Why Last Night’s ‘Glee’ Was Terrible
[spoilers - obviously]
I know. You liked it. I know. Here’s the thing: I’m not going to criticize any of the things you liked about it. Not the dancing, not the singing, not Jane Lynch, not the beautiful moment between Kurt and his father at the end.
I am, however, going to criticize everything else about it, which you’re ignoring in a blind fit of musical theatre-y passion. I’m not saying I want the show canceled. I’m saying I want it to step up its game.
I don’t think this show has any faith in itself. Last week, I commented that I look forward to an episode of ‘Glee’ wherein the characters aren’t constantly calling out their limited social status by proclaiming, “We’re in Glee Club,” as shorthand for, “How can you even think to try to do something outside of the norm, for we are but lowly Glee Club members?” I realize now that every time a character said that, it was the show saying it. It was the show saying, “But how can we even hope to stay on the air, for we are but a lowly show about a glee club?”
Why do I think this? Because it’s stuffing four seasons worth of story into four episodes. This is a show that has a lot of big storytelling dreams. It wants us to experience these people’s lives. It loves these people. It loves their weaknesses and strengths, their aspirations and their follies. And it thinks it has a very limited amount of time with them. I can only assume this, of course. I’m not actually in the writers’ room. But egads! Why else were all of these things hit on in just one episode:
- Terri’s sister gives her the idea to appropriate someone else’s baby
- Terri extends her baby-appropriating service to Quinn (By breaking into Quinn’s car - how’d she know which car? how’s she get in the car? ‘Glee’ itself seems neither to know nor care.)
- Will has to struggle to keep Glee together
- Rachel’s threatening to quit Glee Club
- Rachel gets the lead in Cabaret
- Rachel is doing Cabaret AND Glee
- Nope, Rachel’s just doing Cabaret
- Sue just got a gig on a nightly news show
- Sue blackmails Principal Figgins
- Sue gets Sandy a job at the school again
- Sue’s gig at the nightly news show is in jeopardy (in the same episode it was introduced)
- Quinn is pregnant, but still celibate
- Just kidding, since the last episode, Quinn has not only had sex, but she had sex with her boyfriend’s best friend
- Finn helps Kurt practice to be a kicker
- Finn deals with the news he’ll be a father
- Finn hatches a plan to have Will teach the football team to dance
- Kurt gets on the football team
- Kurt comes out to his dad
Why, ‘Glee?’ Why are all these things happening at the same time? You just blew what could have filled not just multiple episodes, but multiple seasons. I’d like to get to know Sue better, beyond being the show’s Super Villain. We could have spent some time with Sue, some time watching her get the news gig, enjoying the news gig, then dealing with the knowledge that the news gig could disappear. That could have happened over the course of four or five episodes. Sandy’s excited to be back at school, but in my mind, the man just left two weeks ago. You could have saved that for season two, when I would have been able to sympathize with the character’s feelings of isolation and restlessness and triumph at being returned to his post. I love how complicated Rachel is - how she is equal parts endearing and infuriating. We could have spent an entire season teasing out her dissatisfaction. Season two could have been all about her defection to Drama. Then, her departure would have felt more like a betrayal instead of like a no-brainer.
I could go on and on about how much slower this show could be taking things. Quinn was the picture of celibacy for all of three episodes before she turned into a wine-cooler-guzzling slut. Terri and Will’s struggling marriage could have been the focus for ages before bringing a fake pregnancy into the picture. Kurt could have started out much more closeted and slowly grown more flamboyant - his relationship with his father the subject of many episodes before his coming out. They’re wasting their own good ideas on a mere handful of episodes. Do it all at once like this and the storytelling suffers. I haven’t had any time to connect with these people and the drama seems stale when it’s this rushed.
Beyond those very broad notes, I also have a couple of complaints about episode four’s writing. To give Sue a spot on the evening news is hilarious. To give her a monologue about caning, on the other hand, is not only ridiculous, it’s lazy comedy. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she started spouting off about giving criminals cancer or AIDS as punishment. Or hey, while we’re being lazy and outrageous, why not cancer of the AIDS? Or hey, let’s just steal Patton Oswalt’s entire bit about Paris Hilton and say cancer of the AIDS of the eyeballs? Sue is mercenary and opportunistic, she’s not criminally insane. You can come up with a more realistic opinion and still make it funny. Especially when you’ve got Jane Lynch working for you. That woman makes anything funny. Except, apparently, caning, because I wasn’t laughing. Also, Sue’s motivation in bringing Sandy back to school to head the arts is completely off kilter. It’s been established that she hates Glee Club because it’s cutting into her Cheerios budget. Where the hell does she think the theatre budget is going to come from? I can only assume the Drama department was nil before she brought Sandy in, since there was no mention of firing whoever had the job beforehand. I have trouble believing that she’d be happy to help cast Cabaret, while even saying the words “Glee Club” seems to cause her physical pain (which I love … I love it every time Jane Lynch gets to choke on the words “Glee Club.”)
The other lazy chunk of writing I took issue with: exactly how stupid is Finn and why do you want him to be stupid? The fact that he bought Quinn’s story about the hot tub with nary a hint of skepticism was ridiculous. I used to teach sex ed as a peer counselor in junior high. Nobody with an ounce of brains is going to buy that. The other thing, and it was a small thing, was Finn marveling that you can borrow books from the library. Like, did you know there’s a room full of books at this school and that they let you remove the books from it with the promise you’ll bring the books back later? HAD YOU HEARD THE AMAZING NEWS ABOUT THE BOOKS? ‘Glee,’ are you kidding me? That is the dumbest joke. I hate it. I am angry at that joke. Who doesn’t know what the function of a LIBRARY is? Unless the character himself was joking and the actor’s delivery was so completely off that I took it for stupidity instead of humor. It’s possible. Either way, someone failed and it was not caught and at this rate, Finn seems like his next big storyline might be that he’s eating paste from the art room.
To sum up, ‘Glee’ needs to have faith it will stick around, it needs to slow things down, and it needs to stop going for easy and outrageous laughs. I think this could be a brilliant show if it paired all the flamboyance of theatre in its musical numbers with all the subtlety of the ‘The Office’ (UK) in its characters and humor. That being said, every moment between Kurt and his dad, I found flawless and touching. So … go figure.
