Catching up on the first season of Smash on my DVR reminded me of what I loved about an altogether different writerly actorly theatrically magical series set in New York City. I'm thinking of Sex And The City. That show eventually found its center as an extended love letter to our hometown. In a very different way, it seems to me that Smash is shaping up to be an extended piece of hate mail to showbiz.
I'm not sure the choice (hate vs. love) can ever be consciously made when putting a show together but in retrospect it certainly does impact how audiences will feel about watching. Most of the latter episodes of Sex And The City left me wanting to run out and soak it all in. Most episodes of Smash (so far) leave me craving a long hot shower. There's something icky about the vanity and backstabbing on display. Does it not speak volumes about a story when its most fully-realized three-dimensional character is a neurotic, entitled movie star (played brilliantly by Uma Thurman, by the way)?
Let's take a moment to examine the differences between a love letter and a piece of hate mail. The love letter draws its power from the details revealed and in so doing, the writer builds an ever-evolving three-dimensional sculpture of the object of love. It is through detail, lovingly explored, that a whole complex living and breathing entity emerges.
Not so for hate mail. Hate mail brushes over detail and goes for broad generalizations, characterisaztions built primarily on a foundation of exaggeration and blurring of distinction. In the case of Smash: "All theatre professionals are vain, back-stabbing, thin-skinned and self-absorbed." Smash returns to these broad strokes week after week.
The New York depicted in Sex And The City was endlessly surprising, sometimes problematic, but always complex. And out of its complexity and unpredictability, emerged its humanity. In the end, viewers of the show grew fond of this city for its helplessly human qualities.
Seems to me that the best television aims for the specific. The unique wonder of the medium affords its writers a long view, something we don't enjoy in either an evening of live theatre or a feature length film. Over the course of weeks, if not years, characters and their various entanglements can be explored with a degree of detail (and hopefully truth) that few, if any other art forms allow.
This is pretty cool. And ought to be embraced more often. If you ask me.
