New show Smash revives TV musicals

If you happened to watch NBC on Sunday, you might have noticed a sporting event that  was going on in the interim between on-air promos for the network’s highly touted mid-season launch of a new scripted series called Smash.

The media blitz has been relentless in the months leading up to the official broadcast premiere of the show, a fictional account of the making of a Broadway musical about the life of screen icon Marilyn Monroe.

In every respect, NBC seems to have gone all-in on Smash, and that includes casting: Boasting an ensemble consisting of an Academy Award-winner (Anjelica Huston), an NBC alumna (Will & Grace’s Debra Messing), an American Idol sweetheart (Katharine McPhee), real-life Broadway veterans (Megan Hilty and Christian Borle) and big-name guest stars (Uma Thurman and Nick Jonas), Smash proves that, with Steven Spielberg executive producing, anything — including the booking of a Jonas Brother — is possible.

All of it’s enough to make a person wonder if NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt was trying to reassure himself more than trying to convince reporters when he said that Smash was not “make or break” for the struggling network, which is currently languishing in fourth place behind CBS, Fox and ABC.

But he’s probably right. Despite a decade of positively subterranean ratings, it’s hard to imagine a world in which NBC — the network that brought viewers The A-Team, Sanford and Son, Seinfeld and Friends — doesn’t have at least some semblance of cultural relevance.

If anything’s on trial here, it’s the small screen musical.

Since Smash was introduced, the inevitable comparisons between it and Glee have touched on the shows’ nominal similarities — Singing! Dancing! — while generally painting Smash as Glee’s sophisticated older sibling. Greenblatt simply fuels that notion by maintaining the spirit of the show that was initially developed as a pilot for Showtime by the premium cable network’s then-president of entertainment. But pitting the shows against one another misses the point: With any luck, history will show that both programs played instrumental roles in reigniting America’s dormant love affair with the musical.

For any and all who might be skeptical that such a time ever existed, simply look to box office records and Billboard charts of yesteryear to see that exports from Broadway — cast recordings and film adaptations alike — were once not merely bigger deals than they are today, but crucial components of the pop cultural vernacular.

At 54 weeks, the West Side Story soundtrack, for instance, holds the record for the most consecutive weeks as the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200. While in the film arena, movie-musicals, such as Grease, Chicago and Hairspray, have often proven indisputable box office hits, holding the top spot for weeks at a time. As inconceivable as it might seem in 2012, songs from musicals often went on to become honest-to-goodness radio hits, consumed and craved by the masses.

But is it really hard to believe? In a world where at least one Glee cover song is all but guaranteed to number among iTunes’ top downloads at any given time, there’s clearly at least a segment of the American TV-watching populace that doesn’t squirm to think of the incorporation of musical-like qualities into primetime television.

As a matter of fact, the criticisms most frequently lobbed by Glee detractors — namely that the show is inhabited by caricatures rather than characters and that it awkwardly lurches from one top-40 hit to another, instead of pursuing an intelligible story arc — aren’t so much indictments of the TV musical format as they are shortcomings in Glee’s own execution.

Obviously, Smash isn’t a musical in the conventional sense. The show’s qualities as a backstage drama could make for a fresh angle to keep viewers coming back week after week.

But those same meta attributes might end up being Smash’s saving grace for another reason: People who are averse to the idea of characters spontaneously bursting into song do exist. But because Smash makes Broadway its subject, and therefore the bulk of songs will be apropos of the fictional Marilyn musical being put together, audiences may well be more inclined to accept the singing.

If the small screen musical is to have any hope of taking off, Smash represents its best shot. And because it’s hard to imagine Smash resorting to Glee-like gimmicks, to a certain extent, everyone involved with the show is banking heavily on the hope that the promise of classic storytelling and original music will prove enough of a draw for small screen audiences as well.

So whether it was America that was tired of musicals, or musicals that were tired of America, isn’t important. The reality is that, after nearly three seasons of Glee, audiences are perhaps as primed as they’ll ever be to accept the idea of music taking on a bigger role on TV, beyond providing the backing soundtrack.

Call it a good, old-fashioned American sense of entitlement, but I believe TV audiences have long deserved the song and dance and spectacle that was once all but expected at the movies. There’s a lot riding on Smash being a smash, and not just for NBC: It might determine if we’re left singing “Bye, Bye, Birdie” or “Hello, Dolly!” to our erstwhile love, the musical.

 

Louis Lucero II is a senior majoring in environmental studies. His column “Small Screen, Big Picture” runs Tuesdays.