Smash 1×09 ‘Hell on Earth’ recap: From Enemies to Friends

This episode was much better than last week’s episode and even though I cringed for about 25 minutes of it, there were about 10 minutes of the episodes I did enjoy. I only watched Monday’s episode like an hour ago, so forgive me for the late (and quick) recap.

Eileen wants a star to play Marilyn in the untitled musical, but none of the others agree with her. And for the first time Tom, Derek, and Julia agree on something. When Derek tells Eileen that he wants a break from the musical, Eileen decides to lure him back in by talking to other directors. And the trick works. Derek surrenders to Eileen and agrees that they hire a star to play the role of Marilyn Monroe.

Who’s the star? As per Ellis’ scavenge hunt for a star: Rebecca Duvall (which will be played by Uma Therman.) Trying to climb up the ladder, Ellis decides there are no red lines to what he’ll go through to get Rebecca’s agent to make her accept the role. And Rebecca eventually does. Trying to be clever, Ellis tells Eileen that he got her the star, but she HAS to give him a co-producing credit. Eileen, of course, laughs it off.

Meanwhile, Frank finds a song Julia wrote about a kiss on Brooklyn bridge. (Remember her affair with Michael? Ugh, how can we forget?) Frank doesn’t confront her about it at first, but she finds him singing the song and she realizes he’s found out about the affair. She tells him it’s over and that it was a mistake. So he goes to see Michael, who not realizing that Julia didn’t tell her husband the whole story, tells Frank that they shouldn’t have rekindled the affair and should have left it dead. The problem is Frank didn’t know that they’d been together before. So Frank moves out making their son, Leo, resent his mom for what she had done.

If I could, I would have deleted ALL those scenes from the episode, to be honest. I fast forwarded through most of them, anyway.

Ivy’s back on the chorus of “Heaven on Earth” (Julia and Tom’s other musical) and she’s surviving being in the background by popping pills. But when she decides to audition for an orange juice commercial, she finds that Karen beat her to it and that she was perfect. She and Karen bump into each other and drop their things which makes them switch their sunglasses by mistake.

When Ivy finds Karen’s sunglasses with her, she throws them. But when Karen does, as naiive as she is, she decides to give them back to Ivy. So she heads to Ivy’s show to give them back. However, she finds Ivy high on the pills she’s been taking and ruining the Broadway musical which, by the way, the writers actually transformed into a real musical for the episode and even gave it a musical number which was funny and weird at the same time.

When she’s kicked out of the stage, Ivy sees Karen waiting for her and she flipped out. She knows Karen is going to gloat, but Karen didn’t. She did, though, tell her that Derek wanted to sleep with her first. Ivy smiles at Karen and, condescendingly tells her how naive she is. And I agree.

But still, Karen doesn’t give up on her. They get drunk and when they find a guy playing the keyboard on the street, they start singing and dancing to Rihanna’s “Cheers (Drink to that) together. Remember the 10 minutes I told I enjoyed from the episode? THOSE were it because they were FUN. There was no cringe-worthy drama. They basically hated each other for 8 episodes and here they are drunk off their asses enjoying their time together. And why shouldn’t they? They’re not competitors anymore. On the contrary, they’re the only people who know what the other is going through. They’ve both been fired from playing Marilyn Monroe even though they both wanted the role BADLY. They’re both trying to make it big, but life’s been too harsh on them.

Plus, I enjoyed the song A LOT. I don’t want Smash to go mainstream. And I don’t want to be covering Top 40 songs. But if they are, I want them to do it this perfect. The cover was seriously amazing.

But when Karen drops Ivy at her home, Ivy makes sure that she reminds her that they’re not best friends. (And I don’t think they will be until the end of the season (or probably never) But it was nice to see them not shouting at each other for once.

(By the way, can I say just one thing? I saw photos online that featured Tom SINGING. So can we get Derek to sing as well? Please and thank you. He would totally kill it and look smokin’ doing it.)

Did you like the episode?