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

[0:22] Mo Brady: Welcome back listeners to our tongue-in-cheek recap of what is television's most detailed depiction of the theater industry. And yes, we're still talking about Smash, the NBC series that chronicled the creation of not one, but two Broadway musicals and all of the drama that ensued along the way.

[0:38] We've been going back episode by episode to see how this supposed love letter to Broadway has held up over the past decade. In each episode, we're looking to find the answers to these three questions.

[0:50] Did it represent Broadway then?

[0:52] Does it represent Broadway now?

[0:54] And is it any good?

[0:57] So let's dive in and talk about Episode 12 of Season 2, Opening Night. Aaron, give us the stats.

[1:04] Aaron Albano: Here we go, Mo. Opening Night premiered on April 20, 2013. It was written by Bathsheba Doran and Noelle Valdivia and directed by Michael Morris, all three being prolific Smash veterans. Doran's and Morris' last episode was Season 2's The Song and Valdivia's was Season 2's The Bells and Whistles. The viewership rose from last week's downer, growing by .11 million viewers to a total of 1.91 million.

[1:33] Mo Brady: Yay!

[1:34] Aaron Albano: We did it. We're going, we're getting back up there. We only had two featured songs this week. We had a cover of Frank Sinatra's That's Life, sung by Marilyn's past and present, Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty. And we got the chance to revisit Marc Shaiman and Scott Whitman's tour-de-force finale, Don't Forget Me, this time performed by Bombshell victor herself, Megan Hilty.

[1:57] Mo Brady: Yes, she did. And what happened on Opening Night, Mo?

[2:00] Aaron Albano: The curtain comes down on Bombshell's final preview and things are looking up for Ivy. That is, until she dives into reading Broadway message boards, where she's being touted as a career chorus girl. But backstage before the Opening Night overture, Ivy's mother and co-star tells her that her experience has made her into the star she is today. She brings down the house with a glorious performance, ending with Don't Forget Me, which leaves Karen, who is in the audience, visibly shook.

[2:31] Even before opening, Julia is already pitching Tom ideas for their next show, a musical version of The Great Gatsby. But Tom may have found his own new project without her, directing a Broadway revival of City of Angels. When she confronts him about the rumor at the Opening Night party, he admits that all he wants to do right now is direct, not write another musical.

[2:52] Downtown, Hit List has sold out the rest of its off-Broadway run. Eileen has invited the company to come uptown to see Bombshell's opening, which makes Karen feel like she's watching her ex-fiancé walk down the aisle. Jimmy implores her to go, though, and that she's got him in her corner. But it's Jimmy that implodes at the Opening Night party, getting into a fistfight with his drug-dealing estranged brother in the middle of the event.

[3:17] The reviews are in, and Variety calls Bombshell the finest musical of the season. But it's waiting for the New York Times review that has everyone on edge and Ivy hiding in the restroom. When Karen finds her there, the current Marilyn confides that she can't get the former Marilyn out of her head. But the mutual admiration society is there in full force as Karen admits she loved watching Ivy play Marilyn. Ivy promises Karen that she'll make it to Broadway herself soon enough, but offhandedly jokes for it not to be this season.

[3:50] That promise may be going down the drain, though, as Derek hatches a rumor that Hit List is heading to Broadway. But that doesn't stop the two leading ladies from duetting at the party in an impromptu version of That's Life. But that's not the most surprising pairing of the night, as Tom and Kyle end up leaving together while Ivy gives Derek blue balls. Surprises abound as Eileen doubles down on their so-so New York Times review, declaring, screw the Times, we'll sweep the Tonys!

[4:33] Mo Brady: Oh, we're almost done. We are almost done. No, we have five episodes left after this episode. I hope it's good theater drama, though. I hope it's full of like, good theater business drama and not surprise party.

[4:48] Aaron Albano: One could only hope we are up on we are on the upswing. We are on I think which is promising. I felt like this episode was full of truths and lies.

[4:57] Mo Brady: Okay, how so?

[5:04] Aaron Albano: Well, a couple of truths. I think when Bernadette—I can only call her Bernadette. She's Lee Conroy, but I call her Bernadette—when she says all it takes to make it in this business is one role if that role is right for you. This is what she says to Ivy right before the curtain goes up on opening night. I felt like that was a truism in the theater. I think you think about these performers who either used one role as a stepping stone, someone like Sutton Foster, right, or their one role is really their whole life, like Carol Channing and Yul Brynner and Topol, you know, like, yeah, it really does take one role. I mean, it's a breakout performance for a reason.

[5:38] I think that's what's interesting about Ivy is that this, especially with what we watched of her journey with this show, is this is absolutely that role for her. But fascinatingly enough, we just saw her make her principal debut in another show, but no one remembers it.

[5:54] Mo Brady: No.

[5:55] Aaron Albano: So it truly becomes kismet when you find the one role that is right for you.

[6:00] Mo Brady: Yeah. You know who it reminds me of? And I don't know if this is real or not is Katrina Lenk. Like Katrina Lenk didn't make her Broadway debut in Band's Visit, right? But somehow it's like her and the role in the Band's Visit just sort of met and everyone was like, who the hell are you? Let's give you all of the parts, right?

[6:16] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Like that could be this role for Ivy. I mean, that's sort of like, I go back to Joel Grey. When you think of Joel Grey, he's the MC for ever and ever amen. And almost he is cast based on that memory of him.

[6:34] Mo Brady: That's interesting.

[6:35] Aaron Albano: Yeah, because you're totally right. It's like, yes, he played the wizard in Wicked, but the wizard has a little bit of the MC in him.

[6:46] Mo Brady: Right. And he played what, Moonface Martin in the Anything Goes revival? Is that right?

[6:54] Aaron Albano: He was Mr. Cellophane. I forget which show that is.

[6:58] Mo Brady: Oh yeah, he was Mr. Cellophane. Yeah. There's like a little bit of MC in all of these roles. And that's because there's a lot of Joel Grey in the MC.

[7:04] Aaron Albano: Yeah. It's when the role and the actor line up so well that it's career changing. And I think that's what Bernadette is referring—Lee Conroy is referring to when she's speaking to her daughter.

[7:17] Mo Brady: The other truism, and I love that the episode is centered around the idea of the New York Times review and how important it is.

[7:28] Aaron Albano: Oh, absolutely. It's like almost like reluctantly important. Like we all hate that it's so important and yet it absolutely is. Especially, we are moving farther away from this regime. But especially when this show was created, that Ben Brantley review was everything.

[7:42] Mo Brady: Right. And your show lived or died based on what he thought of your show.

[7:47] Aaron Albano: I didn't necessarily, I don't necessarily agree with Julia's statement. You know, Ben Brantley, if you're not in US Weekly, he doesn't care for you. My qualm of Ben Brantley reviews is I feel like he's sort of old. He just likes old things. I mean, at the end of the day, all of this is high school. We all have our opinions and how to legitimize what we think of what Ben Brantley thinks. And I don't know, none of us know him. So none of us know if it's true. It's all speculation. It's what we all tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better when we don't know what he's gonna say.

[8:24] Mo Brady: Yeah. It's about having control in situations we don't have control of.

[8:28] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[8:29] Mo Brady: The lies, the big lies in this episode were Hotel Carter as an opening night party location.

[8:35] Aaron Albano: You don't wear Hotel Carter.

[8:37] Mo Brady: Okay, well, here's the question because the interior of the party looks like a lobby.

[8:41] Aaron Albano: That is not at Hotel Carter.

[8:43] Mo Brady: Is Hotel Carter, is that where just Jimmy just ran away to? And they were just happened to be in front of the Hotel Carter. But in fact, their opening night party was in the lobby of their theater or in the lobby of someone else's theater next door. I don't know. But I was like, because yeah, I had the same moment. I was like, is there a party at Hotel Carter? Or is their party in their lobby? In either case, both are great locations for your opening night party if you're going to want to be like the talk of the town for the night.

[9:11] Aaron Albano: But it has great stairs.

[9:17] Mo Brady: All right. So let's talk about the real meat of the show. Let's talk about Bombshell.

[9:21] Aaron Albano: Bombshell. Frozen Bombshell.

[9:24] Mo Brady: Bombshell Frozen. The show now has an overture. That was a surprise.

[9:29] Aaron Albano: It does. And Ivy can just take her time getting to places during the overture.

[9:34] Mo Brady: On opening night. I think she barely makes it to center.

[9:38] Aaron Albano: Literally, the barn doors start opening and she's like walking to them. I was like, okay, we need to be at places at places. Places is not five. Places is places.

[9:49] Mo Brady: Here is the lie that bothered me. That the Bombshell bows only consisted of a full company bow except for Ivy and then Ivy. I was like, are you telling me that Leigh Conroy does not get her own bow?

[10:11] Aaron Albano: Maybe they're pulling a Hamilton where no one is more important than the show.

[10:14] Mo Brady: Is that? Wait, what are Hamilton bows? I mean, Hamilton just started streaming, so...

[10:20] Aaron Albano: Well, we all bow in place when the lights come up, and then we all come to the line, and then we bow, bow, orchestra, bow, and then leave. So no one gets a single bow.

[10:32] Mo Brady: No one gets a single bow.

[10:34] Aaron Albano: I know. And no music. It's very serious theater.

[10:39] Mo Brady: So maybe Bombshell is...

[10:40] Aaron Albano: I guess the only... I've seen so many people... I've seen like home videos of so many people's last performances of Hamilton where everyone else steps back, and then the person takes their own bow. So in my mind, there was like something like that.

[10:55] Mo Brady: Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. In an everyday show, no one gets a single bow. Maybe this is Ivy's last show on opening night.

[11:06] Aaron Albano: No, I would, I mean, you know, I'll Bombshell with their bows.

[11:10] Mo Brady: What do you think of Don't Forget Me?

[11:13] Aaron Albano: I love Don't Forget Me. Don't Forget Me already is like my favorite song in all of Smash. Like, I remembered that when we saw the finale to season one, when I was just like, this is the best finale that's ever been written for musical theater ever.

[11:28] Mo Brady: Obviously dramatic, but I didn't care at that moment. And I still think so. It's so good.

[11:33] Aaron Albano: And watching all of it, even the questionable blocking...

[11:39] Mo Brady: Wait, are you talking about the like male ensemble just sort of like standing, posing, standing?

[11:44] Aaron Albano: Okay, yeah, it's not great. It's not a great staging.

[11:48] Mo Brady: It did allow me to focus on the embarrassment of riches that is this male ensemble.

[11:53] Aaron Albano: Yes.

[11:54] Mo Brady: Okay, so we've got Wes Taylor, Joe Aaron Reid, Adam Perry, Marty Lawson, Reed Kelly, Chris Vo, and Keith Kuhl.

[12:01] Aaron Albano: So many.

[12:03] Mo Brady: I was like, that's so many icons. But yes, the staging is boring.

[12:11] Aaron Albano: It was added because it was just Karen on a blank stage in Boston, right?

[12:16] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[12:16] Aaron Albano: So this was a Tom Leavitt edition, technically.

[12:21] Mo Brady: Stand, step forward, stand.

[12:24] Aaron Albano: I didn't. Did I want them there? No, I was like, what are we all doing here?

[12:27] Mo Brady: But in the Smashiverse, when all those people shift to the people that have been in Ivy's life...

[12:35] Aaron Albano: Right. We are here for Ivy's journey at this point. Like, I feel...

[12:42] Mo Brady: Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Team Ivy all the way.

[12:45] Aaron Albano: She was such trash in season one. What happened?

[12:49] Mo Brady: Was it the writing? Is it that Megan's getting better at finding the nuance in her? Like, are we...? Why are we all excited about Ivy when she was such a bad person and kind of a not great character?

[13:05] Aaron Albano: I mean, I think it's that. It's we get to see. Season one was the journey of watching Karen rising and Ivy falling because Ivy was on top of the world, wanted too much, and got cast down.

[13:20] Mo Brady: She was Icarus. She touched the sun.

[13:23] Aaron Albano: But at the top of season two, we see her at her lowest point and we've known her and all of her issues, all of her mistakes and all of her baggage. But with this season, we got to watch her overcome all of that. Like, we didn't start from zero with her. We started even from the season two premiere. We saw her wanting to get better and that allowed us to want to root for her.

[13:44] Mo Brady: And we've now watched her growth and her maturity. I mean, and even her vulnerability, when she's worried about the reviews. At this point in our journey with her, we want nothing but success for her because we've watched her fall and now we want to watch her get up. And I'm here for it. And she has gotten up and she looks so great. And she opened a show and it's wonderful. And I hope everything for this fictional character. I love Ivy. I hated Ivy and now I love Ivy. It's the perfect journey.

[14:24] Aaron Albano: I did think it was sort of very intentional that Smash gave us a full solo from one of the shows, right? I mean, maybe it's just the fact that Megan knocks the number out of the park, but it was just thrilling. It's thrilling to watch her sing that song.

[14:41] Mo Brady: Especially with them showing us the entirety of Don't Forget Me. One of the most compelling things that I love about that moment is it opens, she starts the song and the camera goes straight to Karen's face. Gosh, that's so fun to watch her do that. And it's such a beautiful nuanced moment because you have Karen who has voluntarily left the show. It's not like she was kicked out. It's not like anything dramatic happened to her. She's voluntarily left the show.

[15:09] Aaron Albano: But Smash presents this situation that's frankly more nuanced than I expected Smash to present. There's so many layers to just that shot of her. And it just added that much more meat to the entire experience of watching that song.

[15:23] Mo Brady: For as much as I've been thinking that Smash would have been better as a limited series, one of the gifts of the amount of time that very few of us have watched this whole series have gotten is that something as small as a look from Karen can mean so much because we've spent so much time with her.

[15:48] Aaron Albano: Yeah, the annoying part of their rivalry in season one actually fed this investment in season two, that we know both of their journeys with this role. And we're able to watch both of them. Like when Karen says, I just feel like it'll be a really hard night. Like, yeah, yeah, no shit. I can tell it's gonna be a really hard night. Because there's so many things going on.

[16:08] Mo Brady: And we see it in the bathroom scene.

[16:13] Aaron Albano: That bathroom scene.

[16:14] Mo Brady: It's so good. This scene is my favorite scene in the whole thing. Because we finally got to see them with no guard up for like either of them. It was just so much vulnerability and so much trust.

[16:29] Aaron Albano: Because just like the audience knows their journeys with it, they know each other's journeys with it. And they come clean about it. They're like, my biggest worry was that you were in the audience. My biggest jealousy was that you got to do this song tonight. And I was sitting there watching you like both of them confiding in each other that this was hard for both of them because of their experience with Marilyn.

[17:15] Mo Brady: I think it speaks to something that's so true about theater people is that our talent makes us feel connected to each other. Like I feel like a respect for someone's talent makes us feel like we can empathize with them and we like them and we sort of we want the best for them.

[17:40] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[17:40] Mo Brady: And there was this there's this moment where you watch Karen watch Ivy and you're like, I like you because you're good at this thing. It makes me jealous that you're doing it and I'm not even though I'm the one who decided to basically make that happen.

[18:07] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[18:08] Mo Brady: But I can't be mad at you because I love watching talented people succeed.

[18:14] Aaron Albano: Yeah, I think what this show has struggled to do, but I think what they do well, at least in this scene, is that this relationship is not just between Karen and Ivy. This relationship has a third member and that member is Bombshell. Karen's relationship with Bombshell and Ivy's relationship with Bombshell has very much affected Karen and Ivy's relationship.

[18:38] Mo Brady: And I think that's something that is played with and touched upon in this show. But there is a real fundamental relationship between the artist and their art. That when you see someone else, your quote unquote competitor, Jimmy says it outright. And he was like, it's like you're going to see an ex.

[18:54] Aaron Albano: And the but the analogy of that is Karen got to watch Ivy and Bombshell have a healthy relationship. And instead of being upset about it, she's actually quite happy for it.

[19:00] Mo Brady: To keep up to date with next week's recap, be sure to watch season two, episode 13 of Smash, The Producers. You can find Smash episodes on either the NBC app or nbc.com. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady.

[19:05] Aaron Albano: And by me, Aaron Albano. There are two great ways you could be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

[19:09] Mo Brady: And the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist.

[19:13] Aaron Albano: Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network.

[19:23] Mo Brady: You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening, guys. Until next time.