Glee - Thoughts On Its First Season

Let me make something clear. I’m not a Glee hater. The last thing I want to do is just sit here and just rant about the little things on the show that annoy me. No I’d call myself a Glee reformist. Throughout its rocky first season we have seen glimmers of truly magnificent TV show. We especially saw those glimmers in last night’s finale. There have been moments in the first season that give me absolute chills; moments that I honestly consider to be groundbreaking television. These moments are almost enough to make us forget about the really, REALLY terrible things they’ve done on this program…like singing to a fetus or a bunch of pregnant girls dancing and crying about it after. The problem with jumping from big moment to big moment is when an episode let’s us down (like “Funk” last week), it let’s us down HARD.

Those who know me and my feelings towards the show have heard me say time and again that Glee has problems with its tone. I won’t spend too much time talking about this but in as few words as possible, the show is constantly bouncing between campy fantasy, romantic comedy, and melodramatic after-school special. Campy fantasy is the one that works the best for it because it simultaneously allows them to be ridiculous (which they love) and removes the need to explain away the musical numbers. There have been so many episodes where the kids sit in the choir room and listen to a character ramble on about why they’re singing a certain song and then (spoiler alert) they sing the song. Wee. But take for example a few weeks back when Kurt sang “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy. He just broke out singing right in the middle of the hallway but we were able to glean (gleen) everything he was feeling just from Chris Colfer’s acting and the lyrics of the song. Not only that but the number friggan kicked ass…and I don’t even like Gypsy. But did anyone say to themselves, “I sure wish they gave an overly expositional explanation as to why he sang that song. I’m bored, let’s watch The Good Wife.”? I doubt it.

So those are the big problems: tone and the show runners’ desperate death grip on realism. Stop it. Sometimes the songs CAN work in the “real world” and the lyrics don’t always have to directly relate to what’s going on in order to still develop character (a la “Poker Face”). But for the love of god someone needs to tell the writers to stop doing this “assignment of the week” BS they’ve been doing for the 2^nd half of the season. Lose that, and the show will have more time to tell a story as opposed to just having the kids run around trying to “find their voices” or “proving that they’re powerful” or “giving them-“ ugh I’m already bored.

The show has the potential to be the greatest show on TV instead of just the most profitable. The Beatles were the most profitable band in the world at one time and their fans were far more rabid than any gleek could be. So when their loud fans showed up at a concert and screamed the entire time and didn’t even listen to the music, The Beatles said, “Well, guess we’re not touring anymore”. They weren’t content just being profitable; they wanted to be proud of what they were doing. They then went on to better themselves as musicians as well as create the best songs of their career and in the history of music. My beef with Glee is that it seems perfectly happy to just exist as is instead of striving to better itself. I don’t want just glimmers, I want the show to shine damn it. You have the attention of millions of American viewers Ryan Murphy. Do something amazing for them. Don’t just let them scream.

Hope you care.

Danny.