Last season on Glee: Songs were sung, competitions were won and lost, Sue Sylvester legitimized the vinyl tracksuit as suitable everyday attire, Will Schuester found new and awesome ways to embarrass himself through the power of hip hop, Mercedes proved that she was Helen Keller when it came to gaydar due to her crush on Kurt, Kurt couldn't get the hint that Finn just wasn't that into him, Rachel desperately tried to be a star and find her mom and have her gay dads sew her a GaGa outfit while pining for Finn, Quinn had a baby with bad ass Puck, Terri faked a pregnancy in a storyline that everybody wanted aborted, gay slurs were thrown about, Finn was thrown out of the house, Madonna got her tribute, Fox network got a lot of money from iTunes sales, AutoTune was abused like it was a redheaded stepchild, and a pop culture phenom was born.
WHEW. So with Glee taking a break this week with a Glee-run of "Funk", we decided we'd do a little Gleecap of the season as it stands now as we take on The Good, The Bad, and the Mr. Schue that has already gone on the little season 2 that could.
Singing Finn and Rachel invite you to continue reading.
We kicked off the new season of Glee with "Audition" where Rachel sent new character Sunshine to a crackhouse to stop her from auditioning for the glee club, Sue Sylvester and Mr. Schue got a joint villain in the hard-to-exactly-determine-gender form of Coach Bieste, Artie started his year long arc of being a jack ass, Mike Chang got to show off his abs
while new guy Sam was apparently moved by both Finn and the power of Jay-Z to try out for Glee club while also snatching his place on the football team.
Beware of men with perfectly styled locks, Finn. They get their power from the devil.
Aside from the brilliant opening sequence of ultra-meta commentary as JewFro went about the school interviewing the various members of the Glee club and pretty much asked every question a Gleek has ever posted on a message board from Mr. Schue's rapping to AutoTune to the supposed difficultness of working with Rachel, all things were addressed in sharp, witty fashion for the most part while the rest of the episode careened from one truncated tune to the next with a little bit of dialogue in-between.
Which we'll at least give "Audition" credit for having a plot, even if it chiefly existed to assassinate Rachel Berry's character, but at least it had something to hang one's Cheerios skirt on and ended with Rachel's great version of "What I Did For Love." Though we sort of hoped they'd bust out this rendition:
The following episode, the big huge bag of BS that was the Britney Spears tribute episode, didn't even want to entertain to have any resembling a coherent plotline whatsoever with everybody getting their dentist hallucination on with varying degrees of success. It didn't make a whole lot of sense if you spent more than a second mulling over the plot.
But we suppose with dancing like this you don't have to plot-centric? Maybe?
Still all the dancing in the world isn't going to be a Band-Aid on all of the ginormous plot holes, something that Glee has never EVER properly dealt with and now seems sort of part of the fabric of the show. Storylines come and go with will, characters have episode-ending epiphanies only to be reset for the next episode.
Or when plotlines are addressed, they sound a bit like bad fan fiction like Finn detailing how Kurt was creepy about his crush prior to the big gay slur that led to Finn being booted from the house back during the GaGa tribute episode. On the one hand good it was good that this plot thread was finally picked back up, but on the other hand it was bad because it was pretty much the writers cutting and pasting what the audience has written on message boards so they could sort of quell concerns over clear writers' favorite Kurt.
Which random note: Kurt is basically a singing version of Augustine Burroughs right?
Anyway, playing to your audience is fine to one degree or another, they are the ones keeping your lights on and what not. But pandering to them is a whole different thing, like the sudden disappearance of Terri since people didn't like her or Quinn's non-existent baby because people were bored with it or the whole Britney Spears episode because fans and Britney wanted on the show because weaves, even poorly taken care of ones, aren't cheap.
Her cameos weren't bad, but we have seen Britney do infinitely better:
But true, also infinitely worse:
We did enjoy the whole "Grilled Cheesus" episode if only because it focused mainly on the cast, not a terrible amount of shoehorning in of people that sometimes happens on Glee since it's become the 2010s Will and Grace in that way that it always verges dangerously close to being a few minutes of plot and a whole lot of "OMG, guess who we have on the show this week!?" moments.
Glee does extraordinarily well when it is based around the core group of characters instead of writing in everybody who wants to make an appearance. I mean, does Mr. Schue do anything nowadays? Does he even teach Spanish anymore? Seems like he spends the bulk of his time giving out Glee assignments and pining for Emma.
Anyway, the show seemed to be on a season 2 winning streak with cuteness of "Duets." Focused almost entirely on our group of Gleeks, the episode allowed all the characters to stand out, even an unfortunately fully-clothed Mike Chang and the wonderful Tina as they did "Sing" from A Chorus Line.
New guy Sam and Quinn did an actually an endearing rendition of Jason Mraz's "Lucky," a song you readers know I can't really stand.
And Finn/Rachel were hilariously inappropriate with "With You I'm Born Again," Santana proved that she completely underused vocally on the show, and the show had its season 1, first 13 episodes spark back for once.
Then came last week's new episode of Glee which was, as always, a mixed bag of good singing and bad plot points as Mr. Schue tried to win over Emma by doing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the high school. While we particularly enjoyed the vocals as well as the remembered continuity of Rachel being an abysmal actress:
The rest of the episode left shuddering with antici (SAAAAAAAAY IT) pation that never quite satisfied since the whole plotline was so awkward and served only to make Mr. Schue a creeping creeper who creeps.
Regardless, we look forward to next week's episode with Puck out of juvenile hall, Will, as always, crossing the line, Kurt potentially changing schools and the always pithy Coach Sue:
As much as we mock the show on the weekly basis, we still love it for simply being able to exist for more than one season on network television.
Thanks so much for checking out this week's Gleecap and see you next week! Yes?
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