Recapping Smash 2.11: The Naked Truth | Playbill

Film & TV Features Recapping Smash 2.11: The Naked Truth Hit List and Bombshell are set on a collision course by that devious Richard Francis at The New York Times!
What are they watching? Wrong answers only. NBC

Catch up on Smash every night with Playbill! It's available to stream with commercials on NBC, and available for purchase on Amazon. Episode 10 recap here.

"I had a horrible dream," Tom says upon waking. He neglects to tell Julia that, in addition to standing alone onstage wearing a spotlight and nothing else, he woke up in his dream to find Ellis lying shirtless beside him. That's a horrible dream, indeed!

Now it's the invited dress, when all your friends in the industry come to see the last performance before people start paying to see the show... which is at the "Lily Hayes Theatre." (According to show runner Joshua Safran, the Lyceum ended up with that new name because Lily Hayes Kaufman was the name of the series' line producer’s assistant.) It's a quite small invited dress—normally they're a bit more packed—which is all for the best since among other blunders Ivy ends up baring all during the JFK scene.

That bit of unscheduled nudity prompts a landslide of press and an avalanche of ticket sales, enough so that Eileen and Julia think it works in the show. Will Ivy go for it? Since Eileen volunteers to speak to her, I imagine she will.

At Hit List, Karen and Derek are worried that their roles will be sacrificed in favor of Ana's The Diva, and they only have a few hours to run through the whole show before Richard Francis from The New York Times attends their stumble through! Derek has enough time and inspiration to create a new opening, highlighting The Diva. It's a genuinely thrilling moment, watching a musical come together in rehearsal and exactly the kind of thing that, when Smash got it right, made the show so delectable for theatre fans.

Of course, Jimmy and Karen think that the new opening, which has The Diva sing a snippet of "Broadway Here I Come" is in reaction to Derek finding out about their relationship. Jimmy yells at Derek, Derek acts hoity-toity and reminds us that he left Broadway for Hit List, and Kyle—betrays Jimmy and agrees that Derek's idea is better for the show! Twist! Jimmy immediately decides that Kyle agrees with Derek because he's also jealous of his relationship with Karen. No one cares about you and Karen, Jimmy! And Karen lets Ana know that she got Karen's song just because Derek's pissed at her. These two deserve one another.

Over at the Lily Hayes, Ivy is debating getting naked on purpose. But Sam points out that he did Take Me Out—and can Ivy remember the plot of that show? She can't! (It's about baseball!) She still doesn't know what she'll do even during the show, which now includes the ensemble of "Dig Deep" crawling through the audience which gives me heebie jeebies. Ivy does get naked—but not at the same point it happened the night before. Instead of getting naked before a seduction, she gets naked in an effort to keep JFK with her... which doesn't work, making it all the more heartbreaking.

But no one is talking about the full frontal nudity in Bombshell once Richard Francis publishes his story comparing Hit List and Bombshell—and discreetly coming out in favor of Hit List. Tom loses his temper with Julia; Eileen loses her temper with Richard Francis; and for once, the team at Hit List don't lose their tempers! That may be the biggest twist of all.

 
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