Smash: The One Where Derek’s Fetish Is Revealed

Gross.

Last night’s latest installment of the Paul Lynde Comedy Hour, starring Ellis the spring-haired centaur sought to teach  three very important lessons about love, life, and New York City (“NEW YORK CITY?” bellow some old cowboys around a dying campfire.)

Lesson 1: To successfully travel by train to Boston, all you need is a backpack, a photo of Bernadette Peters, and all the love in your heart. Naysayers will try to redirect you to Penn Station insisting that no “trains” leading to “Boston” leave from Grand Central, just ignore them! Who needs logic when you’ve got a backpack, a dream, and TECH! (sidebar – most annoying thing about this episode was all the actors whining at tech. I may have started screaming “TECH IS NOT FOR YOU!” and then never stopped.)

Lesson 2: Derek Wants To Fuck Marilyn Monroe. Does Derek love Karen? No, he loves her Marilyn. Does Derek love his girlfriend, Ivy? No, he loves her connections and her Marilyn. Does Derek love Rebecca Duvall? Absolutely not. In fact, he might not even like her. But once that bitch Marilyn-ed up and revealed her vulnerability to Derek, he saw her Marilyn and had to put his penis inside her.

Lesson 3: When you can’t make a healthy adult decision, make the people you’ve hurt the most make it for you. This may seem callous, but it’s exactly what Madam Messing, and the over-sized plaid tunic she stole from the glove compartment of Andre the Giant’s car did. When Bombshell’s Di Maggio jumped ship for a pilot and it looked like they had no choice but to bring back her topless cuddling partner Michael Swift to the cast, she whined, she wailed, she quit no fewer than 80 times, she made pancakes while wearing oven mitts (FOR STRATEGIC COMEDY PURPOSES) leaving the sack of potatoes she cheated on and the bucket of estrogen to whom she gave life to decide that in spite of Deborah insistence on being the worst person, a terrible mother, an insult to lady writers, and a slob with a penchant for bananas and peanut butter in the sack (oh how I wish this were a euphemism, though to be fair, she was probably thinking about Swift whilst she gagged on that turgid fruit – though the use of knife for the peanut butter was disturbing.) that they should all go to Boston to indulge her and observe the moistening of her lollipops-undergarments-for-women-of-a-certain-age in the presence of Swift, and feign shock when it all blows up in their faces.

After all, what happens in Boston….is disposed of in a trunk into the Charles and never mentioned again. Make way for ducklings, indeed!

At least that’s what the execs behind the show are banking on, having allowed Tom and his righteous dancer boyfriend a pretty solid make out – only to nullify the whole thing by having said dancer’s family hoot and holler at them awkwardly on the front porch of Sylvia Plath’s old suicide manse. This was a lame plot line. The guys had some conflict where Tom all tried to ingratiate himself to his bf’s dad by backing up his assertion that being a dancer isn’t very smart, thus upsetting bf. I might have been more willing to buy the ten seconds of bf crisis this created had the bf not had the option to totally be all, “Right, my career is impractical…SAYS THE COMPOSER OF MUSICALS.” Lame. LAME.

Meanwhile back at the theatre, Derek is basically a step away from fatal self harm when he hears the dialogue Tom has written since Julia has quit the show. A sample:

Actor Boy: MARILYN MONROE HAS ELECTRIC INSECT HAIRY SKIN!*

Actor Girl: AAAAAAANNNNND HOW!

Tom is delightfully pleased with the dialogue he’s written. I think the joke is supposed to be that Tom is a terrible writer. But this joke did not land, because the extent of Julia’s writing has been one line of Marilyn going “Then, I’ll be a greeeat actress!” all said while urinating herself. Julia is good at many things, like making herself a martyr, sexing people up, and redesigning discarded furry sex suits as stylish suits for ladies – but she is not a good writer. Everyone in Boston is very tense that Julia isn’t there. But listen guys, just listen – I’m a playwright, yeah? And I’ll be honest 90% of why I became a playwright was my deep, deep hatred of going to rehearsal. The beauty of writing something instead of acting something is that at the end of the day NO ONE REALLY NEEDS YOU. Hard Truth: Sometimes They Are Happier When You Are Not There. All of this aside – EMAIL IS A THING THAT EXISTS! If Julia really needed to rewrite a scene….couldn’t she just, uh, do it and email it? Does Julia only write in the blood supplied to her care of Eileen? And speaking of which, ha, ha, it only now occurred to me – Eileen made the four plus hour jaunt between Boston and NYC no fewer than what, five times last night? In the span of one day? This is because he magical bartender boyfriend is actually a flying Harry Potter Snitch. Ten points to Slytherin! Whee! Eileen is worried the show is going to bankrupt and that she is going to fail and prove that she can’t do anything on her own, but the magical snitch says it’s cool because he’ll help her….WHICH STILL PROVES SHE CAN DO NOTHING ON HER OWN! But he decide to overlook this as Eileen has a bit of a spermy glow about her, and we cannot deny her right to some quality time with a decent snitch. WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS RECAP?! SPERMY GLOW? WHO AM I?

Then Dev cheated on Karen and proposed to her and she was all “I am a robot, look at me dance,” and he was all “Fuck you for leaving town for TWO WHOLE DAYS! I GUESS NOW I MIGHT BANG THE SHIT OUT OF IVY!” and Ivy is all “GUESS I’LL GET DRUNK BECAUSE MY BOYFRIEND IS FUCKING UMA THURMAN! NOTHING TO DO BUT SING IN A FAKE EMPTY HOTEL ROOM WHILE ELLIS POURS PRETEND RAIN ON THE WINDOW!”

Smash. You are my only friend.

*Fact, Derek will say this exact thing in his seduction of Rebecca. FACT. FACT YOU GUYS.