Smash turns 10
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The NBC musical drama series, which premiered on Feb. 6, 2012, lasted only 32 episodes and two seasons. But its legacy lives on in a Smash musical in the works. "NBC launched the series about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical with great fanfare," says Jackson McHenry, "including a haunted Super Bowl commercial that features more terrible men than you can count, and trumpeted the fact that it would bring all that Broadway glamour to television (Fox was airing Glee; it was a different time) with an impressive pedigree of producers (Steven Spielberg, far before he got into making West Side Story, embraced Broadway as an executive producer on Smash). But things ran off the rails quickly: After the pilot, the show accelerates into convoluted plots about peanut poisoning and Debra Messing wanting to adopt. Creator Theresa Rebeck was fired after the first season. The second brought on Gossip Girl alum Joshua Safran and introduced a rival, Rent-like musical about pop stars. The show became more coherent, but also less compelling, and then it ended. Smash has since lived on as an object of cult fascination via a concert performance, numerous covers of its songs at places like 54 Below, and the constant threat that former NBC head Bob Greenblatt might turn it into an actual Broadway show."
