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Critic Reviews
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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It is less accidentally ridiculous, and more knowingly, willfully campy, less pretentious, but also, for better and worse, less likely to include a Bollywood dance number.
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Feb 5, 2013NBC's Smash returns for its second season Tuesday still a work in progress. But at least there is progress.
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New show runner Joshua Safran has, in any case, declared himself a fan of the show, promising changes more surgical than wholesale, a promise disappointing in its way. Nevertheless, he has trimmed much deadwood.
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Much of the insanity that drove viewers to “hate-watch” the show in its first season has been scrubbed. Competence reigns. The results are mixed.
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The problem is that the story in between the songs is still inconsistent and muddled.
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It's oddly disconnected from the idea of art as transformation, the show's characters are thinly drawn and it's usually fairly easy to see where the story is heading.
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Even with all the changes in front of and behind the camera, Smash is fundamentally the same show with the same problems.
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The addition of Chicago native Hudson is a masterstroke, but with all that other melodrama, Smash remains a hit-or-miss proposition for me.
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The musical numbers are competently staged, even if they often play like filler to underscore character montages. The plots mosey between drama and comedy and never hit their marks.
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There are not many signs that the show is taking a turn toward anything better--more realism, more audacity, less sentimentality.
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Cast changes and additions (a la Jennifer Hudson's new diva) can't obscure a skein whose soapy doings drown out its tunes, and where even the music often comes across as flat.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 16 out of 26
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Mixed: 4 out of 26
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Negative: 6 out of 26
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Feb 10, 2013
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Oct 5, 2012
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Feb 9, 2013