THE SKED: “Smash” – Pow! Season 2 Character Exits

Tell the understudies to start learning their lines, as NBC wants it to be known that the Season 2 version of SMASH, under new showrunner Josh Safran, will be markedly different from the generally assailed Season 1.  No less than 4 major characters are being written out, and all the exits target the show’s most derided soap opera storylines.

According to EW, leading the pack–and thus lowering the camp quotient of Smash singlehandedly–is Ellis (Jaime Cepero), he of the peanut-poisoning smoothies, endless scheming and bat-like hearing.  Ellis, who started the show as a mere assistant, was last seen demanding that Eileen (Anjelica Huston) treat him like a fellow producer, and now he knows how producers get treated:  he’s gone.

And not one, but both male ends of the dreaded Julia love triangle, loyal husband Frank (Brian D’Arcy James, currently being seen in a far more swinging marriage on The Big C) and recurringly irresistible boyfriend Michael (Will Chase), will be off the premises for Season 2–which is actually sort of interesting, since the last we saw of Julia, she was pregnant with the child of one of them.  (Reports are that one or more of the excised actors may return for 1 or 2 episodes to round out their storylines.)

All due respect to the innocent actors who played these parts, the show will likely be better off without them.  Of course, now that we know something about what Smash 2.0 won’t be, the question is what it will be instead.  We may not know much about that until early 2013, when the show is scheduled to return to the air.