Craig Reviews Smash: Understudy

*SPOILER WARNING*

We’re back to the musical this week, as Bombshell waits for it’s star to arrive. Having randomly re-watched The Producers last week I was quite excited to spot Uma Thurman’s name in the opening credits, but it soon becomes clear that she’s barely going to be in the episode at all, as this week’s episode revolves almost completely around her character not showing up. Am I the only person who thinks it’s slightly weird that Uma Thurman is playing a character rather than herself? They spent all that time name-dropping actual actresses and then they get an actual movie star to play a fictional movie star. Anyway, Uma aside, since she has very little impact on the episode outside of not being in it, Understudy was entertaining enough, though I found that things started to get a little too predictable this week.

 The episode opens on a room of potential investors waiting for Rebecca Duvall (that’s Uma) to appear, only to discover that she is stranded in Cuba. In Rebecca’s absence Karen is asked to fill in and understudy for the role of Marilyn. Derek tells Ivy this, because apparently they really are back to playing the happy couple again. This frustrates me so much, you know it’s only a matter of time until their next bust-up, and to be honest it just feels like the lazy way of keeping Ivy on screen now that she’s got nothing else to do. Ivy’s response, of course, is to pout and declare how undeserving Karen is, apparently not remembering that she effectively ruined her career in last week’s episode. Also slightly frustrating is that Ivy seems to be completely healthy and happy again this week, after struggling for several episodes with some pretty dark stuff. Maybe she is still on all those pills, but it got completely ignored this week if she is, and the fact that she was her bubbly, bright self leads me to believe that that aspect of the character has been swept back under the rug for now. Karen rushes to tell Dev her good news, while Dev spends the episode not sharing his bad news, that he didn’t get that promotion from a few episodes back, that I didn’t care about anyway. Does anyone really pay attention to the Dev-in-the-workplace scenes? Besides the fact that the girl he works with is clearly going to be trouble eventually, Dev’s office politics really don’t add anything to the show. Meanwhile, the Tom/Sam/Guy-whose-name-I-still-can’t-remember triangle finally snaps this week. This has been way too obvious for way too long, to the point where it was getting silly. At the start of this episode Tom and Sam are walking down the street having a grand old time, while Tom’s supposed boyfriend is walking a few paces behind looking all sad and dejected. It’s just too much. We all knew where this was going for a while now, but they really stretched it out as thin as they possibly could.

Ivy’s performance of ‘Breakaway’ was nice enough, you can’t go wrong with a bit of Kelly Clarkson in my opinion, and Megan Hilty did it very well. I thought showing the flashback of her getting dressed up as Marilyn was interesting, if only because it really cemented the fact that Ivy is perfect the role, and when we see Karen all dressed up later in the episode it just doesn’t really compare. Karen’s first day as Marilyn doesn’t go especially well, thanks to Derek’s unique style of shouting, and when complaining about it later to Dev she mentions that Derek sexually harassed her when they met. I didn’t quite get Dev’s reaction to this, being angry is fair enough, but being so angry at Karen was a bit much. Then we get a new original song in the shape of ‘Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking’, a very fun number that was performed surprisingly well by Tom, before Derek stuns the room into near-silence by being nice and polite to Karen. In a slightly strange scene later on Derek seems to ‘see the light’ as Karen apparently becomes Marilyn before his very eyes. It feels off because, actually, she made for a slightly awkward Marilyn in the scene and it didn’t really come together. Likewise, Karen’s rendition of ‘Never Give All The Heart’, while pleasant in it’s own right, didn’t really capture Marilyn the way that Ivy’s version of the song from the first episode did. The show wants us to believe that Karen is the right choice for Marilyn, and it’s far too obvious that that’s the direction they’ll be taking now, but it doesn’t really work. It pains me to side with Ivy, because the character has consistently been a mega-bitch recently, but she is much better for the role than Karen.

 Karen comes off as a slightly dodgy Marilyn impersonator next to Ivy this week.

This episode unfortunately seems to fall flat an awful lot. Eileen’s investor-related plotline was just bizarre, and didn’t really manage to hold my attention, but from what I can gather she got some weirdo rock-star on board, thanks to her bartender beau, and proceeded to burn the contracts of her other investors right in front of them, because clearly she’ll never need them to be on her side ever again. It did thankfully mean that Ellis got barely any screentime this week, and on both occasions he was getting told off, which is always nice. The rumbling that this bartender guy is up to something illegal were a little more than rumblings this week, indeed it was all but signposted that this will be coming back to bite Eileen soon enough. Tom’s relationship with… that guy goes out with a whimper, since it never really felt like a relationship to begin with, and Julia generally wanders through this week’s episode being rude and trying to get in touch with her husband. When Derek shows up at Karen’s apartment it’s painfully clear that a confrontation is on the way, and sure enough Dev catches Derek on the way out and they proceed to have a hilarious fight. It seems like the show is trying to make Derek and Karen a thing, but I’m hoping that’s not going to happen.

All in all then, this wasn’t the greatest episode. It wasn’t the worst either, at the very least the songs were all good, and the musical is back off the ground. It was just all over the place, lacking any focus, and with supposed plot twists that you could see coming a mile-off, yet still just about managing to entertain. Uma, sorry, Rebecca showing up at the end was certainly a blessing, because it gives next week’s episode a very clear focal point. While we already know that the star won’t be around for very long and thus where the story is more than likely going, I’m hopeful that we’re in for a treat over the next few weeks.