The Good, the Bad, and the Glee

My love for Glee knows no bounds. I've have long had an obsessive appreciation for musicals (the purest form of expression as far as Joss and I are concerned), but that doesn't mean they're all good. In spite of my love of characters spontaneously bursting into song, even I have my limits. High School Musical, anyone? Oh sure, I've seen it all right. (The first two, in fact.) But, while my threshold for musicals is quite high, my tolerance level for Disney-style teen crap is quite low...

It's for this reason that I'm so pleased that Glee is far from your typical tween dramedy. Given that Ryan Murphy is at the helm, I was confident it would have a lot more edge and more cutting humor than your average fare (Murphy's prior pet project was Popular which was awesome (until it wasn't anymore)). Anyway, I wanted to start off this post with a clear assertion of my love and admiration for Glee because for the rest of the post, I'm going to be contrasting the good with the bad of the show. No matter how many quibbles I may have, at the end of the day, it's one of the most unique shows on TV (and yes, I'm aware the technically "unique" is an absolute, but you know what I mean) and in spite of its faults, succeeds in breaking the mold and allowing Murphy and company to really show their creative chops. Much appreciated, Show. Much appreciated.

That said, the show's awesomeness is often tempered by some less-than-awesomeness...

The Good: It's a musical, week in and week out. Many shows have had musical episodes (I think we can all agree that Buffy's Once More with Feeling set the gold standard here, but other shows (like Scrubs) have also tried their hands), but only Glee takes the musical as its base genre. The Buffy musical integrated song and story quite a bit better than Glee, but then again, they didn't have to do this every single week. Nothing thrills me quite like a good musical number, and this show has them in spades. The producers aren't afraid to take a chance and it has paid off 100 fold. That's pretty damn ballsy and not an easy feat...

The Bad: ...which is evidenced by some of the less successful narrative aspects of the show. When your hands are tied by convention, it's got to be hard to really do exactly what you want all the time. For example, Glee's most recent outing (the Madonna-thon) where actual story and any semblance of logic (which was never real high on their priority list to begin with) were thrown by the wayside. I have no problem with an all music extravaganza, but what few story elements there were didn't... really... work all that well. I most enjoy musicals when the songs are integrated into the story in such a natural and compelling way that you hardly even think about the fact that they just halted dinner so they could sing on the tables for five minutes. Musicals are at their best when the songs help drive the story and the story helps inform on the songs. Glee certainly has its moments of story-melded musical genius, but more and more, the narrative is completely secondary and each plot point seems to be an often shameless ploy to get to the next iTunes sales-getter. Ammon likens the songs in musicals to the sex in porn, and lately on Glee, I kind of have to agree with him. For the most part, I'm okay with more song, less story, but I like the blend to be seamless. The group version of Like a Virgin was quite skillfully done, but most of the others didn't really fit in all that well... Seriously, the music video was badass and awesome and all, but story-wise? WTF? At the end of the day though, just as no one buys Playboy for the articles, the music really is the primary draw and the best part of the show, and I kind of have to hand it to the creators for unabashedly delivering proudly over-produced musical numbers left and right. I have heard that the next few episodes do a much better job with character development and musical integration, so I suspect they'll be back on track in no time. At the moment, as much as I love the music, I could actually live with a bit less of it.

The Good: The music really is catchy as hell (in a good way) and most of the singers are absolutely amazing. Seriously, Lea Michele (Rachel Berry) is fantastic. One of the best things to come of recent episodes (and I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of shit for saying this, but...)? Jesse St. James. I know he's playing a bad guy (seemingly), but I don't care. It's so nice to finally have a male vocalist who can keep up with Lea. As it turns out, Jonathan Groff (who plays Jesse) and Lea both performed on Broadway in the musical Spring Awakening (I want to say the girl who plays Tina was also in it...). Anyway, after performing together for two years, not only are Lea and Jonathan the best of friends in real life, but they've developed one hell of a vocal rapport and chemistry with one another (as is clear to see in the show). Glee has always had a knack for taking cheesy songs and making them relevant and awesome again, and seeing Lea and Jonathan take the uber-corny Lionel Ritchie blind-girl-sculpting-his-face-in-clay song "Hello" and making it so awesome was a real thrill. Even though a number of the principle cast aren't the most spectacular singers (cough--Finn--cough), the guest stars are beyond spectacular. Kristin Chenowith is coming back to the show (tonight, I believe), Neil Patrick Harris (or, if you watch The Soup "Nei9l") is going to be in the Joss Whedon directed episode coming up (!), and while Idina Menzel has yet to sing on the show (a travesty, if you ask me), I hear she will very soon and I simply can't wait. The more Broadway vets, the better.

The Bad: Finn just needs to stop. I think the reason I'm appreciating Jesse so very very much is that we've had to suffer through one-too-many Rachel/Finn duet. Don't get me wrong, the songs are still awesome and all, but the fact that Rachel is so amazing just makes the fact that Finn's singing is terrible all the more ear-splittingly apparent. Honestly, it goes from Rachel's dizzying range and perfect pitch to Finn's thin, raspy, flat "vocals" and it's quite simply jarring. And disappointing. Hearing Rachel sing with Jesse (and with Mr. Shu, for that matter) has been a revelation. There's nothing more exhilarating than hearing a really powerful duet and when Rachel is relying of Finn? It's really more of a solo... Seriously, in the download versions, you can hear that the sound mixer has casually amped up Rachel's vocals (not that she needs it) and underplayed Finn's. I've also heard that in live performances, Finn is even worse, so hats off to the sound mixer for making him less terrible. A herculean effort, it seems. The fact that the base concept for the show is that Finn is the vocal glue that holds the glee club together is just absurd. Everyone is a better singer than he is. Artie has a really deep, soulful sound, Puck's got a great voice, all the girls can blow his singing out of the water (seriously, it was fabulous to finally get to hear Santana get some vocal props during Like a Virgin), and it's abundantly clear that Finn is not the tour de force here. He's a liability. It's unfortunate that he doesn't have a better voice because his acting is solid and his characterization is spot on. As great a job as he does with the character, for a show that is this musically based, they really should have gone with a Broadway baby instead...

The Good: The supporting cast. (Kurt, in particular, makes my day, and once bit players Brittany and Santana have begun stealing the show of late. Brittany cracks me up and has as many hilarious one-liners as Sue Sylvester these days.)

The Bad: The amount of screen-time and singing opportunities afforded to the supporting cast. (It's a huge ensemble, I get it. But honestly, it's been established that they're all better singers than Finn (and by and large, more interesting characters), so why the hell is he getting all the solos and grand story arcs?! I appreciate the fact that they've acknowledged this in the show and I'm hopeful that Kurt's and Mercedes' new foray into the world of the Cheerios will help quell some of this problem.)

The Good: The show has finally eased off the baby drama that dominated the first half of the season. Much as I love babies (especially fake ones), that was getting a little grating.

The Bad: As glad as I am that it's not the A-plot every week, the show just dropped the baby storylines entirely. I know they'll be back and all, but right now, it kind of feels like, "Hey, whoa, didn't we just spend a whole lotta time and energy on all that?" Apparently not...

The Good: The show keeps things snapping and doesn't dwell too long on the storylines I'm not all that invested in.

The Bad: The show doesn't spend all that much time on the storylines I do care about either. Seriously, at the pace they're going, I'm a little afraid the show will burn out before it wraps its second season. Much like The O.C. and Gossip Girl, when you've got that much going on that quickly and jump from plot to plot in a matter of minutes, you're bound to run out of gas...

The Good: The fact that the show is finally back after a four-month hiatus!

The Bad: The fact that Fox thinks American Idol is more important than anything else on the planet and is willing to allow it to spill over into Glee's timeslot. I am a professional DVRerer and nothing is more aggravating than having the last few minutes of a show cut off. To boot, all my timeslots are filled to begin with, so I can't be adding minutes to the ends of things without screwing up the whole venture. Seriously, between that and ABC's penchant for starting its shows two minutes early (that needs to stop, ABC, I'm not kidding--I have, uh... absolutely no recourse... and I'm not afraid to use it!), my scheduling is much more tedious than it needs to be. Justified (which had a couple of off episodes, but has now really come into its own--rather awesomely) could do without going a minute over as well. I don't need my schedule screwed up so that I can catch the "next time on" crap. The episode ends in time, so end the timeslot at 9 on the dot, mmmkay?

Anyway, my love of Glee has its issues, but it's still love. Again, I've heard that many of my primary quibbles will be addressed shortly, and a solution to my main quibble (with Finn's singing) seems to have been written right into the show. When Finn told Jesse he was glad there would be someone to help out on lead male vocals, I was like, "HELLS YEAH!" Here's hoping that's not just lip service.