Smash: Opening Night (2x12)

This episode was great! It was a lot of fun, had a fantastic number from our two favorite leading ladies, and pushed the plot forward in big ways. I had one major problem with it but I'll get to that in a moment.

It's opening night of Bombshell, and the cast of Hit List has all been invited. Similar to the earlier episode with the opening of Ivy's musical, this episode gave us an opportunity to combine all of our story lines and get all of our characters together in the same location. And things... were... tense. In the best way possible.

First of all, we have Julia and Tom. In perhaps the most heartbreaking plot thread that this show has ever had, this dynamic duo may be over for good. The episode tracked them through a series of conversations that made me more and more depressed as I went on: At first, Julia was trying to determine what their next project should be. One of my favorite lines of the episode was: "A musical can be built around the poetry of Ezra Pound." Haha good luck with that. Tom was reluctant, still angry with Julia about the Hit List article from the last episode. Later, Julia remembers a dream she and Tom had always had of making a musical out of The Great Gatsby. However, Tom had already been offered the job of directing a City of Angels revival. The resulting revelations were painful to watch. Julia, excited about Gatsby, has her hopes dashed by, awkwardly enough, Rosie O'Donnell, making a cameo as an audience member. When Julia confronts Tom, he basically tells her that he wants to direct, but that she shouldn't feel the need to wait for him to go back to writing. How depressing! How can they be breaking up? This is not okay! This was a well acted plot line and it really broke my heart. Very nice!

And then there's Jimmy. After being confronted again by Karen, Jimmy gave us an outburst of adorableness that I really really loved. So, it turns out that Adam is Jimmy's brother (what the hell?!) and when Karen finds this out via Ana, she is pissed. She storms up to Jimmy and demands to know the real truth. Jimmy tells a brief but tragic story about how awful his life was growing up, and then delivers this line: "Adam got me into that life. Kyle saved me. He is my real brother." So cute! To make it even cuter, Kyle sees Adam and angrily confronts him, telling him to stay the hell away from Jimmy. A fight breaks out, and Jimmy goes a bit crazy. (It could be because he really hates his brother that much, but I like to think it's because Adam threatened Kyle. Go bromances!) Karen was pissed, and it looks like she's going to stay that way for a while. Hopefully this time she won't jump back into a relationship with him so quickly, like she has at least three times already.

I must briefly talk about my biggest problem with the whole episode. At the end, Tom was upset because of Julia, and Kyle  was upset because of the big fight with Jimmy and Adam. So... the two of them... GO HOME TOGETHER. What?! Did they have sex? Because Kyle totally has a boyfriend, you know. This is ridiculous. The two gay main characters just have to have a thing? They've barely shared any screen time this whole season! I know this is coming across like a pretty extreme rant, but it just really bothered me.

But, there was another romance angle that I enjoyed in this episode: Scott and Julia! They had a kiss this week, and I was really happy to see that. Julia's love life has been given rather sloppy attention during this show: her husband, Michael Swift, and then that dramaturg guy who was so uninteresting that I can't even remember his name (Peter, maybe?) I didn't see her have any real chemistry with any of them, but I'm actually compelled by her and Scott. I was skeptical at first, but I'm totally on board!

Ivy was great this week, as was Karen. The two of them sang a dynamite number at the end of the episode, and it was seriously impressive. I love that the two of them finally made up. How sweet!

I also didn't mind Eileen this week! She broke up with her boring love interest and she also broke up the fight between Jimmy and Adam with a bucket of ice. So classic.

One last thing - Hit List is going to Broadway. This season. Oh no! Scott, Derek, no! This is going to cause so much delicious drama! I'm excited to see how this will all wrap up, given that Smash most likely is not getting a season 3. Onward to next week!

8/10