"Glee:" So Much Promise, So Much Disappointment

- 2 minutes read - 408 words

I admit it, I didn’t like Glee when I first saw it. While there was a brief few weeks toward the end of Season 1 and the “Rocky Horror” episode where I experienced a brief thaw in relations, but now it’s back to full on dislike.

Your cover of “Science Fiction Double Feature” won my heart…

In the first season plot served as a vehicle to provide experiences that created emotional tension that, when acted out, could be embellished or advanced by means of singing. The second season lost all interest in this and has focused on creating song set-pieces which the characters are carried into by means of a gruel-thin plot.

For example, in the first season, after a particularly rough bit of romantic let-down, Mercedes gets rather angry and vandalizes the offender’s vehicle to the tune of “Bust Your Windows.” See, reality and frustration and dialog (in short, plot and characterization) before a song.

It is now clear that artistic direction on the show has done a 180. The plots to set up the songs are absurdly stupid (cf. Bieber episode, Britney Spears1 episode). Basically, pick 12 minutes of video-karaoke you want to do and string it together with a storyline bearing the plot rigor of a “Thundercats” episode.

What I liked, and didn’t realize until the last few episodes of the first season, is that what this show was saying was: “Life in high school is hard ( no news ) and sometimes you don’t know how you’re going to make it through; but sometimes with a few friends, drug use, and a positive attitude about something that gives your life passionate fire (like show choir), you can make it through.”

In the first season there was life and it was prior to singing. You’ll recall that the blonde girl was a teen mother in the first season, the adult character was having some fidelity / marriage issues, one character was dealing with homosexual identity in a place unwelcoming thereunto and another was a “jock” who was penned in by his role within the social hierarchy, etc. Those plot points have been simply ignored – effectively there was a reboot and most of the plot’s forward urgency was simply discarded.

As such, it has made the show, as Ryan said: “a karaoke-a-thon” that has no interest for me. Too bad. It should have been more than a fap-fest or political soap-box for the show’s direction.