Monday night after Superbowl XLVI, the new musical television show “Smash” premiered at 10 p.m. on NBC.  Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about this show.  My hopes were extremely high when I first saw a commercial for it.  I mean, it was a television show about a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe!  (If you didn’t know already, I’ve been a Marilyn fan for quite some time.)  Not to mention it was going to star Debra Messing (loved her short-lived series called “The Starter Wife”) and Katharine McPhee (“American Idol” runner-up and pregnant hippie from “The House Bunny”).  I realized, however, after watching the show, that better ingredients don’t always equal a better show, unlike Papa John’s pizza.

I’m having a difficult time trying to think of a moment in the pilot that I haven’t already seen in another cliché movie.  Katharine McPhee is introduced as the main character who has big Broadway dreams but can’t seem to land an audition, so she works as a waitress in the meantime.  Oh, and she’s from Iowa.  A girl from the Midwest chasing a dream in Manhattan: How refreshing is that?  We also witness her at dinner with her supportive boyfriend and her not-so-supportive parents, who, by the way, are concerned about her and keep asking her to come home (real shocker). Debra Messing’s character, the co-writer of the musical, has a fairly common dilemma involving her own family.  She and her husband are going through adoption procedures at the time that Messing’s character gets the idea for the Marilyn musical.

Her husband is frustrated most of the time because of her devotion to her career and not to their future child. A woman suffering to find the balance between her career and home life?  It’s not like there are any movies that might have a slightly similar resemblance to that tired plot. However, I must give the show props for its songs.  Even though the plots and subplots are very typical, they have some serious talent in the singing department.  Now, I’m not discounting the wonderful voices showcased in “Glee,” but there is just something captivating about McPhee.  There have been few successful covers of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” but I encourage you to YouTube McPhee’s audition with it, in addition to her rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (a song she sang multiple times on “American Idol”).  The costumes for when the actresses are dressed to be Marilyn are stunning and the dance numbers definitely blow “Glee” out of the water. So, readers, you’re going to have to be your own judge this week.  I find the show slow and typical, but I might be able to give it a second chance. If it doesn’t work out between us, I will still watch video clips of the songs and judge how the actresses look as the star herself.  They are going to have a tough time following Michelle Williams’s performance in “My Week with Marilyn.”  But for now, I’m going to bask in the glory that is the current Marilyn Monroe obsession until the world goes back to “Jersey Shore.”