Rachel Shukert's popular Vulture recaps of NBC's woebegone backstage-musical-drama Smash, returned on February 6th, after the two-episode premiere of the show the previous day. The title of the re-cap? "It Gets Better." More than an actual statement about Shukert's personal feelings about an improvement in quality of the show based on this episode, this title would appear to be playing on the PR hype which preceded the season premiere claiming the superiority of the show in its sophomore season, using the catch phrase of the It Gets Better project ironically.
In interviews with the new showrunner Josh Safran, and pre-season articles, changes that have been made to the show since Season 2 have been discussed in some detail. Then, less than a week before the premiere (and some weeks after the release of the premiere's first hour via digital platforms), an article appeared in Buzzfeed titled, "How 'Smash' Became TV's Biggest Train Wreck." Buzzfeed staff writer Kate Aurthur claimed to have interviewed "more than a half-dozen people" who had worked on the show during its first season, and would speak to her only on the condition of anonymity. The author does not clarify what role each of these interviewees had on season 1.
The article describes the initial critical acclaim for the show upon its initial appearance which quickly devolved over the course of the season as the show seemed to go off the rails, inspiring The New Yorker to publish an article on "hate-watching" Smash. Unlike the PR-focused articles and interviews about the new season of the show which had mostly made diplomatic statements about the firing of previous showrunner Theresa Rebeck and several cast members from the show's first season, Aurthur attempted to paint a picture of exactly what had gone on behind closed doors, and what was the real reason for the declining quality of the show over the course of the season.
The answer Aurthur came up with was Rebeck. According to Aurthur and her sources, Rebeck was out of her depth, and her inexperience, inability to collaborate and paranoia about other writers being involved with the show, ultimately led to the show's downfall. Aurthur also suggests that while Rebeck was running the show off the rails, others recognized the problems but were powerless to stop Rebeck.
A few months earlier, Rebeck, who declined to comment on the situation for the Buzzfeed article, had given an interview to the New York Observer, in which she laid the blame for the show's failures (and her dismissal) on the network, which she claimed had interfered with her creative decisions and demanded characters behave in ways that she felt made no sense.
Melissa Silverstein, a writer for IndieWire, who claimed to be a friend of Rebeck',s hinted at sexism as the real cause of tension between Rebeck and her collaborators, and the thing that ultimately led to her firing.
This is one of the biggest shows on TV today. And it was run by a woman. But she was a woman in a sea of men. There were ten executive producers (and none of these ten were actual writers which is highly unusual in TV) and Theresa was the only woman.
Silverstein's article, published in March, just after the annoucement of Rebeck's departure from the show, correctly predicted that she would be replaced by a man, weeks before Safran's appointment was announced.
In her end-of-season Smash-related podcast in May of 2012, Julie Klauser interviewed Shukert as well as one of the staff writers from season one, Jason Grote, who spoke about his experience as a writer on two episodes of the show. While Grote may have been purposely holding his tongue about any professional tension on the show, nothing in his comments indicated a problem between Rebeck and the staff.
A Brooklyn blogger noted, in reaction to the Buzzfeed article, "It’s easy to blame the person who’s not around anymore for all of your problems."
Whatever the "real" story behind Rebeck's departure from the show, and the show's quick decline, we may never know. The two-hour premiere of Season 2 premiered to the show's worst ratings ever, which does not bode well for the rest of Season 2. While some critics seemed to feel the show had, in fact, found surer footing in its two-hour premiere, others felt little had changed, and that getting rid of Julia's scarves, a much-mocked costume element in season one, was not going to fix the show.
The third episode premieres on Tuesday, February 19th.
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