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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to Smashed from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Mo Brady.

[0:09] Aaron Albano: And I'm Aaron Albano. You are.

[0:23] Mo Brady: Welcome back, listeners, to our tongue-in-cheek recap of what is still the Broadway community's favorite TV show, Smash. Yes, we're talking about the NBC series that aired from 2012 to 2013. Smash was also an incredible glimpse into the theater community in the early 2000s as many of the show's writers, actors, and dancers were played by real Broadway performers with real Broadway cred. But we wanted to go back in time to see how the show has weathered, what it got right and what it got very, very wrong. So let's dive in and talk about Season 10, Episode 5, Let's Be Bad. Aaron, give us the stats.

[1:00] Aaron Albano: Fierce, Mo. Fierce. Let's Be Bad premiered on March 5, 2012. It was written by Julie Rottenberg and Alyssa Zuritski and directed by Jamie Babbitt. Take note, this episode is the first in the series to have an all-female writer-director team. Slay. The episode premiered live to 7.76 million viewers, which was up by 17% from the previous week. Wow. Yeah. Using DVR viewing, the episode was seen by a total of 10.22 million that week. Not much music in this one, Mo. There was only one original song, the titular number, Let's Be Bad, by Shaman and Whitman, with two covers of It's a Man's Man's Man's World by James Brown and A Song for You by Donny Hathaway. And what happens in this episode, Mo?

[1:45] Mo Brady: As performers in the Bombshell workshop are warming up to start for a rehearsal day, Derek works with Karen on new choreography for the bridge sequence. Ivy walks in and clearly startled asks, "Am I late?" Eileen is anxious about the script's development, interrupting Tom on a date with a handsome lawyer who he's just not that into. But it's really Julia who's stalling over dinner at Westway Diner with Michael Swift. Eileen uses sneaky Ellis to spy on Julia's progress. Derek is pissed about everything going well, even pitting Ivy against Karen by asking Cartwright to perform a tricky vocal passage in front of a full company music rehearsal. In a private rehearsal, Karen graciously apologizes for the awkward situation, which Ivy labels "taking singing lessons from a chorus girl."

Ivy has a lot on her plate, but she's handling it, which she shows both the audience in the rehearsal room and watching on TV at home with a fully staged fantasy version of Let's Be Bad. Ivy goes out for drinks with Sam and Michael and afterwards, while drunk, confronts Derek at his apartment about why he can't support her more. Derek tells her he wishes that people "didn't have those annoying feelings," to which Ivy yells back, "Theater is about feelings." Derek the Nightmare gives her a pseudo-apology, which is more than enough for Ivy to spend the night. Also, Julia's son gets arrested while she's out with Michael Swift, who woos her with a front stoop serenade. And Karen learns how to be sexy to help her boyfriend Dev get a leg up in the running for the mayor's new press secretary job.

[3:21] Aaron Albano: All these things at the end are like the things that no one will care about. Yes, no, perfect.

[3:29] Mo Brady: All right, favorite performance by an ensemble list.

[3:37] Aaron Albano: We'll get to that fantasy Let's Be Bad in a second. Yeah, but this is where we're definitely seeing the Bombshell core, right? We've started seeing the whole company. And even in the fantasy sections, right where you'll see Savannah, Philip, right? They're all in the workshop, but even in the fantasies, up will pop Ricky, trip up will pop Joe Reed, you'll see just golden who we aren't seeing in the rehearsal room, are in the fantasy version of the completed show. My favorite performance, not that you asked, but my favorite performance was Manny Santos on the foam roller in the opening rehearsal. I thought that was the best performance by a foam roller I've seen on screen. It was quite a long time.

[4:12] Mo Brady: Do you have a foam roller like that?

[4:17] Aaron Albano: No, I have the one with like, spikes.

[4:22] Mo Brady: Oh, okay. And a PVC pipe in the middle. Do you bring it to rehearsal?

[4:27] Aaron Albano: No, it just sits out. It sits at work.

[4:31] Mo Brady: Oh, okay. So like, you would like just leave it if you were doing a workshop, you would have brought it on day one and just I just left it there.

[4:35] Aaron Albano: Yeah, probably. So safe space.

[4:35] Mo Brady: Hey, moments that scream 2012 to me were Christine Bendel holding up an iPhone in music rehearsal to get her part.

[4:42] Aaron Albano: Yes, she her arm was extended. And she's got her I'm like, just put it down on the music stand. That's where those belong. You just put your iPhone on the music stand. This is dating me, which is the entire subplot of this entire mini series. But I had like a microphone on my iPod. It was like an attachment.

[5:00] Mo Brady: Oh my god, I forgot about that.

[5:05] Aaron Albano: That attached on like, because the lightning's what we have now. Right?

[5:09] Mo Brady: Yeah, right. The other the bigger one. The bigger one.

[5:14] Aaron Albano: Yeah, I remember that one. And you've turned your phone upside down.

[5:18] Mo Brady: Yeah, you could record. Those were the days see, why did anybody have that?

[5:22] Aaron Albano: Here's an Albano fact check for you rehearsal. Have you ever had a director lead a music rehearsal? Derek is the one who's giving the notes, right? He's the one that's like, Ivy, you aren't singing it right? Karen show Ivy how to sing it right. So sing Happy Birthday, right? I mean, I've been in rooms where directors would like give a note here and there from the other table, right? But it definitely seems like he's leading the rehearsal. And I guess there's also an element where are we to assume that Tom is the musical director, right? There's no music.

[6:06] Mo Brady: There is no music. There's only Larry, the accompanist.

[6:10] Aaron Albano: Yeah. He sure is not giving any notes. No, he must just be like, he shows up late for private music rehearsals. He's leading rehearsal. And that's this developmental workshop. I mean, there's no money. There's zero money. There are a total of two Broadway, there are a total of 13 actors, and that we're told that the workshop is quote, primarily for the ensemble. Derek said that in the last episode.

[6:34] Mo Brady: Yeah, but it's weird that there's 11 ensemble members and two leads, right? And there's a lot of producer pressure. This is developmental. Eileen is very present. You do a workshop for an ensemble. If you were trying to develop ensemble numbers, you would do pre pro.

[6:47] Aaron Albano: Yes. A workshop is to like figure out the arc of the story with their literal two leads in the room.

[6:56] Mo Brady: Yeah, and if it makes sense, and you wouldn't go into a workshop unless it was like a dance show.

[7:01] Aaron Albano: Yeah, unless it was like, maybe Bombshell is dancing. And we just didn't even we had no clue.

[7:06] Mo Brady: Yeah. So no, to answer your question, that was odd. The dynamic in that room just showed how toxic this room was.

[7:12] Aaron Albano: Yeah. And I was like, what are we showing? It really makes you wonder why these are the people that have been brought together to do this project that has zero money.

[7:18] Mo Brady: Well, also, here's what's interesting, too, because this and I think last episode were the first episodes where the title clued you into the thematic elements of the episode. Like last episode was cost of art, and all of it was pretty much like about the sacrifice.

[7:29] Aaron Albano: Yeah, well, that too, but like, like sacrifices you give, whether it's your sanity or your art or like actual money to get it put up, whatever. This one is called Let's Be Bad and you watch everyone being bad, including many people involved in this show and in this rehearsal.

[7:35] Mo Brady: A, you see Derek playing all these games with his cast, which I don't even know where to begin on that one.

[7:41] Aaron Albano: Start somewhere. Like he seems terrible. He seems I do not like Derek. It's disgusting. He's a nightmare. He plays this game where he yells and kicks and screams at Ivy for doing it wrong, whatever that even means. Right. And then calls up the other not even she's not even the understudy.

[8:01] Mo Brady: No, she's literally just she's there because they felt bad. She's the woman who didn't get the part.

[8:05] Aaron Albano: Yeah. And then set that asks her to demo in front of the entire.

[8:11] Mo Brady: Which she handles very graciously. Karen handles that moment graciously. She does it, she commits to it, and then she shrugs it off and laughs it off. And she says, this is weird. Yes, and that's the first thing she says in the private rehearsal. Yeah, that Ivy's completely playing games in also.

[8:30] Mo Brady: Right, and no stage manager. Right, you would never have a rehearsal without a stage manager in the room. I mean, can we even call it a real rehearsal? No, but Darren called it, he said, you have a rehearsal. It wasn't just like, off the cuff, go work on this. Yeah. That had to end up on a schedule. The fact that Julia is just chilling with Michael Swift and not writing any pages that she's supposed to be writing. Well, she's trying to adopt a baby from China. Oh yeah, that too. Her son is getting arrested, who's also being bad. And Frank is in Berkeley getting his teaching certification. Oh, is that where he was? Yeah. I didn't catch that. I was just like, I guess Brian was busy.

[9:08] Mo Brady: Yeah. And then you have Tom who's completely distracted from this show. I'm like, wasn't this your baby? Watching it again, I'm way more invested in the fact that like, Derek is an asshole to everybody. Uh-huh. Ivy is literally a crazy person. Yeah. Who is employed not just once, but twice right now. Yeah. And that Karen is the voice of reason. No one's caring. No one cares about this show that they're all supposedly so invested in. Yes.

[9:37] Mo Brady: Tell me about your thoughts on Let's Be Bad. The song itself? The fully staged- Oh, the fully staged fantasy number? Yes. It was another sort of deviation from the convention that was set up earlier in the season because it wasn't quite a projection of what the number could be, or maybe because those people weren't in the room. Sure. I think there's a lot of problems with how the series is using fantasy sequences.

[10:01] Mo Brady: Yeah. Well, because this number had an entire pre-scene leading up to the number, like where she enters and it was this entire like- Oh, right. And there's the cameraman and like the woman who's like, geez, Ms. Monroe. I was like, these people don't exist. Right. Yet. If this is us watching the number in the room in an elevated way-

[10:30] Mo Brady: How is this even part of the- We've deviated from the number that we've watched. Right. Sure. Because those people don't exist. Fun fact. Go. The cameraman was the first time I went in for Smash. I read the cameraman. Oh, really? Yeah. That was the first- Yes, cameraman. Fantasy cameraman. That was the first role that I auditioned for on the series. Didn't book it. Sorry. It's okay. It's fine. You originated a show on the show. Bigger, better things.

[10:53] Mo Brady: What did you think? I liked the number. Yeah. Oh, the number itself, I thought it was great. I think that this is where we really started to see Josh Bergas's great choreographic work on the show. I agree. We're seeing sort of like snippets. The challenge of Josh Bergas as the choreographer of Smash is that he's not creating numbers. He's creating moments of numbers, right? Or like we're seeing like the work session in the callback or we're seeing what a number might look like in the pilot, the national pastime. But this is where it's like, all right, if I staged a number, it would look like this. This is the extent of it. I mean, it's a long-

[11:34] Mo Brady: Yeah. It's a sequence. It's not even just a number. It's a full- The women come in and there's lots of them. I mean, I think it's 10 women and eight men. It's a big ensemble. I love this. There's a journey that goes on.

[11:48] Mo Brady: Yeah. There's storytelling involved. If this is what this workshop is leading toward, this is some good work being done amidst all of this drama. I think what doesn't ground us as viewers of the television series is we don't know if this is what it could be, what it will be, what it will never be. We don't know where they fit into the future of Smash.

[12:10] Mo Brady: Yes. I keep thinking about the phrase palace intrigue, referring to the activities of people in the court of a king or a queen. Okay. Yes. Right. It's like the drama that's happening in the room.

[12:19] Mo Brady: Yes. So much of the drama is not happening in the room. Yes. Yes. It's happening outside of the room. When we get a great scene, honestly, I think the best scene we've seen so far is Ivy and Karen in the private rehearsal that's not actually a rehearsal.

[12:38] Mo Brady: Sure. That is where we get to see the most truth, the most artist talking to another artist. I thought that was the best work we've seen of Megan Hilty so far in the series is that she is juggling her embarrassment of having to come to this rehearsal. The fact that she wants to have some sort of control and come out on top, right? Karen is trying to be nice, but she's also trying to be in her place, but she's also trying to not be a doormat to Ivy. Yes, absolutely.

[13:09] Mo Brady: When the show keeps the intrigue in the palace, it's doing good. And maybe not even the literal palace, but the other scene that I jumped to is the last scene with Derek and Ivy. Oh, sure.

[13:23] Mo Brady: Because it's the same- Theater is about feelings. Yeah, but it's this power dynamic that now Ivy has flipped on, where Ivy is now that girl, and Derek's like, I'm the one trying to work because that's the one thing that I wrote down. Derek is the only person in this episode working on the show. Everyone else is dealing with their own crap. And I'm like, Derek, the guy that I don't like in this room, I have to give kudos to because he's literally the only person working on the show that we all supposedly care about.

[13:55] Mo Brady: And when he says- Tom is trying to find a boyfriend. Clearly. And he's like, I'm working on your show. She literally kowtows and she's like, oh yeah. In a sensible like- Yeah, but he's also kind of a dick about it. Completely. Because that's also what I love about Megan in the role of Ivy because you'll have both of these scenes where all her guard falls and all her security falls and everything.

[14:20] Mo Brady: She creates so much depth because she has both of these colors in the 40 minutes that we just watched. It's the power struggle and that power dynamic, I feel like is the most interesting thing about the show. As much as I cringed and hated it, the rehearsal room was really great. It was fantastic. Let's watch that show. I love Christian Borle. I love Tom- I don't love Tom Leavitt. But I don't care if he has a boyfriend or not. Let's write some songs or get your writing partner to write some stuff.

[14:49] Mo Brady: Especially when you have good music that is being written by Mark Shaman and Scott Whitman that's just being sprinkled into. The creation of those songs could be a part of the story. Yeah. Come on, guys. Yeah, I need more bombshell. More bomb- More bombshell. More bombshell. More bombshell.

[15:30] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Aaron Albano for joining us for this mini-series. You can learn more about him and how to connect with him online by visiting our website, theensemblist.com. Are you enjoying the Smashed mini-series? If you are, let us know on any of our social media platforms. If you are having as much fun as we are, and we are, let us know and we'll keep going. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. Please help others find out about The Ensemblist by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. You can also download episodes wherever you get your podcasts or at theensemblist.com. Follow The Ensemblist on Instagram to see the latest posts from our website where we share the stories of talented artists working in Broadway ensembles. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time!