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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. And I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:23] Aaron Albano: Welcome back, listeners, to our tongue-in-cheek recap of what is television's most detailed depiction of the theater industry. Or is it? We're going back. And yes, we're talking about Smash, the NBC series that chronicled the creation of not one, but two Broadway musicals and all the drama that ensued along the way.

[0:42] Mo Brady: We've been going back episode by episode by episode by episode to see how the supposed love letter to Broadway has held up over the past decade. In each podcast episode, we're looking to find the answer to these three questions. Did it represent Broadway then? Does it represent Broadway now-ish? And is it any good? So let's dive in and talk about Episode 15 of Season 2, The Transfer. Aaron, give us those stats.

[1:10] Aaron Albano: The Transfer premiered on May 11, 2013. It was written by Justin Brenneman and Julia Brownell. Brenneman is a Smash rookie, while Brownell last penned last month's episode, The Dress Rehearsal. The episode was directed by Holly Dale, also a newcomer to our Smash world. The viewership fell for its last time in the series, dipping by 270,000 to a total of 2.01 million viewers. We had four original songs in the episode this week. Our two from Hit List included Pretender, written by Lucy Silvas and Michael Busby, and I'm Not Sorry, written by Andrew McMahon. Mark Shaman and Scott Whitman penned our remaining two for the Houston Levitt Review, which were The Punny, Grin, and Bear It, performed by Megan Hilty, and The Right Regrets, sung by our now-defunct music team, Christian Borle and Debra Messing. And how'd this transfer go, Mo?

[2:04] Mo Brady: Audiences are literally running to see Hit List on Broadway, with Derek's former assault-ee, Daisy, now understudying Anna. But something about the show still isn't working uptown. Derek is worried that the problem is Anna's performance as the diva, so he tries putting Daisy on for the role. Jimmy wants a posthumous Tony Award for Kyle, so he and Julia get to work finding a solution that brings some of the downtown magic Hit List had off-Broadway up to 46th Street. The Great Lindsay Mendez guest stars as The Great Lindsay Mendez, performing in a one-night-only concert of Houston and Levitt songs designed as a ploy for Tony nominations. You see, as Eileen knows, the Tonys are not just about a great show, but a great story.

And Bombshell's story is that Tom and Julia are a great yet-so-far-unawarded pair of songwriters, so she asks the semi-estranged duo to perform a duet at the concert as well. Ivy and Karen make a Times Square promise that although awards season is bound to get a little crazy, they promise to be adults about it. Ivy's pill-popping past is catching up with her, though, so she has to start fixing her reputation from difficult diva to sweet-hearted star. But the player with more on the line is Derek, who is being blackmailed by a not-sorry Daisy in exchange for taking over Anna's role. Everyone who's anyone shows up for the Houston-Levitt concert, including pre-icon Lin-Manuel Miranda playing a Twitter-obsessed, Jonathan Groff-obsessed Lin-Manuel Miranda.

That is, everyone except for Julia, who's too busy reworking Kyle's ideas into ways to save Hit List. Covering for Julia, missing in action, Ivy throws caution to the wind and doubles down on her body reputation in a burlesque performance of Grin and Bear It. And in the eleventh hour, Julia finally arrives to perform a nostalgic duet with Tom as they both decide to say goodbye to their writing partnership.

[4:09] Aaron Albano: Later that night, after Ivy is confronted by Anna about Derek, the leading lady takes on Karen, saying, you play this naive, just-off-the-bus routine to get exactly what you want, but deep down, you're just as calculating as the next person. In a parting shot, Ivy tells Karen she's glad Hit List made it to Broadway, because now she can beat her fair and square for the awards. Also, Ivy is pregnant.

[4:34] Mo Brady: You hate to break it to you, I'm not sorry, sorry, yeah. I'm not sorry, sorry, uh-uh, uh-uh-uh. It's time to stand aside, you can't take the best of me. Hate to break it, hate to break, you hate to break it to you, I'm not sorry.

[4:59] Aaron Albano: General thoughts for the episode are, and also, Ivy is pregnant.

[5:05] Mo Brady: Can I tell you how of all of the details that I forgot watching this show, that is the biggest one?

[5:12] Aaron Albano: It is for sure the biggest one.

[5:14] Mo Brady: Completely left my head. I was like, wait, what? Wait, what? It's like unnecessary drama at an unnecessary time in an episode, and it's like two episodes from the end. I'm like, I already figured out what the story is that you're telling me that I want to get emotionally involved in. This was unnecessary.

[5:33] Aaron Albano: Okay, well before we get into the unnecessary drama, because there's plenty of it, Hit List is at the Barrymore Theatre.

[5:43] Mo Brady: Yes, west of Broadway. We've made it to real Broadway.

[5:47] Aaron Albano: We definitely started with all the marquees, and you know I paused it to make sure that it said like a real theatre and not the Lily Hayes part two. And I definitely even wrote down the address that they said was the Ethel Barrymore Theatre just to make sure, because you've made me this way.

[6:05] Mo Brady: Yes, I apologize, slash I don't. So let's also talk about, let's talk about this idea of Hit List moving uptown and whether or not it can keep the magic, and how do you keep that magic from off-Broadway to Broadway?

[6:22] Aaron Albano: Again, I feel like this is a, this is like an early 2010s problem, not a 2020 problem, because the kinds of shows that didn't keep their magic were like famously Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which sort of pittered out at when it moved from the public to Broadway. I feel like Passing Strange was also a show that like didn't quite get the buzz. Little Shop of Horrors was like an off-Broadway, when they tried to make it a Broadway show it sort of felt too small. That revival with Cary Butler and Hunter Foster.

[6:58] Mo Brady: Oh yeah, that was a huge like upping of the production to Broadway.

[7:02] Aaron Albano: Yeah, part of the reason why I think people were so excited. But why I said it was an early 2010s problem is because if you look at it now, Dear Evan Hansen, The Band's Visit, Hadestown, arguably Hamilton are all shows that did retain their quote-unquote magic from off-Broadway to Broadway. So it may be this was something that people worried about 10 years ago, but it's not really something that people worry about today.

[7:26] Mo Brady: Well, here's what's interesting about that, especially with those shows that you just mentioned, like Dear Evan Hansen, Hamilton, arguably they were all shows that didn't they were already Broadway shows in an off-Broadway house.

[7:43] Aaron Albano: Ah, I hear you. Yes.

[7:46] Mo Brady: And that's what's so interesting about this 2010s problem is that like we had a whole episode where Jimmy and Scott and Derek all had a fight on what this show was downtown. It wasn't Broadway. And so the natural progression of this episode is they're now on Broadway. How do they up the show to be more Broadway, quote-unquote? It's a fascinating question that I do think still exists now, where like, do you even need to do that? If something had magic downtown, or if something had magic off-Broadway in that off-Broadway form, why do you even feel the need to glitz and glam it up for Broadway?

[8:30] Aaron Albano: Okay, so we're talking about sort of two different things. An off-Broadway production can be intentionally a pre-Broadway production. I would argue that The Band's Visit and Dear Evan Hansen were that.

[8:42] Mo Brady: Okay.

[8:43] Aaron Albano: Versus Hadestown at New York Theatre Workshop, right? Looked very different, right? The New York Theatre Workshop was before Edmonton, before London, before Broadway, right? So that was truly a different experience. This was a question, your question about why does it need to come to Broadway was a question that went through my mind over and over again when First Date was on Broadway.

[9:06] Mo Brady: Oh, yeah.

[9:07] Aaron Albano: First Date, which was like a six-hander starring Zachary Levi and Christa Rodriguez at the Longacre, tiny little show. And you just went and you were like, this is perfect for every regional theatre, college, community theatre. Why does it need to be on Broadway? And my answer is licensing. That if it's been a Broadway show, then when you are licensing the show—

[9:33] Mo Brady: You can say Broadway's First Date.

[9:35] Aaron Albano: You can say it was a Broadway musical.

[9:37] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[9:38] Aaron Albano: Right?

[9:38] Mo Brady: Interesting.

[9:39] Aaron Albano: So you need it to be on Broadway so that it can have been a Broadway show, so that it can have a life after Broadway.

[9:48] Mo Brady: Fascinating. So it's interesting because I feel like this question has sort of shifted. It's Hit List is now on Broadway, which is great. And it's where the trajectory of the show needed to go. However, should it have even come to Broadway, A, and B, are all of these adding of sort of bells and whistles detracting from the show now because we're now on Broadway?

[10:14] Aaron Albano: That's a super interesting question that I don't think that the series actually has any interest in exploring.

[10:21] Mo Brady: Sure. Well, because that's also very interesting because I think not even- not only is that an idea that the show puts forward, but I do think that it's a show- it's an idea that exists in our industry, where if something's brilliant, it should obviously go to Broadway because Broadway is the end all be all of our business. This percolating idea that the best art should be on Broadway.

[10:46] Aaron Albano: Yes. Speaking of Hit List and the ways that it sort of spins things on its head, I want to ask you about this newsreel idea.

[10:55] Mo Brady: Oh, yeah.

[10:56] Aaron Albano: Julia says Kyle had this idea for an updated take on newsreel footage blown up across the proscenium just in your face. Gossip sites, tabloids, Twitter, YouTube, a multimedia assault. This

[11:08] Aaron Albano: To keep up to date with next week's recap, be sure to watch Season 2, Episode 16 of Smash, The Nominations.

[21:25] Mo Brady: You can find Smash episodes on either the NBC app or on NBC.com.

[21:29] Aaron Albano: The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Aaron Albano.

[21:32] Mo Brady: And me, Mo Brady.

[21:34] Aaron Albano: There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now.

[21:37] Mo Brady: One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

[21:40] Aaron Albano: And the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist.

[21:46] Mo Brady: Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts.

[21:48] Aaron Albano: On Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network.

[21:54] Mo Brady: You can also follow us on Instagram.

[21:55] Aaron Albano: Thanks for listening, everybody.

[21:57] Mo Brady: Until next time.