I have so many feelings right now! The Smash season finale was so much Broadway that I just can’t! I’m so emotional. I’ve got goosebumps. They did not pick the actress that I’d want playing Marilyn. But the actress that did play her actually kicked ass, and she was a wonderful Marilyn.

Let’s start from the top. The episodes opens with Tom & Julia finally finishing the song for the new ending – just 15 minutes before the show starts. And then we see everyone wishing the actress playing Marilyn good luck, but we don’t see her face.

Let’s rewind 12 hours, shall we? (I just wanted to kill them right then and there. I just wanted to know who Marilyn was! I did not appreciate them stalling!)

They have no Marilyn and no ending. The ending in the preview when Marilyn died disappointed the audience who did not applaud at all. But Julia & Tom have no time to write a song, but they have to. The previews are tonight!

Everyone is worried about who’ll play Marilyn. Karen tells Ivy that it will be her, but Ivy is not so sure. The only person who’s sure of who’ll be playing Marilyn is Derek who can’t stop seeing Karen as Marilyn in his head. And just like that, he announces to everyone that it’s Karen who will be on that stage tonight much to Ivy’s dismay.

But the problem is: the costumes do not fit her (Rebecca is almost a foot taller, apparently. But that would make Uma Therman a GIANT! Because Kat McPhee is actually tall, isn’t she?), and she doesn’t know all the lines to the scenes and the songs. Understudies don’t rehearse until AFTER the previews. So not everyone is happy with Derek’s decision.

Ellis is one of those people. Ivy IS Marilyn, he says to Eileen. But Eileen blows him off and tells him to go for a Starbucks run; everyone is tired and needs a bit of coffee. And that’s when Ellis admits to poisoning Rebecca; he knew she’d mess up the whole thing if she played Marilyn. They wouldn’t go to Broadway if she had. So Eileen fires him. Thank God; the episode was so Ellis-less.

During rehearsals, the lights go out. And Michael finds Julia on stage. He tells her that he only came because he thought she needed him. But she didn’t. His wife left him and took kid away. She tries to console him. And who walks in on them? Who else? Frank. Julia tries to reassure Frank that there’s nothing going on between her and Michael. And even if he doesn’t trust her, they still have good things together that can make their relationship successful. And that encounter inspires her to write the right ending for “Bombshell.”

Everyone is arguing with Derek that it should be Ivy on that stage not Karen. But Derek just won’t have it. It’s his show. He’s the storyteller, and he’ll choose who Marilyn is. No one can be Marilyn except Karen.

When Ivy sees Karen performing “Wolf,” she remembers the first she sang it, in Lyle’s (Nick Jonas) birthday party. She was good. She had everything that Marilyn needed. So why wasn’t she Marilyn? She asks Derek those same questions. He can’t see her in his head the way he sees Karen. Wow, that was too honest. I mean, poor Ivy. That must’ve really hurt.

But Ivy isn’t someone who’ll go down without a fight. She grabs Karen’s engagement ring from her bag – the same engagement ring she told Dev she couldn’t find – and placed it on Karen’s desk. She wants to shake her; she wants to make her doubt herself. And that’s exactly what happens to Karen when she finds the ring and Ivy tells her that she and Dev slept together. Ivy tells her that it was so Joe DiMaggio of Dev to ask her to marry him like that. But Karen says this is not Marilyn; it’s her life. This is not the only Marilyn-parallel Ivy uses in the episode (More on that later.)

During the second rendition of “Wolf,” Karen decides she wasn’t want to be Marilyn anymore. She takes off her wig and runs away. And no one can find her – except Derek who follows her clothes that are thrown on the ground like breadcrumbs finds her hiding behind the costumes. And we get one of those rare caring Derek moments – not the jackass, the human. She doesn’t tell him what’s wrong, but he knows her heart broke. And he tells to exploit the heartbreak. She has almost everything Marilyn had and now she has the heartbreak, too. He believes in her; you can see it in his eyes. And she can see it in his eyes, too. And that’s exactly what she needs to get up and be a star again.

Meanwhile, Eileen, Julia, and Tom announce to Ivy that she will be playing Marilyn. But Derek comes on stage with Karen. (This is like a freakin’ merry-go-round) Karen is back as Ms. Monroe.

15 minutes before the show starts, Tom & Julia finish the ending. The actors are wishing Karen luck. And then the show starts, and we get the 10 minutes we’ve been waiting for ever since the series started: The “Bombshell” show.

The new ending made me tear a bit and gave me goosebumps, I’m embarrassed to say. Marilyn dies. And DiMaggio mourns her. And then she sings about not wanting to be forgotten – that people should remember her whenever they hear a birthday song, or whenever they want diamonds but cannot afford them. The crowd applauds. And in my opinion, it was the perfect ending not only for the musical but for the show itself. It was so triumphant – it was so inspiring that it just left me in awe. Kat McPhee killed that song, I have to admit.

If you haven’t yet watched the episode (or want to listen to the song again), there you go:

But aren’t we forgetting someone? Yes, Ivy. Ever since Smash started we’ve been seeing Ivy trying to identify with Marilyn a little bit too much. During the workshop, she told her mother that Marilyn went crazy because her mom didn’t support her, just like Ivy’s. And in the finale, she took her identification with Marilyn too seriously. She grabs a bunch of pills, and the episode ends.

Just like I said in the beginning, it wasn’t the Marilyn that I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, I love Karen. Her innocence and her determination make her an incredible character to cheer and root for. But I feel like Ivy should have deserved that chance, too, you know? I know she got her chance in the workshop, but I wanted to see her on that huge stage singing “Second Hand White Baby Grand” and slaying everyone with it. I did not appreciate, however, that those who wanted Ivy to Marilyn had to put Karen down to prove their point. Karen is a wonderful performer, and I think she proved that in the last 10 minutes of the episode.

By the way, don’t you guys feel like the episodes with Rebecca were unnecessary? I mean they just introduced her to fill in the episodes so they could choose between Ivy & Karen in the finale. I’m just afraid they wasted a lot of episodes putting us off that they could have used to their advantage.

And if you didn’t notice, Nick Jonas & Bernadette Peters resurrected their roles as Lyle West & Leigh Conroy, Ivy’s mom, respectively. I say that because they had only a couple of lines and were so underused. You have two musical bombs! You should have made them do something instead of just saying a bunch of things that didn’t matter that much. Oh, well. I’m just cranky because I really wanted to see Nick sing again on this show.

Anyway, what did you think of the finale? Was it everything you wanted? Were you happy that it was Karen not Ivy who played Marilyn? What do you think will happen to Ivy in the next season? See you next January with another Smash recap! (The new season will air mid-season not in the fall)