Dear Gossips,

We will get to Madonna. But this open is for all of you who’ve written to me about Smash. The show premieres tonight. I screened the first two episodes last month at the TCA winter press tour and fell in love. I’m not saying it was a perfect pilot but it takes you there and makes you want to stay. And this from someone who really wanted to resist Katharine McPhee. But Katharine McPhee is surprising. All of it is surprising. And the songs are surprising. This is high quality television with the kind of high quality ambition that is missing from, say, Glee, to which Smash keeps getting compared. It’s exciting to watch a show that wants it like this. And goes about trying to get it in all the right ways. Smash is more than an excuse to start singing songs from the Top 40 countdown in a classroom. Watch and then come for the recap tomorrow.

It was a big weekend for Daniel Radcliffe and I am thrilled. His first release post-Potter, The Woman In Black, exceeded expectations, grossing over $20 million for a close second place finish on Super Bowl weekend. You want good things to happen to the good ones. He deserves it.

Same goes for Taylor Kitsch. I won’t pretend that John Mars and Battleship are my kind of movies, but to see him have that kind of a spotlight on Super Bowl Sunday, targeted at exactly the audience that supports those features, that didn’t suck for his career, not at all.

Just me or was Friday Night Lights everywhere this weekend? There’s Riggins, oh hi Landry cameo, and Vince Howard, is that you with the number 1 movie at the box office in Chronicle? Well done Michael B Jordan.   

Friday Night Lights was all over your Twitter feed yesterday, wasn’t it? If you don’t know why you have five seasons on DVD to figure it out. Do it!

Yours in gossip,

Lainey