Now television, struggling in the era of multiple platform viewing and increased time-shifting, is turning to the clay feet of the musical for a wallop of financial and “special event” adrenaline. After 18 million Americans (hate) watched NBC’s live airing of The Sound of Music, it took less than five months for both NBC and Fox to announce their upcoming live musical projects, Peter Pan and Grease respectively. Of course this practice of airing live musicals has precedent. The New York-based 1950s live television era was bejeweled with live musical events. NBC’s 1955 airing of Peter Pan with Mary Martin garnered 64 million viewers. (Take that Carrie Underwood!) For the first time, television was bringing Middle America (and everyone else) the elusive sights and sounds of Broadway.

Today, the networks are struggling to find some way—other than awards shows—to draw a 21^st century, distracted, i-device obsessed audience to their living rooms. The ratings success of The Sound of Music seems to have been just the encouragement needed to reproduce the tele-theatrical disaster that was Underwood’s performance. The selection of Grease by Fox seems to ignore a string of warning signs.

(1) As was the case with The Sound of Music, Grease is an iconic text. Just as most Americans can only imagine Julie Andrews descending the Alps, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are Grease to most. As many of the press announcements note, Grease is the highest grossing movie musical of all time. Casting is going to be a bear. (2) The Broadway version—even the latest incarnation that hybridized the Broadway and film versions—is not the 1978 Paramount film. The energy is different. The songs are different. This means something when one is trying to capitalize on an audience’s existing emotional attachment to a property. It is nearly impossible to deliver on such a promise when millions are saddled with memories of specific choreography, inflections, phrasing, etc. Overcoming this is no easy feat. (3) Television viewers have already chimed in on Grease and they did not emit a rousing “we go together.” NBC’s 2006 reality show Grease: You’re the One That I Want served as a televised audition for the 2007 Broadway revival’s Danny and Sandy and ranked 75^th in annual Nielsens, garnering about a quarter the number of American Idol’s “hopelessly devoted” viewers. Fox’s Glee also took a shot at the musical with its own “Glease,” one of the lowest rated episodes of its drooping fourth season. (And let’s not even get started on Smash.)

As a devoted fan and scholar of the musical, I always try to root for the genre’s triumph over the jaded sensibilities of contemporary audiences, producers, and ticket buyers. (Although the lasting wounds from viewing 7^th Heaven’s musical episode may never heal.) That said, I often find myself disappointed by the nasty effects a network’s or producer’s hope for commercial appeal has on the musical product itself. Although Paramount TV President Amy Powell sounds like a latter day Sylvester “Pat” Weaver (NBC 1950’s head of programming/chairman of the board and cheerleader for the “spectacular”) as she states, “Fox’s passion for engaging audiences with bold storytelling and live musical formats make it a perfect home for this special broadcast,” perhaps NBC’s current chairman Bob Greenblatt was a bit more honest and on point in his response to the Sound of Music, “We own it so we can repeat it every year for the next 10 years…Even if it does just a small fraction of what it did, it’s free to repeat it.” Who knows, maybe this new trend will catch fire and save the networks and produce a whole new generation of musical fans, or just maybe we’ll all get a real treat and Stockard Channing—high on Good Wife street cred—will reprise her role of Rizzo, only slightly more age inappropriate now than in 1978.

As a lifelong musical fan and once theatre artist, I continually tune into the Tonys and find myself crestfallen by the broadcast’s dismissal of my ilk and need to embrace the otherly occupied masses. True to form, this year’s Tony Awards laid bare its undying need to appear youthful, popular, and hip, all the while marginalizing the spirit of American theatre and those who participate in it. The broadcast looked less like a celebration of New York theatre and more like the Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys rolled into one. The—given, totally engaging—opening number aptly set the metaphorical and literal stage as a performance by the Book of Mormon cast showcased film, television, and music stars (e.g. Ricky Martin, Judith Light, Matthew Broderick, and James Earl Jones) and culminated in the introduction of three-time host and How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris. (Given, Harris has at least graced the Broadway stage—ex. Assassins [2004] and Cabaret [2003].) The star-studded parade continued throughout the evening, with tangential Broadway figures—and everyday mainstream musicians and Hollywood actors/producers—such as Josh Groban, Sheryl Crow, James Marsden, and Tyler Perry presenting. Meanwhile, folks whose careers largely revolve around the stage fell to the wayside. It’s a night full of stars, ones imported from other stages. (Notably, ten-time Tony winner and producer Emanuel Azenberg’s Lifetime Achievement Award is somewhere on the cutting room floor while Hugh Jackman’s “special” Tony was front and center.)

Okay, sure, the night shone with musical number after musical number. Who doesn’t want to see a torturous snippet of the new and ill-conceived Ghost: The Musical or riveting (really) numbers from revivals of Jesus Christ Superstar or Porgy and Bess? Such moments have defined the Tonys, as America gains an annual glimpse into the Broadway stage and shows that might be coming to local touring houses near you. To maximize time for the stars and shows to shine, however, the producers creatively edited the show to reinforce the notion that actors and directors make magic on stages with spontaneously appearing choreography, costumes, settings, etc. (Admittedly, the Oscar producers do the same thing to some degree.) While acting awards provide an opportunity for the latest crossover star to flaunt his or her new theatrical cache, the less showy nominees find their awards presented during commercial breaks. Seconds of the winners’ speeches appear in clips during the transitions back to the show from commercial. Editing reduces Best Choreography, Best Book for a Musical, all of the design awards, and others to asides so that Amanda Seyfried and Hugh Jackman can remind the audience of the upcoming—and likely appalling— Les Misérables film adaptation.

After all of this pandering, the Tonys did what many think they do best: produced a ratings disaster. Despite the star-studded list of presenters and an almost complete erasure of the greater Broadway community, the show brought in its most dismal ratings of all time. With viewership down significantly from last year, the show garnered a whopping 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 6 million viewers—33 million fewer than either the Oscars or Grammys. (This was its worst showing in twenty years.) So, fine job Tony producers. They seemed to suffer from the same ailment as many who adapt the musical from stage to screen. In shooting for the masses, they forgot that the masses often don’t care about musicals—or theatre for that matter—and the compromised tripe that emerges—I’m talking to you bungled adaptations of Evita and (mark my words) Les Mis—hurts the souls of those who truly care. Perhaps the whole thing could be solved by just weaving the “important” Tony winners into the Grammys, Emmys, or Oscars.

From the setup of the pilot episode, SMASH purports to be centered on a narrative trope I personally love – the rivalry between someone who has worked hard and followed all the rules, but never quite rises above mediocrity, and a newcomer who bursts out of nowhere, refuses to fit the mold, and sparkles with natural talent. I’ve written about this trope before, regarding comic book miniseries Mystic, noting its presence in celebrity media narratives (Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera, Evan Lysacek vs. Johnny Weir) and in fictional narratives like – appropriately enough – the musical Wicked.

The problem, however, is that Ms. Hard-Working But Mediocre is played by Broadway veteran Megan Hilty, and Ms. Natural Talent is played by American Idol alumnus Katharine McPhee. And while there’s no denying McPhee’s vocal talent, her voice simply can’t compare in power, vibrancy, and fullness with Hilty’s – a fact which becomes abundantly clear in the duet that closes out the pilot. McPhee is a pop singer, but Hilty is a Broadway star, and whatever the narrative setup, the competition (for the lead role of Marilyn Monroe in the new musical) in execution winds up being between someone who is hard-working and talented and someone with no experience and a weak voice. Given that reality, how is the viewer supposed to believe that McPhee (as a character who is definitively not a former American Idol contestant) would even be in consideration for the role?

This narrative problem could be chalked up to the perils (so familiar on the Broadway stage itself) of celebrity stunt casting. But I believe the issue goes deeper than that. This pilot implicitly urges us to believe that fresh-faced McPhee and her small, breathy voice are actually superior to Hilty’s singing-to-the-back-row style – not just for the sake of the narrative conflict, but for the sake of the show’s overall style. From High School Musical to Glee, musical theater in contemporary media has become a punchline, its songs and traditions reworked into airy pop confections that disdain their origins. The pop style itself is not inherently a problem, but the concomitant dismissal of classical musical theater styles creates a frustrating status quo for fans of the genre. And though the original musical numbers in the pilot (created by Hairspray composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman) are by far the best parts of the episode, even the very idea of a “Marilyn Monroe musical” seems weak and uninspired – in an early scene, Messing’s character bemoans the popularity of revivals and movie-based musicals currently on the Broadway stage, but is a musical based on the life of a well-known public figure any more original than one based on a film?

Beyond this glaring problem inherent in the premise lies another, more insidious issue: despite the fact that most of the show’s main characters are women and gay men, the narrative relies on a number of tired sexist tropes for its forward momentum. When the egocentric director played by Jack Davenport calls McPhee’s character to his apartment late at night and demands she “do Marilyn” for him – implicitly by having sex with him – she’s horrified and runs to his bathroom in shock. But a moment later, she pulls herself together and decides to swap her clothing for a men’s dress shirt hanging in the bathroom and perform the infamous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” for her potential director, complete with a seductive crawl into his lap. When Davenport leans in to kiss her, she turns away, telling him the dance is all he’s going to get, and we’re presumably supposed to applaud her show of backbone. But the real message comes through clearly: McPhee’s character is admirable because she gives into sexual harassment just enough, accepting this as “part of the process” but not slipping into promiscuity. This scene comes on top of Messing’s unfortunate storyline, which involves her husband (Brian D’Arcy James) repeatedly berating her for focusing on her musical-writing career instead of their attempts to adopt a baby. Casting couches and work-family balance are certainly topics that could be thoughtfully explored in feminist narratives, and I hope the series improves on both past the pilot, following in the vein of the much stronger subplot about the show’s producer (Anjelica Huston) and her contentious divorce. My expectations, however, are not very high.

Whatever the merits of the show, I’m happy to see Broadway stars (particularly Hilty and Christian Borle, who plays Messing’s writing partner) getting the chance to gain mainstream exposure. And as a scholar, I’ll certainly continue to watch Smash, if only to see where the series goes and what it does to influence the popular perception of musical theater (and musical theater television) in a post-Glee world. But after such a frustrating pilot episode, riddled as it was with narrative disconnects and troubling sexism, I find it doubtful that I’ll enjoy the experience.