There's music that sticks with you — like Megan's can't-get-it-out-of-your-head "Zou Bisou Bisou" birthday party bump and grind from Mad Men — and music you can't wait to forget: as in whatever the hell Katharine McPhee was screaming on that revolving mattress-prison during the ambush production number on Smash's worst episode to date.
Which seems an appropriate way to begin our medley of some of the week's notable hits and misses.
read more
Smash, NBC's soapy musical drama about the making of a Broadway show, has been renewed for a second season, the network announced Thursday...
read more
Thanks to NBC's relentless marketing and PR campaign, much is already known about Smash, a big-risk series about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical. At the center of the sudsy backstage drama is American Idol's Katharine McPhee, who stars as an ingénue pitted against a more seasoned Broadway chorus girl to play the iconic blonde.
If the premise sounds hopelessly niche for a broadcast network in desperate need of a hit (thespians! show tunes! jazz hands!), both NBC and critics high on the series have been working hard to change your mind. Advanced word on Smash is that it's the anti-Glee (especially if you've tired of that show's pop song-happy chorus of high schoolers), The West Wing but on Broadway (should you miss Aaron Sorkin's defining sense of a workplace), and a game-changer for NBC (if you went bananas for the first episode, which NBC screened in theaters and made available on-demand and online weeks before Monday's official premiere).
Watch Smash right now — then tell us what you think!
Is it all just hyperbole?
read more
Scene: A massive converted warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn, late 2011. The lights come up on the cast of an ambitious network drama about the making of a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe as they screen the series' pilot during a catered lunch break. Once the credits roll, so do the waves of applause...
As anyone who's read the copious critical raves knows, Smash — the most faaabulous show that's not on Bravo — is all that and an orchestra seat. Produced by Steven Spielberg, created by Emmy nominee Theresa Rebeck (NYPD Blue), loaded with tunes by Hairspray Tony winners Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and boasting a cast so good you'd think it was on cable, this stage-door soap is either gonna be a knock-'em-dead blockbuster or one of TV's splashiest misfits.
It's risky for sure. There's a reason...
read more
As NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt put it, NBC is giving Smash the full-court press.
The network announced Friday that the full first episode will be available as a digital download beginning Jan. 16
read more