‘Smash’ Review: Opening Night

I was really hoping that by the time we reached this episode of Smash we would get  to just sit through all of Bombshell, or at least most of it, but we were lucky to get a full song. Still, not a bad episode at all. It was entertaining and it had a good pace.

“Opening Night” was very much focused on Bombshell, which despite all the drama, has finally managed to open on Broadway and it had a successful opening too, at least according to most reviews. Of course things couldn’t go too well for them and Eileen broke up with her New York Times boyfriend (again) right before the show started so while the NYT review wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t raving either. Unlike Hit List, however, I don’t need the reviews to tell me that the show is good, the one number we got this episode from it speaks for itself. Ivy is amazing as always and even though the stage was empty if not for her co-stars, it was still a Broadway worthy performance.

The show also focused on some drama between Julia and Tom as they tried to decide what to work on next. While Julia decided it was time to try for The Great Gatsby, Tom decided to move on with a directing position at City of Angels. But since the reviews about his directorial debut weren’t great, he changed his mind and tried to tell her he would go back to writing, but she won’t have any of this second best BS, so she told him no.

Speaking of second best, Ivy also told Derek she would let him know when she needed him again after Karen told her Derek asked her out a couple weeks ago, you know, right before he went after Ivy.

Seeing Karen and Ivy together again was nice, having them sing together about all the drama they went through and watching that little talk in the dressing room about how they were jealous of each other, was a nice way to bring their rivalry to a (possibly temporary) ending. Now having Hit List get to Broadway just so it can compete with Bombshell on the Tony’s should bring that right back and should send us back to recycled plots, which I’m not looking forward to.

There was also finally some explanation about Jimmy’s ‘Dark Past’, which sounds like it could be interesting, but the information was just thrown out there. The acting was pretty good but I either want the plot to be fully developed or not done at all. Rushing through something that could be so big for character development just doesn’t work.

Overall, this episode kind of felt like a series finale to me, and would have worked well as one. Most plots were wrapped up and since the whole series was about getting Bombshell to Broadway, having that accomplished feels like a nice way to wrap things up. But we still have at least five more to go.