Oh Smash, you make it so hard to continually tune in every week. I have resolved to go. This season has traded in the batshit crazy bravado of the first season for more streamlined stories that lack ambition. They’ve sort of buried the craziness in a shallow grave, but it could only remain there so long. On last night’s SMASH titled “Phenomenon” the show took a dip back into that pot of foolishness and created a storyline that while somewhat dramatically compelling, just stank of tired clichés, bad writing, and the ultimate demise of the show.
[Spoiler] Kyle’s dead. Yes his brush with a car while singing a Jeff Buckley last week resulted in his death, a sad episode and some flashbacks to make Kyle a saint. [end spoiler] I admit that though the show has made no qualms about making Hit List the Rent to Bombshell’s Ragtime, I had no clue that they’d kill off a character to complete the parallel. It was shocking, sad, and I think that the show managed to find a delicate way to shoot the episode. The storyline of killing off a character just as the audience liked them isn’t new and was handled quite well. But there are some real issues with this whole plot.
First off, IDGAF what anyone from the cast or creative team behind this show is saying, this storyline is in incredibly poor taste. They’ve been comparing Hit List to RENT for the entire season, but this just felt manipulative and slimy. I am here to tell you SMASH people that being hit by a car is not the same as having a brain aneurysm. Yes, both are sudden accidents that result in death, but to equate someone getting hit by car with a brain aneurysm is tacky, even for SMASH. Why not have him die of natural causes if you wanted to make the comparison to Larsen instead of relying on the trope of all tropes in TV writing?
This arc to make Kyle some sort of martyr that everyone will rally around totally goes against everything the show has been telling us about Kyle’s actual worth in the universe. If you’re going to make parallels to real life people then you need to do more due diligence. Jonathan Larsen had composed several musicals before RENT and was professionally well known, with his musical RENT being highly thought of even before it premiered off Broadway. On SMASH, Kyle isn’t even the star of the CREATIVE TEAM with Hit List. Jimmy and Derek Wills have all reaped more praise than Kyle. Hell even Julia has gotten more praise in one episode than Kyle ever got. There have been entire episodes dedicated to how bad his book was and how the songs that Jimmy composed were why the show would be so successful. So why then is this musical a monument to him if all you’ve done is make it seem as though it’s successful in spite of him?
Furthermore, and most importantly, they did this solely to serve as redemption for Jimmy. If you have to KILL A CHARACTER in order to redeem another one, you have failed as writers. Jimmy has just been THE WORST this entire season and there have been countless times in the season that the show could have redeemed the character in a far more sensible way (his love story with Karen being the chief example). So how then do you think we feel all of 3 episodes before the finale that you 1) are just now going trying to turn around a character 2) someone the audience actually HATES 3) by killing a character we like? What part of the game is that? I love me some Jeremy Jordan and his voice has been blessed by God but I’ve long since stopped caring about his character. I refuse to believe that anyone, even with extreme issues, would act the way Jimmy has when given the chance for Broadway success and as such idgaf about his redemption.
The writing was already on the wall when SMASH got moved to Saturdays but lawd is it apparent with this storyline that the show can’t even be salvaged. It’s a shame given the wonderful nature and world of Broadway but it’s plain that it’s perhaps best to put the show down.