Catch up on Smash every night with Playbill! It's available to stream with commercials on NBC, and available for purchase on Amazon. Episode 13 recap here.
Jimmy sings a song before clambering up Karen's fire escape to apologize—where he catches Derek still lingering the morning after! Off again. But on for Karen and Derek? Their conversation on the sidewalk is pretty vague about details.
Julia is seeing her partnership dissolved by lawyers, but Jesse L. Martin is concerned about his own hide. He reminds her, again, that if she pulls Gatsby then his career is kaput. Luckily, Tom has made this decision to help Julia by freeing the property for their join ownership. And in another meeting, Eileen is listing off the possible competition: Imitation of Life. Harold & Maude. Road House. Daphne Rubin-Vega compliments her on the full-page Times ad, but Eileen doesn't have that kind of money. Know who does? Jerry. And his largesse earns him another Manhattan to the face. (To be fair, that Manhattan had a maraschino cherry in it instead of Luxardo, and deserved to be thrown.)
Their war room is interrupted by a call to Tom from the police, letting him know that Kyle is dead. (Tom had just called his cell.) We get a flashback of Julia telling Kyle that once day they might even dim the marquee lights for him. Oh, Julia. That's gonna haunt you. Much like teaming up again with Jesse L. Martin because Julia does not have good instincts about men. (Although ultimately Michael Swift was not the problem in that relationship.) Instead of canceling that night's performance of Hit List, he tells the staff that Julia convinced the cast to perform anyway. It's a stunt and god knows the theatre has a history of stunts, but this one used Julia and for that she will not stand.
Jimmy storms into the theatre to pack up his stuff and is generally so unpleasant that I took great delight in Kyle's boyfriend bluntly telling him that Kyle is dead. Karen chases after him, of course. All day, apparently, because she doesn't find him until after night fall, sitting on the railing at the pier. Clambering up beside Jimmy, Karen tells him she loves him—he rejects her love, of course, because he loves to wallow in self-disgust.
I forgot this whole episode is a requiem for Kyle, a character who (because of a reduced number of episodes) never registered as anything other than Jimmy's handler. His suggestion about "At Your Feet" prompts Tom to restage the entire second number of Bombshell. And prompts Ivy to call out sick to head downtown for that night's performance of Hit List. Man, everyone involved with Bombshell just cannot resist this show! I think the only one who hasn't spent time at New York Theatre Club is Bernadette Peters at this point.
Jimmy does finally show up for the performance of Hit List, and decides to do his own thing despite Derek's staging with the actors at music stands. Of course he does. Needless to say the evening is a moving success—even Derek is in his feelings, asking Ivy what happened. Once again, she calmly explains to an obtuse man that she deserves better, and isn't willing to settle.
At the Lily Hayes, Julia has orchestrated for the theatre to dim its marquee for Hit List writer Kyle... which is even weirder when Jerry tells Eileen just beforehand that he's moving Hit List to Broadway. You don't think that could hurt Bombshell's chances at the Tony Awards, do you?
