You know, the funny thing is, I almost sympathize with Richard's choice of Darren. He's had to deal with Oliver and Geoffrey both battling him on art versus money, and here he is interviewing a bunch of candidates who are all mooning over how they'd be awesome because they get at the truth of things. And there's…

"And cue the caveman!"

It's a real missed opportunity.

There are no 1:1 correlations!

The same could be said for Smash at large, if you want to go down that road. Though I find that Jimmy character so likeable and compelling…

Anyone else find it so utterly in character for Richard that even in success, he's still so defined by outside forces and spineless that he'll go in for what looks like a pan-sexual orgy out of sheer euphoria and because everyone else is doing it?

Anna is practically Cordelia in this whole affair, loyal without fanfare. She adopts (marries) Los Perdidos (France)… it doesn't not work.

Well, for a start, in Spanish their name would translate to "The Lost Ones." Hanging on, finding home, wandering through a storm… there are worse interpretations.

Again, at least one of the writers (Bob Martin) is a performer in and writer of musical theatre. The show did a pretty good job of making sure Darren's BS made the show worse than it was (jazz hands!), but also how it takes as much artistic vision to pull them off as anything else (the flowchart scene in particular).

The jazz hands slay me… it's hilarious how Darren thinks those were appropriate for the show. It's a musical! It's triumphant! Jazz hands for the common man! But there are nuggets of a decent show in there, for all that.

Hospitals and doctors are covered, as is medication so long as you're actually in the hospital. Once you're an outpatient, meds you self-administer are on your dime.

I've wondered a lot about how the show treats musicals. To be sure, everything about how East Hastings is presented makes it out to be pretty terrible; it's hard to feel like the show isn't making fun of it. And yet the writer is so concerned about Darren overworking the truth of it, so there's obviously some…

I also like how his criticisms aren't exactly wrong. S&A really excels at throwing characters at you who are very knowledgeable and yet utterly ineffective for one reason or another.

"Oh god, are you crying? Please don't cry. I'm going to walk away now."

Still waiting for my favourite line of the entire series to come up. In the latter half, I think.

Also, did it make anyone else smile to see Emily slowly cool her jets and become competent over the course of the season? It's such a common story for young people, and I found it refreshing to see as a background arc of minor importance instead of as the main plot in a coming-of-age movie.

I always like the idea that they played Ellen as a person genuinely ill-equipped to handle the details of life, and the way that so many of us make our weaknesses into cute quirks that make us lovable. She's bought into her own BS so much, and her arc this season was to pull her head out of her ass, to the extent that…

This thread reminds me of a conversation from s1 about whether or not the writers of the show are contemptuous of management, musicals, and pretty much anything that isn't Shakespeare. One of the points raised was that the writers just committed to creating characters with viewpoints that are concrete and realistic,…

I kind of agree… though I've seen the whole thing before and think it's genius overall, but season 2 is definitely my least favorite. It feels like it's all over the place.

In the right circumstances, a lot of people will have sex with someone they wouldn't ordinarily. People think of being attracted to one thing as implying the presence of repulsion by another, but if he's not actively turned OFF by girls, when it's not such a stretch that he'd not only perform, but also be into it.…