MY SISTER IS WAITING FOR US IN CHINA. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO HER IF WE DON'T GET HER? I've given Smash two episodes, and my basic reaction is this: who wrote this shit? Look: I'm a big fan of cliched backstage stories so long as there's some wit or self-awareness involved, but this is done so straight and predictably that I feel like I'm laughing at characters who don't know they're being laughed at. Really: when you tell us early on that Dev has a Very Very Important Dinner for which Karen Cannot Possibly Be Late ... and then she's late, and Dev reacts exactly the way you'd expect if this were a dumb and predictable show... one starts to believe this is, in fact, a dumb and predictable show.
As Alan notes, the show has a serious case of Studio 60-itis, in which the writers feel the constant need to have other characters tell us just how brilliant and wonderful everyone is (the scene with the adoption letter, ugh), with minimal evidence that the characters are, in fact, all that. Indeed, yet again, we've got an NBC behind-the-scenes drama that comes with much hype, and with talent behind the scenes and on stage whom we've liked in the past ... and the execution just isn't there. I may watch it just to laugh at it, but I'm certainly not enjoying it on its own terms.
