit The Voice.
No work of popular fiction receives unanimous acclaim. But the pilot for Smash , sent out to journalists shortly after the up-fronts, got a ton of early love from critics, and deservedly so. It set up a world full of compelling characters. Messing and Borle played Julia and Tom, a successful team of songwriters who are also best friends; they begin to write a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, providing the plot's engine.
The music was a combination of pop covers McPhee sang Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" during an audition scene and original songs, topped off by the catchy "Let Me Be Your Star," a duet and duel between Ivy and Karen as they both audition for the part of Marilyn in Tom and Julia's nascent musical.
It was exciting. A show as complicated as Smash — with multiple musical numbers every week that needed to look and sound professional, in addition to the requirements of any television drama an engaging plot and characters — had to be run meticulously. Any television series can go off the rails if the showrunner loses control, or, conversely, controls too much — if his or her ideas turn out to be bad ones.
A creator with aggressive convictions about what the show is or should be is not rare in television, nor is it necessarily a bad thing for a show that has so many non-writers in producing roles. The issues occur when that person creates a show with obvious, worsening problems and won't listen to anyone else — and that is what happened with Rebeck. A source who worked on Season 1 of Smash said, "Very quickly it just turned into kind of like — a kingdom or something.
A dictatorship. Rebeck had a full writing staff, some of whom she hired and some of whom were hired for her. One person who had happily taken a job behind-the-scenes based on the pilot and the premise said: "She was this kick-ass woman showrunner who wasn't taking shit from the network. Someone who had a very clear vision who was going to stand up to the network.
They were all good things in the beginning. You know where this story's going! She had never been in charge of a television show before, so executive producer David Marshall Grant was tasked with helping Rebeck shepherd it day to day and to run the writers' room. He was nominated for a Tony Award. After a short time with her staff, Rebeck decided she wasn't interested in having a writers' room; at most, she wanted writers to do a first draft that she would then rewrite herself.
That's not a crime, of course — show creators like Matthew Weiner, Aaron Sorkin, and Amy Sherman-Palladino surround themselves by writers who don't really write the episodes, but provide help in other ways. Rebeck, though, didn't want to be surrounded. In a thorough, excellent preview story in New York magazine, Rebeck told Jesse Green, "Writers' rooms really are not my thing, because I can only stand being in a room with people so many hours a day.
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Where is that built-in audience for Smash? Show-tune lovers and theater diehards? Sure, but they've been watching the show all along, and for the love of Patti LuPone will probably continue to tune in so long as the show exists. Soap opera fans? Quality-television lovers?
The show's better, but it's not that good. NBC's marketing and PR onslaught for the second season shows that the network has a lot invested in Smash 's success—and that the 7. By fixing the show, and making a big deal about fixing the show, the network wants to attract new eyeballs.
It's not going to work. The earliest figures released this morning reveal that the premiere scored an abysmal 1. So yes, I'm hooked again—but I, a Broadway junky, always was throughout the entire first season.
I'm not the person NBC was hoping to win over. Sadly, it seems, that person will probably never tune in, no matter how entertaining Smash becomes—or what Julia wears around her neck. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest.
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