Smash: Liaisons, Bombshell, and Jimmy/Kyle's Show All Suck

Most of you know that theatre is my background. It's the reason I gave Glee a chance (though I hated it) and one of the reasons I wanted Smash to work. But, I don't think my interests and the show's line up together anymore, so I'm thinking one more episode and I may be pulling the plug here. I'm not the only one, either, as the ratings have taken a plunge this season (this episode only brought 2.68M watchers), especially when you recall the pilot's 11.4M viewers. Sean Hayes made it worse. The lack of trust in anyone (Ellis, Jerry, Nick, Peter, Derek, now even Tom, etc.) made it worse. The idea of the fringe festival is making it worse. Liaisons is making it worse. What's going to make it better? 

Smash "The Read-Through" (S02E05): A famous comedy actor, Terry, joins Liaisons and struggles to fit in, so Ivy helps him understand that the show is a drama. However, he prefers comedy, and the director listens to him, making a mockery of the masterpiece. What's more, Terry decides to go off of all of his mental health meds. [what, exactly, is going to come out of this??]

Photo by: Craig Blankenhorn/NBC

Eileen can't even attend the reading of the new script, so she goes to visit Nick in prison. It doesn't work for her to see him, though, and she works her way into the reading anyway. Of course, Julia panics when a friend warns her that Peter can be evil, so she almost cancels the reading after learning that another version of the script has been floating around. At the last minute, Julia decides to trust Peter, believing that maybe it wasn't him who gave Jerry another script. The reading goes well, but Jerry doesn't think it's for Broadway... it's "too good" and not for the masses. [ain't that always the way!?!] It turns out that the version Jerry prefers is the workshop version from seven months earlier, that Tom shared with him. [simultaneous jaw drop!] Tom agrees, too, but Derek sides with Julia. Eileen is to be the tiebreaker, but we'll have to wait for next episode to find out what she thinks.

Elsewhere, Karen learns that Jimmy has been with another girl, which she tries to ignore as she leads a reading of their show, with the ensemble of Bombshell. Nobody likes the dialogue and characters, but Kyle and Jimmy decide to make the show more like RENT, meaning they eliminate the dialogue and have the show be sung-through, like the famous rock opera. [maybe this was enlightening for non-theatre folks, but I thought this was a boring "solution."]