Television: Smash, "The Parents"

Tonight on Smash: Karen's Dad and Ivy's Mom!

After having Jimmy stay over, Karen's dad turns up unexpectedly and Jimmy goes out the window. Literally.

And Ivy's mother has been cast in Bombshell. As Marilyn's mother.

Hit List continues down the road of weird performance art piece masquerading as a musical . . . Okay, I'll just admit it isn't my kind of theatre. At least based on what I've seen. It's hard to tell from the bits and pieces.

Except I did like Rent when I saw it. So . . . I don't know. If Hit List is trying to be Rent . . .

Jimmy, meanwhile, also continues down the road of being utterly obnoxious by (a) worrying that Karen will tell other people they slept together (thus setting off Derek), and (b) having a dealer he stole money from turn up at rehearsals.

Ivy and her mom try to play nice but Tom urges them toward their hidden bitterness as he tries to get them to perform a scene in which Marilyn and her mother fight.

And Karen's dad accuses Derek of ruining his daughter's career by yanking her off Broadway and dragging her into a basement version of Cirque du Soleil. (Okay, he didn't say the Cirque du Soleil part, but really, that's what Hit List has become.) Karen's dad makes a pointed observation of Derek's jacket and a comment about going out the window, much to Derek's bewilderment.

Derek finds Jimmy going through people's coats in search of loose change (or full wallets) because there are no couches where they are. Jimmy then spills the story of how he needs $8,000 to pay back his ex-dealer. Derek offers to spot Jimmy the cash. Problem solved. Wow. What a story line that wasn't really a story line. It's like they felt they needed to bring in the drug story some more but didn't want to risk making Jimmy any more unlikeable than he already is.

Oh, and while playing in the coat room, we see that Derek and Jimmy have almost identical jackets. Something Karen's dad notices as well, motivating him to revise his hypothesis.

And Eileen starts dating the Arts editor from the paper.

Then we're forced to listen to Bernadette Peters sing. Which isn't normally a problem, but the song itself is awful and interminable.

Karen's dad spills it to Derek by mentioning that it wasn't Derek he saw with his daughter . . .

. . . And Scott asks Julia to be dramaturg for Hit List because, after such great response, Anna's role needs to be cranked up.

Plus, Jimmy pays off his ex-dealer but doesn't say no to a little something for the road. We also learn that Collins is probably not Jimmy's real surname. If that matters. Or we even care. Which I don't. Because I find all attempts to make Jimmy interesting or sympathetic to be hollow, forced, and trite.

And don't forget, viewers, that the next episode is on Saturday, which will be Smash's new night. Like Karen, it has gone from the bright lights of Broadway to the dim bulbs of what amounts to the basement of weekly television.