Image Credit: Eric Liebowitz/NBC
As someone whose knowledge of musical theater began most forcefully listening, as a child, to my mother’s vinyl copy of The Music Man cast album (she had a crush of Robert Preston), my pleasure in watching Smash has to do with an admiration for the Harold Hill-like hustle and jive the TV show tries to pull off on its audience. The new, supposedly improved edition of Smash that premiered on Tuesday night offered not so much a boost in quality by conventional standards (more interesting storytelling, clarified motivations, etc.) but rather a whole new set of characters, plot lines, music, and bits of dialogue that add up to reasserting Smash as a TV show about a Broadway show used as a metaphor for a TV show that was flopping creatively. READ FULL STORY »
