Smash: When ‘Tech’ Trauma Ends, ‘Preview’ Pain Begins…

I watched Game of Thrones last night before I watched Smash and I gotta say, it did not set the mood. By the time it was over I was all “Uuuuuggggggh so much jogging in the snow, not enough grinding in Ewok-like parkas!” I was cranky and did not want to watch the millennium’s answer to the Bob Newhart Show. I just wanted to pour wine on my face and then lay down on the floor and wonder if my tendency to turn inwards means I’ll never be able maintain a healthy romantic relationship. But because I was at a friend’s house, I didn’t do that. Instead, I poured the wine INTO my face, plucked a rogue Tostito off of my boob-bench, possibly smoked three Marlboro Lights in rapid succession (KIDS, DON’T SMOKE!), and proceeded to watch possibly my favorite episode of Smash to date. That said, I feel like every week I wind up saying that this week’s installment was my favorite when in reality, picking a favorite episode is like picking a favorite Rolo from the roll. Sure, the first one is delicious and maybe the last one makes you nauseated but at the end of the day – they are fucking Rolos man, and every Rolo is delicious.

As surely as night follows day, as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and surely as god resting on the seventh, so after every tech rehearsal comes a block of previews to that northern hamlet, Boston-on-Thames. Another certainty of our sad world, is that surely as a whiskey is shot, Ivy and Dev will find themselves naked, post-coital and awkwardly on the cellphone to Dev’s current paramour, the deceased anorexic singer, Karen Carpenter. It’s shocking but true, Dev has fallen from the marble column where he has lived for nigh on 60 years. As you may recall, he proposed to his girlfriend and was taken aback by her attitude.  So he confessed to nearly putting his sacred penis into another broad, one more ethnically suitable. Because it would make their situation better, Dev slept with Ivy, who had her own reasons for lashing out at Karen, who she believed to be fully aware of Derek’s affair with living Pert Plus conditioner ad, Rebecca Duvall.

To express her dismay at her current situation of heartbreak, Karen has decided to wear two shirts of drastically different lengths and to call Dev every minute, on the minute, mere hours after telling him she needs space. This is both reasonable and rational. Speaking of the cool hand of logic, let’s talk about Debra Messing, her pursed sphincter of a mouth and her bug-eyed unblinking attempt at tears. Debra has returned for previews which is great because the end of the play needs to be rewritten. Debra is annoyed by this. Which is unsurprising as everything annoys her. The very fact that she has had to write a play annoys her. She swans in from NY, watches her bucket of gray floor soap mock and belittle the man she had penis-sex with, goes into the theatre, casts a cursory glance at the stage, pronounces that everything looks good, and then spends the duration of the episode berating Tom. Yeah, take a minute to take that in. After repeatedly, and shamelessly, cheating on her husband, it is somehow her writing partner’s fault that her marriage is at stake. If I were Tom I might have hulked out and thrown the piano Eileen keeps him chained to at her fake red head and crushed her all the while raging about how she should feel lucky to have the fake drama in her fake hetero marriage because some of us are stuck playing harmless affable theatre fairies who aren’t allowed to touch penises but instead are only allowed to go to vaguely racist portrayal’s of ‘black church’ with their vaguely religious but never-frenching dancer boyfriend! Eventually they work it all out by making moon-faces at each other and then acknowledging that they aren’t a real team because at their core, they serve the god…OF THEATRE. Then I killed myself from the awful and couldn’t recap anymore.

But then Eileen, her ridiculously hot legs, and a piano, covered the Kurt Weill classic – popularized by Angelica Huston’s grandfather, mind – September Song and for the first time in the entire series I remembered why I loved musical theatre once, and I got a chill listening to Huston direct this somber ballad of love late in life to her boyfriend, Leonard Cohen’s bodyguard Raspy Alan. Ol’ Raspy also showed up in Beantown for the preview, even though the town had permanently banned him following his involvement in the great molasses spill of 1919. But curiously his mangled hand coincides with the…

The Great Peanut Heist of 2012! That’s right, Rebecca Duvall has been hospitalized following her awful premiere which I didn’t really think was the worst – I mean, fair, I have seen some shit theatre, but still, it was not terrible? Was she hospitalized from being allergic to sucking? No! To peanuts, in fact! Peanuts which she has frequently mentioned that she is allergic to. She has mentioned it so often that when I went to get a smoothie after going to the gym last week, I barked, “No peanuts! She’s allergic!” to the hapless sweetie behind the counter. Clearly someone ELSE was listening too! Someone like Ellis! Or Raspy Alan! Because peanuts found their way into her mouth and I do not refer to micro-penises even though I do not doubt that both men previously mentioned have these.

With Rebecca in the hospital having her face replaced with the face of living sex doll, everyone is all “OMG WHO WILL PLAY THE ROOOLE? I DON’T KNOW! LET’S GO TO CHURCH!” I believe that was actually a direct quote. So they go to church and it’s stupid, and Rebecca is fine but she confides in Karen telling her that she tasted the peanuts (yeah she did) and drank the drink anyway! Because she doesn’t want to be in the play anymore! Which I do not buy. I think she is trying to feel out whether Karen is the one responsible for her shelled undoing. If Rebecca DOES drop out that means, logically, that Karen goes up – as she is the understudy. But because Ivy is conniving and still technically dating Derek (who explained away his infidelity as ‘paying attention’ to the leading lady. Yeah with his lack-luster British erection he’s paying attention to her.)  Apparently THE ROLE OF MARILYN COULD GO TO ANYONE! But does any of it matter if the show is the worst? Does any of it matter in Boston? No! No to both! No one cares! No one! The stakes could not be lower! Even as Angelica loses all of her money, her boyfriend will just explode a tanker in the ocean and it will be full of diamonds and that will be that! Wait -speaking of diamonds, did I mention that Dev lost Karen’s engagement ring? And that Karen wants to marry him now? But she can’t because the ring is probably permanently lodged in Ivy’s vagina? Because that happened.