Craig Reviews Smash: The Workshop

*SPOILER WARNING*


A lot of things finally came to a head in this week’s episode of Smash, making for one of the most interesting episodes so far. This was the first time that the ‘Let’s make a musical!’ half of the show really felt properly combined with the personal drama half, and by the end of the episode pretty much everyone had something to be frowning about. Indeed, we even have doubts for the first time over whether Marilyn: The Musical will even get made, but it turns out that this show gets really interesting when everything goes wrong.

 The episode opens with Karen recording a demo for the important music industry person that she apparently impressed last time. Karen is the only person with any good news this week, and even then she blows off a meeting with said important person, in favour of performing in the workshop for Marilyn. Everyone’s after Karen at the moment, even Derek seems to be favouring her over Ivy these days, so I'm interested to see where things will lead for her in the next few episodes. For everyone else though it’s bad news on top of bad news this week. Julia and Michael have an especially interesting week, they are found out by Tom early on in the episode, and Julia discovers that Leo also knows. And, of course, sneaky Ellis was hiding around the corner looking sneaky and generally being annoying. I'm fairly sure, if memory serves, he’s actually already caught them once before, so I'm not sure why we needed to see him pull the spying crap all over again, and it’s getting really irritating now. Fortunately when he comes running to Eileen to tell her what he knows she gives him a bit of a telling off, telling him that he’ll never work on the musical again if he spreads it around. Pretty sure he’s not actually working on the musical anyway, so I still don’t understand why he’s always there, but it was still nice to see Eileen take him down a peg or two.

 ... awkward!

When Michael’s family come to see him at rehearsal it all proves too much for Julia. It’s nice to know that she at least has a conscience; Michael meanwhile continues to ignore his wife and child and acts like they don’t exist. When it finally becomes clear that the stress is affecting Julia’s ability to do her work Tom subtly suggests that he doesn’t think Michael is right for the part, so right now it looks like Michael may be out. Derek was not at all pleased with the suggestion though so it may not happen, but personally I’d be glad if he did. His performances don’t exactly set me on fire anyway, and I would like for the affair to just disappear, though I’m sure it won’t be as simple as that. Ivy also gets a family visit this week when her mother comes to stay, providing some new insight into Ivy’s character along the way. Yes, Ivy has a mother who was in the theatre and apparently doesn’t think much of her daughter. It’s not exactly a new idea, but it’s executed well enough, and it goes some way to helping us better understand some of Ivy’s issues, though it was pretty clear to see her mum’s pride during the workshop, and it doesn’t excuse the fact that she’s still being  a bit of a bitch, especially when it comes to Karen.

And then we get to the workshop itself. Ivy loses all confidence in herself after overhearing that her time as Marilyn may be over soon, and a broken boiler leaves the room uncomfortable hot which seemed a little weird. I’m still not sure why that was necessary, but it gave Eileen an excuse to see more of the barman she’s been eyeing up recently. Julia meanwhile tries to cope with having her husband and Michael in the same room together, telling Michael once again that it’s over. Hopefully this time it will actually stick. Tom finally discovers that Sam is gay, and also practically blanks the guy he’s supposedly seeing once the workshop is over, so I can only assume it’s not long now until Tom and Sam start getting it on. The workshop seemingly goes quite well, aside from a few stumbles, but the reviews at the end of the episode tell a different story, and it looks like some big changes are on the way. As mentioned previously it seems that Michael is off the production, and there are a lot of questions left hanging over Ivy as well. It leaves the show in a very interesting position, and I’m most definitely looking forward to seeing what changes are coming next week. With a second season of the show confirmed I can’t help but wonder how the series intends to stretch out the material, after all they can’t just be forever making a musical about Marilyn, eventually it has to end at some point. However this episode did a lot to make sure that, for this first season at least, there’s still plenty of life left in the story yet.