Will Glee’s new episodes fix the show’s pitch problems?
Posted on 13. Apr, 2010 by Jef in Television
I like Glee and am glad it’s finally returning with new episodes, but the show frustrates me at times with the way it develops (or doesn’t develop) its characters, their relationships with each other, and the way it will shamelessly ditch story developments by the wayside if it means scoring a cheap laugh or two. Which sucks, because the show is THAT close to being THAT good.
New York’s Vulture blog posted a tongue-in-cheek timeline prediction of Glee‘s inevitable backlash, but unlike most of the points on their list, I think what’s wrong — and could get mo’ wronger — with the show has less to do with the threat of ratings-grabbing stunts and more to do with lazy ass writing.
Here is my short list of concerns as Glee enters the second half of its well received first season:
1) Glee squanders character for cheap moments
One thing the show does way too often is build a foundation for character development, then toss it aside the following week for cheap laughs or oh snaps.
Remember when Finn took a big leap of courage in singing his feelings to Quinn’s parents at an awkward family dinner? Following this, Quinn got booted out of her crib and Finn and his mom accepted her into their household. How touching and ripe for development and oh I can’t wait until next week!
What we got the following week however was yet another story about Finn having the hots for Rachel, and Quinn AGAIN entertaining the idea of a relationship with Puck — two story strands that flat out ignore the last episode’s growth of Finn and Quinn’s relationship. Puck kinda sorta rules, and his pursuit of Quinn is one of the show’s best sub-plots, but even if you’re down for that ride the episode quashes it quickly by having Puck randomly mess around with another cheerleader and say to Quinn, “I’m a man. I have to get laid!”
The show at its best balances straight-up ABSURDITY with GENUINE moments about what it’s like to be a teenager, but it hasn’t really found its stride yet. It plays it straight here, then goes screwball there, and rarely hits the proper venn diagram sweet spot (like say, The Office frequently did at the outset, especially regarding Jim and Pam). Here, Puck’s love for Quinn takes a backseat for a cartoonish moment that supports the lolz aspect of his character, and the genuine advances of the Finn and Quinn story are flat out ignored for the entire episode.
There are MANY other examples of this problem.
The easy fix: Obviously characters’ desires are going to bounce around in the washer/dryer of teenage emotions, but this should be the extension of events. Quinn finally taking a serious look at Puck should have had something to do with how she felt about the previous week’s developments and her new living arrangements, and Puck’s spurning of Quinn should also have been the result of something that, you know, happened. Not just because Puck is Puck, because at this early inconsistent point, who the hell is Puck anyway?
2) Are the characters friends or not?
As epitomized by the show’s adoption of the L-is-for-Loser handsign, Glee is about a bunch of outsiders. Except of course that it isn’t. The show is more about the conventionally attractive (and white) members of the club than it is about the “others”, which blurs the lofty messages it pretends to play around with. The way the “cool” characters (the football players and the cheerleaders) are brought down to glee club level geekdom means the message of the show is more “we’re all losers in our own way” rather than “we’re all cool in our own way.” Yeah, Kurt had a moment of triumph with the football team, but like we covered in the first point, this progress was later undone or purposefully forgotten.
Ideally with a show like this about teenage-outsiderness you should be able to feel like you belong with this group, that you’re right there singing and hurting with them every week; but at the same time I know if I was on this show I would just be “Other-Other Asian”, and Quinn would probably never sleep with me. Or if she did, it would be really funny.
Which is fine, I guess. I don’t really expect this show to make me feel better about my self, but the chasm between the cools and the nots keeps shifting and it will quickly get annoying if the show continues in this vein. The overly-sincere “Lean on Me” number where the group sang in support of Quinn and Finn’s predicament was followed the next week with Kurt addressing Quinn as if she’s just that bitchy cheerleader girl he hates. “This is the first time you’ve spoken to me,” he says to her all salty like. HUH?
Are their friendships growing or not?
The easy fix: The animosity between all the characters is where some of the best comedy comes from, so I understand why the show wouldn’t just up and make them BFFs in the first season. But some attempt at consistency would be nice — build character exchanges off of past interactions that we’ve seen, and not off of some lazy hot/not cool/loser straight white/miscellaneous dichotomies from which we’re supposed to infer how everyone feels about everyone else. At the very least, just stop including we-are-the-world-moments for easy episode closure if in the end it means absolutely nothing. At the very least of the very least, do a meta joke about how they always become friends but then are always enemies again the next episode.
3) …Is this a joke?
Like I said, the show is all about balancing the absurd with the sincere, but there are times when it sends mixed signals and fails to deliver either; it’s easy to confuse character developments for jokes and vice versa. One example is when Rachel fell in love with her teacher Will just because they were singing a duet. With no foundation for this AT ALL, I guess we were expected to believe singing and looking at someone at the same time has some sort of involuntary Cupid’s arrow effect? (Note to self: don’t sing to babies.) Was this even really the first time they sang at each other? I dunno. Whatever the reasoning, this was stupid because 1) the show had spent so much time building up Rachel’s love for Finn and 2) it was all for some cheap stalker jokes.
I know, the episode went on to say something about Rachel putting her love on dudes to mask her own self-esteem problems, but that point was delivered in a lazy way by a side character who herself was just a joke, and even then, the realization went nowhere because THE NEXT WEEK Rachel was dressing like a slut to impress Finn. Say wha?
See how all these points work together? And I didn’t even mention the “Wheels” episode about Artie or the one about Sue Sylvester and her sister with Down’s syndrome. (I’ll let the fake-pregnancy plot slide, because the mid-season finale finally, mercifully, ended that horrible storyline.) That’s a lot of griping about a show I ultimately like, sure, but given how MUCH people say they like Glee, unless the next half of the season pays more attention to its characters and more clearly defines what it’s trying to accomplish, I’d say New York’s conclusion is right — a Glee backlash might just be around the corner. I’m not rooting for it — this cast is too good and the premise too on-point — but I can’t pretend it hasn’t already been heading that way.
Hopefully after tonight’s episode I’ll be eating these words.
Simon
Apr 13th, 2010
A testament to how spot-on your points on lazy character development were:
1) I was completely confused because I realized completely didn’t remember what happened with each person. I forgot Quinn and Finn broke up. I forgot Rachel and Finn were dating. I forgot Teri and Will broke up. I forgot Will and Bambi-eyed-bush-baby got together.
2) I forgot these things because, really, they don’t matter that much.
Somewhat related:
3) The new episode was awful.