Smash- The Movie Star

What Happened- It turns out that, like most movie stars, Rebecca Duvall isn’t Broadway material. She can’t sing. She also has plenty of ideas and wants to make the musical have more dialogue and fewer songs. Tom and Julia are offended, Eileen is worried, and Derek is mortified. He gets Ivy a job in Bombshell’s chorus, just in case Rebecca doesn’t work out and Karen turns out to still be too green by that time. Rebecca offers to take voice lessons and manages to breathe out a decent song.

Eileen breaks reads Ellis’s report on Bartender Nick. She meets with Nick and they talk about his past financial arrangement with criminals. Eileen gets over this, for some reason, and they kiss again. Tom and Sam go on a real date after Julia makes them. She is sick of watching them just flirt. Tom is upset when he finds out that Sam isn’t as into casual sex as he is. Sam believes in God and believes that sex is holy, so he wants to take it slow. He calls Tom out for his intimacy issues and constant singleness. Leo is struggling in school, so Frank and Julia have to meet in order to talk Leo into doing his homework again.

Comments- This episode wasn’t as eventful as last week’s, but it wasn’t a disaster either. We love Uma Thurman for being a good sport and proving that while she can still dance, she isn’t much of a singer. The funny thing is neither was Marilyn Monroe. The breath-y, range-challenged sexy voice actually fits the icon better. The real Marilyn couldn’t belt it like Ivy and she didn’t have Karen’s pleasant tone either. But in order to have a good musical, you need to have numbers that bring the house down and the voices to carry them. With the right side characters getting all the best songs, Tom and Julia could make this work. They’d have to scrap the best song so far though (Let Me Be Your Star, obviously).

Once again, we weren’t thrilled by the songs this week, even though the Rebecca Duvall one was fun to watch. We liked seeing Karen and Ivy hang out, even if Karen ditched her at the end. We agree that Miss Iowa was being way too touchy. We also liked seeing Derek stick up for Ivy. Ellis was pretty lame this week, and after we defended him in our last Smash post! We think it would be unrealistic if Julia gets Frank back. Dev needs to go. Overall, this episode was quiet and mostly pleasant. This show isn't the greatest, but we are weirdly addicted to it. 

Episode grade: B-