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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.

[0:12] Aaron Albano: I'm Mo Brady.

[0:13] Mo Brady: And I'm Aaron Albano. Welcome back, listeners, to our tongue-in-cheek recap of what is television's most detailed depiction of the theater industry.

[0:35] Aaron Albano: And yes, we're still talking about Smash, the NBC series that chronicled the creation of a Broadway musical and all of the drama that ensued along the way.

[0:43] Mo Brady: But before we dive into Season 2, Aaron and I wanted to take stock of the first season as a whole. Aaron, do you remember what we said way back in the first episode of Smashed?

[0:52] Aaron Albano: Of course, Mo. I remember it like it was November.

[0:58] Mo Brady: One of the biggest reasons I wanted to look back on this show, now that we've had, what, seven years of separation from it, is to see if Smash really holds up. To see how the show authentically represents or sensationalizes our business. To see what, if anything, holds true to our 2019 Broadway world. Or is it more of a time capsule of the business in 2012? And if anything else sticks out that may have or may not have worked.

[1:22] Aaron Albano: All right, so let's dive in and talk about Season 1 of Smash.

[1:35] Mo Brady: I think we should jump to your final thoughts on the season, because these are so interesting to me.

[1:40] Aaron Albano: Okay, okay, go. With that in mind, let's wrap up the season. How do we think the show has done? From when we embarked on this adventure, the three things that we wanted to know were, does Smash authentically represent our business or does it sensationalize it? Two, does Smash hold true to today's Broadway or is it a capsule in time to 2012? And three, how does it hold up as a TV show?

[2:09] Mo Brady: Let's go one. What do you think? Does it authentically represent or sensationalize our show, our business?

[2:15] Aaron Albano: Okay. In my opinion, Smash is a completely inauthentic representation of our business, but it does so by using many authentic story points, real people playing themselves, real locations.

[2:30] Mo Brady: Okay. What do you think?

[2:33] Aaron Albano: I want to say if we were on like a graph, if we were on like a spectrum, I'd say we'd definitely be more on the sensationalism part of our scale in terms of the business. That said, I think it represented us closer than I remembered.

[2:48] Mo Brady: In what way?

[2:49] Aaron Albano: Because we have now tracked the characters of the show in a more unbiased and realistic way. I think the character archetypes of Karen and Ivy absolutely exist in our business. Their motivations and their intentions and their characteristics, I think are more authentically represented than I gave it credit for in 2012.

[3:15] Mo Brady: I think it got three big things wrong and that is what made it so inauthentic because it was basically three pillars of the show that are incorrect. One is that you produce a musical in 2012 the same way you produce a musical in 1957, which is you raise a bunch of money, you do an out-of-town tryout and you come into New York because the nonprofit theater has really changed that. It's changed it maybe a little bit more in the last five years, but I think that was wrong.

[3:47] Aaron Albano: The second part is the pitting against Karen and Ivy. It made the most interesting television drama, but that wouldn't have happened where they just wouldn't have picked someone, they wouldn't have dragged it on that long, they wouldn't have hired somebody on as a standby. Those two women would have not been pitted against each other.

[4:07] Mo Brady: The third is that all of this theater people are trash in the other parts of their lives, bleeding into the creation of the art doesn't ring true to me. Theater people can be dramatic onstage and off, but I think it rarely happens where it makes the art bad. And in Smash, it made Bombshell's journey to opening night in Boston harder because everyone's personal drama was getting in the way of putting on the show.

[4:42] Aaron Albano: Yes, I agree with that.

[4:43] Mo Brady: Okay, you've convinced me because I was just looking at it as I always do in the Karen Ivy dynamic, but the business surrounding them was yes, way over sensationalized. Okay, you've convinced me. Good job, lawyer.

[4:58] Aaron Albano: Good job, me. So does Smash hold true to 2020 Broadway pre-coronavirus or is it a time capsule?

[5:08] Mo Brady: I don't know. I want to say the same thing where the personalities and the characters in our show have stayed the same. When you say Broadway, that's the business plus the people. And so maybe I think it holds true in that the industry is the industry and it stays the industry in any generation.

[5:32] Aaron Albano: But details of it...

[5:35] Mo Brady: Those details have changed, but it is this... I agree with you. It is the same amount of truth now as it was eight years ago.

[5:44] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[5:45] Mo Brady: So today we get emails about the rehearsal schedule instead of having to call a hotline. Okay, great. But at the end of the day, we're all still rehearsing. We're all still putting on a show. We're all still inspiring people and getting paid for it and living life. And how does it unbiasedly hold up as a TV show, Mo?

[6:04] Aaron Albano: Smash came about right before streaming. And so this is the kind of show that would have had two seasons out of the gate. One would have just made the show maybe a little bit wiser in terms of finances, because this certainly looks like an expensive show. But in this glut of content that we have online, there's enough goodness in there that it is better than many of the things that are produced by both networks and streaming services right now.

[6:40] Mo Brady: That is high praise. That being said, I think the middle half of it was kind of bad. But I think it would have found its legs more if it wasn't so worried about ratings. Because I'll tell you, when I was filming episodes for the second season, we were filming the end of the second season as the first season was coming out. And it was certainly the discussion on set, at lunch, at craft services, in the holding rooms, how the ratings were affecting what we were doing, filming it. And if it would have been on one of these streaming services where they just didn't have to worry about that, they may have made different choices.

[7:36] Aaron Albano: All right. We made it.

[7:38] Mo Brady: We made it, Aaron.

[7:39] Aaron Albano: We made it. To the end of season one. Thank you to all of our listeners who have stuck with us week after week through 15 episodes. And special thanks to all of you who tweeted at us, DMed us, and especially those who graciously left us an Apple Podcast rating and review.

[7:52] Mo Brady: Because of your support, Aaron and I have decided to keep watching and recapping into season two. Woohoo!

[7:57] Aaron Albano: Yay! Okay, so here's what's going to happen. Mo and I are going to take a little break, give us all a chance to revel in the brilliance of Don't Forget Me, and return fresh in a few weeks to recap the season two premiere of Smash.

[8:09] Mo Brady: What's going to happen?

[8:10] Aaron Albano: I honestly don't remember, but I am very invested now. And so to keep up to date with our next recap, be sure to watch season two, episode one of Smash entitled On Broadway. You can find Smash episodes on either the NBC app or at NBC.com.

[8:25] Mo Brady: The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Aaron Albano.

[8:28] Aaron Albano: And me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping the Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and the other is by becoming a Patreon member, which you can do at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist.

[8:41] Mo Brady: You can subscribe to The Ensemblist on Apple Podcasts, follow us on Spotify, or listen to all of our episodes on bpn.fm. And be sure to follow The Ensemblist on Instagram, because things are changing all of the time.

[8:54] Aaron Albano: Yes, they are. All right, thanks for listening. Until next time!