SMASH wrapped up its run last month after a lively second season (first season reviewed here) that had both the creative team and the cast of Bombshell splitting up and some of them moving to an off-off-Broadway production, Hit List. Which then by the magic of backstage musicals becomes Bombshell‘s big rival at the Tony’s. This was actually a pretty clever move, as we have someone to root for on both sides in the final episode, which also wraps up most of the romantic plots, though leaving a fair amount of challenges if there’d been a third season. The big drawback to that is that assuming Derek and Ivy will work out looks like an awfully optimistic dream given what a tool he is (I imagine that would have been explored next season). Still, it was a fun run. “He may be in the closet, but his upper arms are so gay!”
I also finished the first season of the 1960s’ THE MONKEES last week, and lord, it amazes me that such a giddy, loopy show didn’t seem at all weird (IIRC) to my childhood mind. For those who don’t know, the show concerns the four members of the title rock group, struggling to break into show business while also coping with spies, cops, gangsters, kiddie-show hosts royal conspiracies and beautiful girls, plus such really oddball ideas as occasionally turning into the caped MonkeeMen in one or two episodes. All of it delivered with sight gags, illogic, music and breaking the Fourth Wall (“Peter, you can’t expect the writers to think of everything.”). Probably not to everyone’s taste, but certainly to mine. . “I used to be a has-been—now I’m back to being an am-is.”
More Alfred Hitchcock: SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) has “Merry Widow” serial killer Joseph Cotton hole up in a small town with his sister, only to have niece and namesake Teresa Wright begin to realize just how far this apple has fallen from the family tree (this vaguely hints at brain damage as the cause of his evil). This is small-town America a la Hitchcock, who does a remarkable job of creating an entire community around the family, with little bits such as Wright’s bookish younger sister and her father’s mystery novel-obsessed buddy (Hume Cronyn). Reminiscent of Fargo in emphasizing the gulf between decent people and the evildoers, particularly in the endbit where Wright and cop swain MacDonald Carey reject Cotton’s worldview. “You know what you do with animals when they’re too old and too fat to live, don’t you?.”
REAR WINDOW (1954) has photographer Jimmy Stewart bide his time recovering from a broken leg by watching the community around him (ballerina, sculptor, salesman, lonely woman, dog lover, etc.) while fending off socialite Grace Kelly’s push to make their relationship serious. Then Stewart gets the crazy idea salesman Raymond Burr has murdered his wife and when the police won’t listen, Stewart, Kelly and nurse Thelma Ritter decide to take matters into their own hands. While just as effective at evoking a community, this one here is watched voyeuristically at a distance (when one neighbor contemplates suicide, Stewart observes, but doesn’t try to intervene). Very good; the quasi-remake Disturbia would be a good double-feature. “If he talked long distance with his wife after she arrived, why did she send a postcard saying she’d arrived safely?””
