About Last Night…THE VOICE, SMASH and ALCATRAZ
March 13, 2012 by Marisa Roffman
This may sound terrible, but I love how slow March is. Television is about to get crazy as we head towards the end of the season, so I’m enjoying this lull now.
Let’s talk about what went on last night!
The battle rounds kill me on THE VOICE. It’s really unfortunate to lose so many super talented contestants so fast, and it’s really a shame so many of the “battles” seemed so stacked to be beneficial to one particular singer. And Blake, what’s up with picking all the wrong “winners”?! Grr.
As much as I adore SMASH — and I do — I really feel like it needs a jump-start. Nearly every single character has been unlikeable to some degree and I just want to root for someone. The show is shoving Karen down our throats, but as talented as she is, she’s becoming less and less appealing by the week. Her behavior at the Bar Mitzvah was so disrespectful — she killed “Shake it Out,” but “Hava Nagila” is actually an important song to know for the occasion and she dismissed it. If you’re going to take a job, do what they require, not just what you want to do. (Which was the same issue I had with her when she joined the ensemble.) Oh well. (Not gonna even touch the Julia/Michael affair storyline, either.)
Brainwashing? Why the heck are they brainwashing inmates on ALCATRAZ? That might be able to explain why no one knows where they’ve been, but at the same time, you’d think they’d be able to better control their actions once they return if they were all brainwashed. Hm…
What did you watch last night?
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Loved the deepening mystery on Alcatraz and Hurley has a date! (He will always be Hurley to me!)
Totally agree with you about Smash…I want to like the show but it’s really hard with so many unlikable characters on it (among other reasons!)! (Though Jack Davenport can play a character who is as much of a rat-faced b**terd as he likes and I will still adore him!)
I completely agree with the GRRRR for Blake. I don’t know what is going on with him when I loved his singers last year. So far, I’m liking Adam’s team the best.
I agree, @Becky! I loved Teams Adam and Blake the best last year, but Blake has let me down so far 🙁
@Kath (canakatydid) I reluctantly (and a bit shamefully) agree re: Davenport. Derek is SUCH a jerk, but I don’t mind him as much as others.
Team Adam for me this year! <3
As for Smash, I am having such a love/hate relationship with the show right now. I LOVED the pilot and the 2nd ep, but what has come after doesn't even seem like the same show anymore. I guess I'm willing to embrace the soapiness because it has definitely been entertaining last few episodes, but last night's episode was definitely a step backwards, and so much randomness! I can't even comment on that Ivy hallucination song. It was like a bad high school film class music video!! I also think you're being pretty unfair about Karen, but maybe that's because I find her to be one of the few still likeable characters left on the show. I don't agree about her being disrespectful about being in the chorus, sorry ensemble, haha! When did this happen? It's understandable and human nature she was a little upset to not get the lead, so was maybe overdoing it slightly in ep4 (especially when you have the director feeding your ego and telling you you're too good for the ensemble), but other than that she seems to have integrated well and been happy with her position as an ensemble member. And as for the bar mitzvah I just found it entertaining, and it seemed like they were playing up the ditzy side of Karen's personality rather than any intentional disrespect. And come on, it's definitely not the writers intention to have Karen come across as being disrespectful!! Ivy I just can't root for. Not because of her recent bitchiness to Karen, but because I don't really find her character that believeable. Everything is so over the top with her. Are Broadway peeps actually like this, idk? And wow the Julia/Michael love scenes, noooooooo!
I do think the show would have been better, with hindsight also, to have not decided on the Marilyn so early. That way we could have seen whether or not Karen really does have what it takes to be Marilyn, because Ivy clearly does. Instead, we are always left with the awkward situation of finding a sideplot to enable Karen to 'sing a pop song'. We all know Katharine McPhee can nail a pop song. What I want to know is if Karen can be a Broadway star! I've given up on my wish that Karen plays Norma Jean and Ivy plays Marilyn. Would have been perfect <3
Sorry this post was longer than intended, ha! See what this show does to me 🙁
@JC: You make an excellent point that they probably revealed Marilyn way too soon. Because of that, the Karen plotlines (the trip to Iowa, for instance) have felt tacked on, as if to remind us she’s still here. Had we not known she didn’t get it and were still left in limbo, it might have felt different.
It’s possible I thought too much about the “Hava Nagila” thing, but I kept thinking if that was my Bat Mitzvah, I would have been upset. That’s not a silly throwaway song, it’s actually normally an important family moment. It’s possible/probable the writers didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but it wasn’t a great move.
(And yes, some actors can *definitely* be like that.)
You just reminded me of episode 3 lol (if Karen’s ‘friends’ ever return then I am most definitely done with Smash!!). I’m sure I might have gotten annoyed if they had dragged out the Karen or Ivy thing for weeks and weeks, but how about the first 4 or 5 weeks of them duking it out as Marilyn in the workshop setting, and then move on from there. The workshop scenes have been the most interesting/compelling to me anyway, but they only ever seem to touch the surface of the workshop in each episode. I don’t feel like you that Karen is being shoved down our throats, because she is one of the main characters and I’m interested in what she’s up to (and she hasn’t even really had that much to do the last few weeks), but yeah I do think they could have done a better job of making those scenes more relevant to the musical itself, or at least to developing Karen’s character to prepare her for the role of Marilyn.
Fair enough about the Hava Nagila. I’m not Jewish so am afraid I didn’t understand the importance of it, so just thought it was a fun moment, and nothing more was meant by it.
Haha, which is why I personally would prefer Ivy in smaller doses. Next week there is going to be so much overwrought overracting between Ivy and Bernadette Peters – dreading it, lol.
@JC: Ah, perhaps I didn’t phrase it right…I don’t mean Karen is being shoved down our throats, but her storyline feels more forced in/unnatural because it doesn’t normally relate to the musical. Ivy’s freakouts are normally show related, whereas Karen was in Iowa and at a Bar Mitzvah. I definitely don’t think they should have dragged it out all season, but waiting until episode 3 or 4 to reveal who made it might have been more beneficial in the long run.
(Though, of course, we have the easy part…Monday — er, Tuesday — morning quarterbacking. Can we all agree to dislike Ellis? ;))
Deal about Ellis! I’m also not a massive fan of Dev, especially as I feel the inevitable Karen/Dev relationship troubles are going to revolve around his snoozefest of a promotion storyline lol.