Smash Recap: On Broadway

I am coming to this show with two warring prejudices. One is completely pro-musical theater; my favorite movie when I was two was Annie, when I was four I had moved on to Fiddler on the Roof, and in high school I drove my parents crazy by listening to (and singing along with) The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, and Miss Saigon non-stop. My other bias is completely anti-musical TV shows; this is a result of Glee raising my hopes sky-high and then dashing them to the ground and grinding them to dust with its half-baked story lines, Very Special Episodes, and Matthew Morrison’s “rapping.”

Not cool, Ryan Murphy.

Being produced by Neil Meron and Craig Zadan (who were responsible for the movie version of Chicago and the recent remake of Hairspray, among other things) makes me optimistic that Smash isn’t going to suck, but it stars Katherine McPhee (from season 5 of American Idol) which makes me think that maybe it will suck. I don’t know, you guys, I’m torn. But it’s time to stop procrastinating and do this thing.

The show opens on Kat McPhee singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” dressed in a sparkly little cap-sleeved, short-skirted dress in front of a background of twinkly stars. If Kat were barefoot and/or seated and/or singing in a minor key, it would be exactly like Drew’s every performance on the X Factor.

Right?

A cell phone chirrups, and we are rudely yanked out of the sparkly twinkly fairy land into a drab, harshly lit audition room. A short-haired, bespectacled woman who looks like Dame Judi Dench’s younger sister answers the phone and dismisses Kat from the audition. Kat storms out of the room and marches down a Manhattan street complaining on her cell phone about the way she was treated.

Meanwhile, the next auditioner has been called in. Ivy Lynn is blonde, buxom, and ballsy, as she breezes into the room and asks the panel if they want to hear “the ballad or the up-tempo first?” Looks like Ivy belongs to the “fake it ‘til you make it” school of thought.

We meet our next set of main characters in an apartment somewhere, as Debra Messing rummages through kitchen cabinets looking for tea while a beautiful young man explains to Debra’s weak-chinned, floppy-haired friend that he rearranged the kitchen and has macaroni and cheese and meatloaf in the oven.

Yes, please.

The beautiful young man is Mr. Weak-Chin’s new assistant, and WC is super excited about having an assistant who not is not only the walking definition of eye candy, but also cooks. “Straight. Sooooo straight,” Deb says. Hmm, Debra Messing in a TV show where her best friend is a gay man! Something about this feels very familiar.

Can’t quite put my finger on it….

Not-Will pulls the food out of the oven while Not-Grace reads the newspaper. She is annoyed to learn that a revival of My Fair Lady is going through, directed by one Derek Wills. Not-Will bitches about Derek Wills, and Not-Grace moans about how all anyone ever does anymore are revivals of old musicals and movies of current musicals. “Why doesn’t anyone do new musicals anymore?” she asks. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with making money, but I do tend towards cynicism.

Not-Will and Not-Grace move into the living room, sitting on the couch and crossing their legs in perfect synchronicity. The hot assistant takes a book about Marilyn Monroe off the coffee table and puts it back on the bookshelf. Not-Will checks out his ass while Not-Grace muses about how beautiful and tragic Marilyn Monroe was. “I think she’d make a great musical,” hot assistant says. Apparently the Nots had tried this before, and it was a huge flop. “Besides,” Not-Grace adds, “everyone’s doing her now.” Hot assistant points out that this resurgence of popularity increases the chances of a Marilyn musical being successful. Not-Will throws in the idea of doing a baseball number (because Marilyn was married to Joe DiMaggio), and Not-Grace’s interest is piqued.

Coffee shop: “I didn’t get it,” Kat murmurs into a man’s ear as she fills his coffee cup. An aspiring actress working as a waitress, that is an original concept. Why don’t aspiring actresses on TV ever work as phone sex operators? You wouldn’t have to worry about bad tippers, and you’d get a chance to practice different accents and characters. Seems like a win/win to me.

Kat sits down across from the man, and complains about how she’s a girl-next-door type and doesn’t get roles because she isn’t sexy enough. “Why do I have to be sexy all the time, I wish I were fat,” she whines. That’s a super-sensitive line to give an actress who struggled with bulimia. Good job, writers. She tells the man (who has a British accent and works in the Mayor’s office) that they keep saying she’s “light” and she doesn’t know what that means.

I didn’t realize that being a struggling actress would involve so much struggling.

“Karen, you have two tables up front” an off-screen female voice tells her, and Karen goes back to her job. Yay, finally, we have a name for one of our characters!

Exterior of a brownstone. Not-Grace comes into the kitchen and greets her husband and teenage son. The son seems a tad resentful that Not-Grace had to pick up Not-Will (aka Tom) from the airport. The husband tells Not-Grace that their adoption agency called and wants to set up a meeting with a social worker. Not-Grace is mildly alarmed at how quickly the adoption process seems to be moving. I get the vibe that the adoption is something that the husband wanted to to and Not-Grace is just going along with it.

Not-Grace changes the subject to her time at Not-Will’s apartment. “Hey, Leo,” she asks her son, “When I say ‘Marilyn’” what do you think of. “Baltimore, Marilyn,” he answers, proving that somebody wasn’t paying attention in Geography class. Rather than educating her son about the state of Maryland (established as a colony in 1632 as a safe-haven in the New World for Catholics who didn’t want to be deal with the Puritan/Separatist Pilgrims), Not-Grace redirects him to think about what person the name Marilyn makes him think of.

Saw that coming.

Leo has never even heard of Marilyn Monroe, leading me to think that this kid is just plain dumb. Mr. Not-Grace rolls his eyes and snarks, “Marilyn the Musical?!” He reminds her that she and Not-Will were supposed to be taking a break, and she gets very defensive. She insists that she was just talking in the abstract, and he tells her that it’s not a bad idea if someone was looking for ideas, “which you are not.” She asks how you could even do a musical about Marilyn Monroe, and her husband lists a few suggestions, including a baseball number. Coincidence? Or Fate?!

Outside a bodega, Katren is on the phone with her mom. She hangs up and tells her British boyfriend that her parents are coming to visit. She claims to be happy about seeing them, but also dreading their visit because the last time they came, the spent the entire time trying to get her to come back to Iowa. “It was a bit like an intervention,” the boyfriend agrees.

At home in bed, Not-Grace is watching a Marilyn Monroe movie on her laptop while her husband sleeps.  Her laughter wakes him up, and he tells her not to stay up all night.

We now find ourselves at:

Not-Will is backstage watching a dance number. Dancers run off stage, and one of them is Ivy from the earlier audition scene. In the dressing room, Ivy hangs up her cell, and begins ripping up a wig; she didn’t get the part that she auditioned for. Not-Will pokes his head in and sees her dabbing away tears. She tells him what happened, and that even though she loves being in the show, what she really wants is a part of her own. “I trained, I’m a trained…” Seal? Nurse? Electrician? She tells Not-Will that she isn’t complaining, she’s just… “Dreaming?” he fills in. “Like everybody does,” she shrugs.

Back at the brownstone, Not-Grace (and I’m sorry, but if they’ve told us her name yet, I missed it entirely) is on the phone with Not-Will. Her husband comes downstairs and says, “Are you going to wear that?”

This about 43% dressier than I ever, ever look.

She gets off the phone, and her husband is annoyed to learn that the Nots have written one song based on the Marilyn idea and are planning to cut a demo. “You said that you would take the whole year off so we could do this [adoption]!” he reminds her. She tells him that he’s over-reacting, and he insists that his reaction is perfectly appropriate. “When you’re in production, Leo and I go days without seeing you!” How edgy, a gender-reversal on the stereotypical workaholic husband, neglecting the needs of his wife and children because of the demands of his career. Bored now.

Mr. Not-Grace asks why Not-Grace has to be the one to do this musical with Not-Will, and she gets all scary intense at him. “Do you know what she said in her last interview?” she asks. “‘Please don’t make a joke out of me.’” Not-Grace wants to show how deeply Marilyn wanted to love and be loved, and doesn’t want anybody else to do this project.

“I hate the theater, I really do,” Mr. Not-Grace responds. Leo comes downstairs, and Not-Grace asks what he’s doing home from school so early. You weren’t all that concerned about his education five minutes ago, lady. Mr. Not-Grace reminds his wife that the social worker will be arriving at any moment, and that is why Leo came home early. Mr. NG is really invested in making a nice impression for the social worker so that their adoption goes through successfully, and just as he tells Not-Grace that he thought she might want to change before the social worker gets there, the doorbell rings. Not-Grace talks her husband down, reassuring him that the social worker will like them, because they are a nice family, and that she really does want the baby, and the family holds hands around the kitchen island for a minute before Leo reminds them that the social worker is waiting outside. When Mr. NG lets the social worker in, NG apologizes for the way she’s dressed, but the social worker tells her not to worry about it. Turns out Social Worker Rene is a huge fan of the Nots.

Still hate the theater, babe?

Ivy and Not-Will are practicing the demo song, when Not-Grace rushes in, apologizing for being late. Turns out that adopting a baby involves all sorts of paperwork, and proof that you are who you say you are, and is very time consuming. Ellis, the hot assistant, is watching them, and when he draws Not-Grace’s attention by laughing at a joke she makes, she sends him out of the room to make her some tea. I don’t know if this is coming across in the recap so far, but Not-Grace is kind of a bitch.

Katren and her British boyfriend are at a restaurant, and Katren keeps sitting up straighter and straighter. She tells Brit Boy that good posture is important to her dad, and Brit Boy is also a fan, because it makes her breasts look amazing. Katren’s parents come towards the table, and they are played by Dylan and Becky Ann Baker, character actors whom you’ve seen in a million different things and who are married in real life. That’s actually pretty sweet.

These guys

After some chitchat at the table, Katren’s mom is horrified by the “city” prices, and Katren says that she’s paying for dinner. Her dad is condescendingly amused by this, reminding her that she’s a waitress and therefore stony broke. “She’s an actress, not a waitress,” Brit Boy states, and Dad reminisces about Katren’s starring role in the Sound of Music back in highschool. “Who knew that meant… all this?” he finishes. Katren doesn’t want to have the same old argument about why she should give up on her dreams and come back home to Iowa, and her mom tries to diffuse the situation by explaining that they worry about her. “Sometimes dreams don’t mix with reality,” her dad pipes in, and Katren is visibly crushed by this. “That’s what makes Karen so extraordinary,” Brit Boy says, because she is courageous, and talented, and wonderful, and he thinks she’s a star. This shuts Dad up, and Katren’s mom mouths “MARRY HIM!” across the table.

Listen to your mother.

In the recording studio, Ivy is  laying down the vocal track for the demo. She does a fantastic job of capturing the breathy quality of MM’s voice, but what really nails the similarity is the way she moves her mouth. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s something you have to see in motion, but there is a very distinctive way that Marilyn would shape her mouth while singing, and Ivy does it perfectly. Ellis is recording a video of her performance on his cell phone, plain as day, for all the world to see. This will be an important plot point in a minute.

Super-duper sneakiness

Quelle horreur! The Nots are watching the illicitly recorded video on a website that is most-definitely-not-YouTube, and when it finishes they turn on Ellis like rabid, upper middle class, WASP hyenas.

I am going to run you over with my environmentally-responsible yet still status-symbolly SUV!

“You’re fired!” yells Not-Grace, which Not-Will quickly echoes. Ellis swears that he didn’t post the video online, all he did was e-mail it to his mother. This is one of the many reasons that I give thanks daily that my own mother can barely even check her email. The day that woman becomes web-savvy, my life is over, much like Ellis’s career seems to be.

In the brownstone boudoir, Mr. Not-Grace is reading reviews of the leaked video online while Not-Grace freaks out about how much she hates bloggers and theater critics. She is particularly concerned about what a critic by the name of Riedel will say; apparently he was bad-mouthing the Spiderman musical before they even started maiming people. Mr. Not-Grace tells her that Riedel did critique the song, and he loved it. “You know, he’s much smarter than people give him credit for,” says Not-Grace.

Katren sings along with the not-YouTube video. My opinion? Ivy does Marilyn better.

Finally! Anjelica Houston! I’m not gonna lie, I live in eager anticipation of the first time her character throws a drink in someone’s face. She is in negotiations with her soon-to-be ex-husband regarding the divorce settlement. He feels that she is being unrealistic with her expectations, and reminds her that she came into the marriage with nothing. “Except love,” she retorts. Score one for AH. “Bringing up love in a divorce proceeding is childish,” the S-to-be E-H says, and Ms. Houston racks up about ten more points when she argues that screwing every blonde that will open her legs is equally childish. Hubby’s attorney states that if they can’t come to an agreement in that meeting, all of the assets will be put in escrow until a settlement can be reached. This is bad news for Anjelica, whose production of My Fair Lady will be shut down as a result. She tells her husband, Jerry, that they don’t have to do it this way, and he asks, “Is this your version of begging, Eileen?”

Come ON, Eileen!!!

Eileen decides that if Hubby Dearest is going to be a bitch, then she will too, and says that everything can go into escrow then. “I’ll see you in court,” she says as she leaves the room. Can we please have a crossover where the attorney who represents her in court is Glenn Close’s character from Damages? Jerry would be whimpering naked on the floor before they were done with him.

Poor, pretty Ellis is sitting outside Not-Will’s building as the Nots  (seriously, are we ever going to get a name for Debra Messing’s character?) arrive via taxi. He brought croissants and an apology.  He stumbles through about how it was wrong to steal the video, and how he’s idolized them ever since working backstage when his high school did one of their musicals, etc., etc., with much ass-kissing. If this was such a huge faux pas, how did the Nots fail to notice Ellis with his phone out during the entire recording session? Way to be hyper-vigilant, guys. To Not-Grace’s chagrin, Not-Will is placated by the apology, and lets Ellis back in, pointing out that since the musical was Ellis’s idea, his input is worth having. Not-Will sits down at the piano and starts playing the baseball number, and Not-Grace allows Ellis to stay, but she does confiscate his phone. As she should have done during the recording session if it’s such a BFD.

The Nots meet with Eileen, who has expressed an interest in producing Marilyn (despite her frozen assets). She is eager to get going, even though the musical isn’t even fully written yet, and suggest that they hire Derek Wills as director. “Great! Or I could just gouge my own eyes out,” Not-Will says. Apparently he and Derek worked together on a production and things did not go well. Not-Grace wants to give Derek a shot, and she is clearly used to always getting her own way. This is why following the advice to “say yes as often as possible” to children is a bad idea. Sometimes I tell my kids no, just on general principle.

“He is very talented,” she argues, and Not-Will points out that they work in an industry that is lousy with talent. “Is it too much to ask for kindness, too?” he asks. Eileen and Not-Grace suggest that they could at least let Derek audition, but Not-Will is standing firm. “So you don’t think it would be fun to watch Derek crawl?” Not-Grace wheedles, and Not-Will concedes that it would be fun. Eileen is ready to call Derek, but Not-Grace interrupts to semi-tactfully inquire whether or not the rumors are true about the financial difficulties that have arisen due to Eileen’s divorce. Eileen plays it off, and Not-Grace looks a bit miffed to have lost in a game of “We’re Going to Do Things My Way.”

Now that is NOT a face I would feel comfortable saying “no” to.

Eileen meets Derek Wills in a restaurant to discuss the project. Derek is played by Jack Davenport, who is probably best known for his role as Commodore Norrington in the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but to me he will always be Steve from the BBC comedy Coupling. If you haven’t seen it, hie thee forth to Hulu and start watching. The recap will be here when you get back.

Derek is not enthusiastic about a Marilyn Monroe themed musical. “I want to do My Fair Lady,” he tells Eileen. Eileen counters that Marilyn was the “American Eliza Dolittle,” and reminds Derek that Marilyn comes with no strings attached, unlike My Fair Lady which is currently tied up in escrow. Derek is reluctant to work with Not-Will, and insulted when he learns that he will have to audition for the Nots. “For me to audition, Marilyn herself will have to pop out and do me right here,” he tells Eileen.

We immediately cut to a dance studio, where Derek is running through a final rehearsal before his audition. Eileen, the Nots, and Ellis come in, and after exchanging some (not necessarily so pleasant) pleasantries, Derek tells them to imagine the ensemble in baseball uniforms, and Marilyn (played by Ivy) in a red dress. The song is called “The National Pastime,” which refers both to baseball and sex. It intercuts between the rehearsal version and what the performance would look like on stage.

Comme ça

The Nots are clearly delighted with Derek’s work, but while Not-Grace willingly gushes about how amazing it was, Not-Will is very reserved. Ivy tells Derek that it was an honor to work with him, and he thanks her dismissively as he walks out with Eileen. Not-Will complains to Not-Grace about how Derek treated Ivy, but Not-Grace pushes him to tell her what he thought of Derek’s interpretation of how the song should be performed. Begrudgingly, Not-Will admits that it was brilliant, but… “But what?” Not-Grace asks.

“Julia, I love this project,” and holy cow, we finally know this woman’s name. Not that I’m planning on using it, but I don’t like having these important little details left out. Not-Will tells Not-Grace that he loves her, and this project, and he doesn’t want to do anything that is going to put them or the musical in danger. Danger? That sounds juicy. I really want to know what happened between him and Derek. “He is a terrible human being!” Not-Will shouts as he leaves, and Derek hears him through the open doorway.

Sounds like an accurate description to me, mate.

Eileen and Derek are walking through Times Square, and Derek is skeptical at best regarding his chances of getting the job. Turns out Derek gets pissed off by gay men, which explains part of the problem between himself and Not-Will. Also, given his chosen profession, he must be cranky an awful lot of the time, a fact that makes Eileen smirk. Eileen tells Derek that since Not-Grace is on board, she’s sure she can get him the job by the end of the week. Turns out she doesn’t have until the end of the week, because Slimy Future Ex, Jerry, wants Derek to come direct a film that he is working on with Lionsgate. Eileen swears that she will get this whole snafu ironed out, “and prove you’re not out of the game?” Derek asks. Eileen says she isn’t out of the game, and she can prove it. That’s what passes for humor in this show so far, folks.

A narrow hallway packed with hopeful auditioners dressed in various incarnations of Marilyn Monroe: Brit Boy walks Katren in, and she wishes that she had dressed up. Brit Boy tells her that she doesn’t need to do that, because she is talented. Seriously, girl, listen to your mom! This guy is a sweetheart, has a hot accent, and a steady job. Katren reminds him that she’s “light,” which she thinks means she can’t do sex (much like Deena on Jersey Shore) and since Marilyn Monroe = sex, Katren is metaphorically screwed. Brit Boy tells her that Marilyn was about love, not sex, so think about love.

The bitch-faced girl who was sitting next to Katren in the hall is auditioning with “I Wanna Be Loved By You,” and it is dreadful. Derek dismisses her before she even finishes the first verse, and asks if Scarlett Johansson is available to do the show. Someone else suggests Kristen Chenowith, and Not-Will butts in that maybe they could offer the part to someone who isn’t famous but is perfect for the part like, oh, I don’t know, Ivy Lynn maybe? Derek wants to hire an icon for the role, because no matter how great the musical itself is, without the right Marilyn it will fail. “Ivy really will be terrific,” Not-Grace tells him.

As soon as she’s done throwing up in the ladies’ room, that is. Since Ivy is currently occupied, Katren is called in to audition next. Derek finds it refreshing that she didn’t come as Marilyn. She isn’t going to sing Marilyn either, as she begins Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” with a very simple piano accompaniment. It is truly lovely, but then other instruments start joining in, and suddenly we’re in Katren’s imagination once again, as she pictures herself singing the song to Brit Boy. I feel like this is a device that is going to be severely abused in this show; I liked the way they kept going back and forth between the rehearsal and the performance versions of the baseball number, but I think for this part of the show, it would have been fine to let us only see the audition as an audition, interspersed with shots of the panel’s reactions, and with only the piano instead of a full orchestra.

Later that evening, Katren gets a call back. She tells Brit Boy that they liked how she didn’t play the sex angle, but that for her next audition, sex is what they want to see. Being a simple, wholesome girl from Iowa, she’s not sure how to do that; thankfully, Brit Boy is a bit more worldly. He raids her closet looking for something that will accentuate her breasts. “Marilyn was obsessed with her breasts,” he says.

In Ivy’s sad little apartment, she is talking to her mother on the phone, sharing the news that she too got a call back for Marilyn. Based on Ivy’s side of the conversation, it would appear that Ivy’s mom is about as supportive as Katren’s dad, and Ivy bites her lip and tries not to cry while still cheerfully “Mm-Hmm”ing about whatever her mom is saying.

Ivy’s mom is a jerk.

Back with Katren and Brit Boy, he is continuing her education in all thing Marilyn by making her watch Some Like it Hot. He points out to her the way Marilyn moves in one scene, leading with her breasts, and Katren mimics, laughing self-consciously. She escapes further instruction by seducing him, because the fact of the matter is that for a lot of girls it is far easier to have sex than it is to be deliberately, methodically, comfortable-in-your-own-skin sexy.

Post squelchy-time: Katren thinks that tomorrow night, they should copy the movie “where they’re making out in the ocean.” Faithful ‘Gasmi Itchy has much to say on that topic, which is both amusing and informative (comments #28 and #33 are particularly enlightning.) Brit Boy tells her that Marilyn Monroe wasn’t in that movie, but Katren doesn’t see what that pesky little detail has to do with anything. Her phone buzzes, and after looking at it she says, “Whoa, what?”

A taxi drops Katren outside a drab building. She gets buzzed inside, and we soon find that she is at Derek’s loft. Did you leave your brain in Iowa, Katren? Seriously. I want to shake some sense into her. There is no possible way that this isn’t a casting couch situation.

Derek feeds her some crap (possibly true, but still crap) about how he needs to get on a plane the next morning at 8am, but they’re very serious about her for the part, and he wanted to help her understand what they would be looking for at the call back. He tells her that he resume is light, which clears up all sorts of confusion for Katren, and she responds that Marilyn was inexperienced once, too. He tells her that Marilyn would never have come to a man’s house alone at 10pm, and asks if she even knows why she’s there. She says, “Because you asked me to come,” and I can hear her mother yelling from Iowa, “If he asked you to jump off a bridge would you do that too?” Geez, Kat.

She tells Derek that she had just been working on her audition, actually, and that her boyfriend was helping her understand Marilyn. “And how was that?” Derek asks. He means it in the British way: how was that, in what way was he helping you understand Marilyn? She hears it as an American: how was that, was the sex good? He clarifies, and she explains that they were doing Some Like it Hot. Derek tells her to show him. In fact, he wants to see everything she’s got. “And enough with the scared bird routine.” The light begins to dawn, and Katren gets up, saying, “Excuse me.”

Instead of leaving the apartment in righteous indignation, Katren goes into the bathroom. Let me tell you right now, girls and boys: if you’re ever in a situation where your potential future boss gets all vaguely date-rapey and strongly implies that your entire career rides on letting him ride you, if an opportunity to leave arises, TAKE IT. No job is worth that kinds of treatment. What Katren should do is get the hell out of there, still show up to the call back, and find an opportunity to let the Nots and Eileen know about what happened. But little miss innocent-Iowa-girl-just-trying-to-make-it-in-the-big-city does not do this. She leans against the bathroom counter, looking at herself in the mirror, visibly shaking and her eyes filling with tears. She fakes a smile, takes her hair down of of her ponytail, and fluffs it up. The child couldn’t even do deliberately sexy for Brit Boy, the one person that she should be able to comfortably be that way around, and now she’s going to tart it up for the skeevy director. What would your mother say, Katren?! This is what they worry about on those cold Iowa nights when there’s nothing else to do but watch the corn grow. (Iowa has corn, right?)

Not worth it, Katren!

Katren spots a shirt hanging up in the bathroom, and grabs it in a moment of inspiration.  She slowly walks back into the living room toward Derek, wearing nothing but the shirt, and singing “Happy Birthday” à la Marilyn. She straddles him on the couch, and it is pretty hot. As she finishes the song with her face very close to his, and just as he goes in to kiss her, she rolls off saying, “Not gonna happen.” Well played, Katren. Dangerous, but well played. As she stalks back to the bathroom, Derek gets a little smile on his face – I think he was impressed by both her acting and her chutzpah.

Not-Grace buzzes up to Not-Will’s apartment. “We’re late for call backs!” Katren steps out of her shower, singing “Let Me Be Your Star.” After the first verse, we join Ivy, who is also getting ready for her call back audition. I love Ivy, you guys, but she is kind of scary looking. Like she maybe eats small children on the weekends. After Ivy’s verse, the girls sing together as we see a montage of all interested parties going to the call backs. Katren and Ivy meet outside the building, and I love how sharply their different personalities are highlighted simply by their wardrobe choices.

We go back and forth between Ivy and Katren, and back and forth between the audition room and the fantasy stage performances.  The song ends, and we go to credits.

So I guess next week we find out who gets the part! I’m assuming that one girl gets the role of Marilyn and the other will be the understudy, but maybe they’re going to split it? I am totally on Team Ivy, if I hadn’t made that clear before, and I hope that future episodes aren’t so Katren-heavy.

Leave your thoughts, feelings, opinions, and judgments in the comments. See you next week!

<3, SuburBint

To get the funniest quotes from TVgasm recaps as they’re posted, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page! You can post your favorite lines right back at us. Thanks for being here!