NBC’s released the pilot episode of Smash, its new (and quite good) drama about the making of a Broadway musical on iTunes, and while in many ways, it’s handsome without being revolutionary, there’s also something to just having a show based in a setting where the dominant perspectives are those of women and gay men:

Of the main characters, musical writer Julia (Debra Messing), scenery-chomping producer Eileen (Anjelica Huston), ingenues Karen (Katherine McPhee) and Ivy (Megan Hilty) are all women, Julia’s writing partner Tom (Christian Borle) is definitively gay, and his ambitious new assistant Ellis (Jamie Cepero) is potentially gay. The only straight men are high-powered-and-he-knows-it director Derek (Jack Davenport) and Frank (Brian d’Arcy James), Julia’s husband.

They both feel varying resentments towards the dominant paradigms that govern their lives. “All that fawning over the actress,” Jack complains. “Gay men piss me off.” “That’s an unfortunate sentiment to express in the American musical theater,” Eileen deadpans at him. His solution to being a straight man in a gay man’s world seems to be to benefit from it, or at least to try. He calls Karen to his house at 10 p.m. the night before her callback, expecting her to show up to seduce him, and even when she’s visibly upset, talks her into proceeding with a sexy-Marilyn impression, if not all the way in to bed.

Frank joins Chris on Up All Night as the second major stay-at-home father NBC’s put on television this season. He’s upset when Julia dives into the Marilyn musical, breaking her promise to him that she’ll take the year off so they can focus on their adoption. And when it’s clear that she’s determined to move forward, he decides he has to go back to work: waiting for the adoption to come through and tending their domestic life isn’t enough for them. There’s something very interesting going on here in NBC’s decision to put the emotional struggles of stay-at-home mothers in the mouths of men, and I’d be curious to know how much it’s resonating with straight male viewers — if any of them are tuning in.

I’d argue that even if you are a straight dude, Smash is worth a trying if you’ve been looking for some fascinating female characters on television. Julia’s clearly very creatively driven, sometimes to the point of neglecting her home life. She forgets to dress up for a social worker’s visit that’s a condition of their adoption, but charms the woman when it turns out they share a love of her subject matter. Watching her watch Marilyn movies in bed and light up while she’s doing it is wonderful — Messing may tend towards light fare, but there’s no question that she’s a delight to watch. And as a writer (though, of course, one of the representatives of the chattering classes who nearly give Julia a heart attack), the show has a sense if not for the actual process of writing, which we don’t see in the pilot, the itchy compulsion to do it.

Similarly, Huston is tough as nails: her production company’s in bad trouble, tied up in escrow while she and her husband fight out an extremely nasty divorce. It’s a nice illustration of how divorce can really take something away from a person. “I’m not out of the game and I don’t have to prove it,” she snaps at Derek as they walk through Times Square discussing their fledgling production. Sure, the competition is supposed to be between Karen and Ivy (at the moment, I’m Team Ivy, since the show seems to be trying awfully hard to get me to be Team Karen). But watching these big, grown-up women with big lives making things on television is lovely.

Regular-schedule blogging commences tomorrow. But while I was making personal resolutions, I thought of a couple of cultural ones I want to take care of, too.

1. Get over my anxiety about getting stuck on levels and finish playing Portal.

2. Film school: lots of Kurosawa. Lots of Truffaut.

3. Catch up on or finish: Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, Cheers, The X-Files, Enlightened, Dexter, How I Met Your Mother, Misfits.

4. See John Lithgow in The Columnist and Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Death of a Salesman,” “Chinese Art in the Age of Revolution” and “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition” at the Metropolitan Museum, “Strange Interlude” at the Shakespeare Theater Company, “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980″ and “Zarina” at the Hammer Museum.

5. Read: a lot of Judge Dredd. Barchester Towers. Play It As It Lays. Joseph Lelyveld on Gandhi. Manning Marable on Malcolm X. Swamplandia.

What’s everyone else working on?

I’m sorry I missed Occupy Broadway, which sounds like a joyful, entertaining evening of live street theater. And of course I agree with Benjamin Shepherd, who told Wired that “Social movements are about imaging a more just, democratic, joyous set of social relations and I think that begins with art. We’re using public space to create a more colorful image of what our streets could look like through open-access performance.” But I’ll admit I’m a bit more excited about the long-range planning going on in the Occupy Comics movement, which has a three-stage plan for 2012, starting with digital comics, moving to a limited-edition paper run, and culminating in a hardcover edition.

I’m all for temporary, innovative, moving art that transforms public spaces in the same way I’m all for temporary, galvanizing public protest. But if that’s all we get out of Occupy Wall Street or the various Occupy Art efforts, I’d be disappointed. The arc of culture is long and broad, and bending even some substantial portion of it towards justice is going to be a long project. The goal shouldn’t be just to crash Broadwalk theater sidewalks, but to see shows make it all the way through the process and on to the stages inside. A year-long publishing plan for some alternative comics is great — and getting those themes fully integrated into mainstream comics narratives should be the actual standard we’re setting. Occupying everywhere is one thing. Achieving enough change so that we don’t have to think of ourselves as occupiers is where we should actually want to end up.

The bridge is yours.

-Presidential candidates as D&D characters.

-Millionaire behaves like millionaire, makes headlines.

-Olympia Dukakis as Clytemnestra is one of the best performances I’ve ever seen, so it’s always cool to hear her talk craft.

-Weegee in Hollywood.

-I may be sentimental and ridiculous, but Jennifer Lawrence looks amazing in The Hunger Games.