The Three Faces of Glee

I think it's pretty safe to say that fans of Glee, even the most ardent among them, have a love/hate thing going for the show. Episode to episode, it's one of the least consistent shows on the air. There are a number of reasons for this, the basic conceit of the show being a hurdle that promotes a lack of balance, but the root of the problem is that Glee has three head writers.

I had always known that the show had three creators, but until I actually saw the episode credits listed for each, I could never really put my finger on exactly why the show was all over the place. I had a notion that the writing process was heavily collaborative, but after seeing the breakdown in episodes, it's pretty apparent to me that each writer has his own style, his own narrative focus, and a particular way of working with the show's foundation and characters.

My relationship with Glee is as inconsistent as the episodes themselves. It's hard to quantify exactly what makes this show a success to the general population, but for me, there are very specific aspects that make an episode a classic or an embarrassment. First and foremost, I love musicals, so even at its worst, I cut Glee a lot of slack. It's an incredibly difficult genre to work with at all, let alone week-in and week-out. The very fact that it isn't a crime procedural, medical show, cop show, or legal drama also wins it a ton of points. Glee doesn't have 50 years of predecessors to trade on and reference for pointers. They are making things up as they go along and are, by and large, doing a hell of a job. In terms of ratings, they are completely unbelievable. Their key demo ratings are insanely high and are consistent every week. It sends a good message to potential writers that a show that is so strange and would seemingly have a niche audience is such a success. To boot, the show has a more diverse cast than just about any other on the air with characters from a number of social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, including characters with varying mental and physical ability levels. It honestly makes it hard to criticize. Throw in the show's recent focus on bullying, and its indictment of homophobia, and I'm willing to let weaker narrative points slide. The very fact that this show managed to make their Teenage Dream cover the biggest selling Glee single in history makes me smile. Not so much because of the song itself (but leave it to the darling Darren Criss to make a fairly nauseating song completely charming), but because it's essentially a love song that was sung by one boy to another. Something like that succeeding like it has sends a wonderful message and can't help but make me smile. (Word is Darren Criss is becoming a series regular, so maybe he can charmify other songs with equally horrendous lyrics. Yay!) I appreciate a show that has something to say even when it doesn't gel with my own ideologies, so when a show like Glee comes along that has a message that is in line with my own perspectives, I melt a bit.

That said, this show is wildly uneven, and of the three faces of Glee, I'm generally only fond of about 1 1/2 of them. It has honestly been a good long while since I've seen a lot of the season 1 episodes, but I can confidently say that Brad Falchuk is far and away the best writer on the show, beating out Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan by a considerable margin. Before I looked closely at the lists of episodes, I thought of my favorites. Almost without fail, the episodes I've enjoyed the most were penned by Brad Falchuk. "Dream On", "Sectionals", and "Preggers" from season one, and both of his season two outings thus far ("Grilled Cheesus" and "Never Been Kissed") are some of the best of the series, in my opinion. For me, musicals only really work when the story and the songs blend together seamlessly. I know a lot of people just enjoy a good musical number, but as far as I'm concerned, if there's no story behind it, I'm bored. Falchuk manages to integrate the musical numbers more organically than his fellow writers and includes the most coherent storylines. He also seems to pay more attention to consistency of character than Murphy or Brennan. The emotional impact of his episodes works because he tells a complete story. Murphy and Brennan seem more focused on music, music, iTunes sales, and more music than anything else. The funny thing is, the songs that are used for a clear purpose and that have narrative significance are the songs I like the best. Even when the songs are only important because they were performed at Sectionals or something, they're rooted in the story and are important to the characters. That makes them important to me. Even if it's a song I generally hate.

The show really falls apart for me when they don't even pretend to have a coherent storyline. On the one hand, I guess I have to give them some credit for being ballsy enough to not even try, but on the other, considerably larger hand, it annoys the hell out of me and is unwatchably dull. It's like musical pornography when there's just one shameless ploy after another to get us to the next song. I need meaningful connective tissue to really enjoy myself. There are certain episodes where I half expect a pizza boy to show up in class with something to sing about. All the non-singing is just a throwaway bid at loosely stringing together a bunch of songs. Ugh. A sub-genre of this kind of episode is the tribute episode. I have mixed feelings about these... While I grant that the lazy attempts at a story in episodes like the Madonna tribute, the Britney tribute, and the Rocky Horror theme episode are unengaging and mostly ridiculous, I do enjoy to the music to a certain extent. It should be noted that all three of these episodes are courtesy of show creator Ryan Murphy. The Madonna episode was probably the best of these three. Why? Well, it has the most actual story going on, even if half of it was totally absurd (Sue's hair woes, anyone?) But really, who can argue when Sue's Vogue appears on the screen. I reconcile myself to these kinds of episodes by not thinking about them as episodes of a TV show. These episodes are simply variety shows with a series of musical vignettes. So long as every episodes doesn't fall into this category, I'm okay with it. The only real problem is that when they're haphazardly stringing together songs with "story" they sometimes make some fundamental changes to characters or ongoing arcs and then casually forget about those changes next week. Look, show, I'm not saying every iota of the show has to be consistent, but a little continuity now and then would certainly be nice. Murphy's episodes do tend to have some of the more merciless dark humor on the show, and the songs are always solid, but his theme episodes aren't my favorites, to be sure... His non-tribute shows are a lot more successful for me, but overall, Murphy is really hit and miss for me, even within the episodes themselves.

Of the three head writers on the show, I'd say Ian Brennan is the weakest link for me. He has some strong episodes to his credit, but there's more bad than good. When I thought of my least favorite episodes ever, "Funk" was at the top of my list for about 87 different reasons. Thank you, Ian Brennan, for the only episode of Glee that I turned off halfway through, came back later, and then fast-forwarded my way through the rest of the pain and agony. Geez, if there's one episode I never want to see again, that's it. Even the songs were terrible. That episode left such a bad taste in my mouth that it may have tainted Brennan's other credits unduly... except for maybe "Hairography", which was no peach either. In Brennan's defense, most of his credits are middle of the road. He wasn't at the helm for any of my favorite episodes, but most of his are at least decent. I wouldn't be at all heartbroken if Falchuk and Murphy took over his share of the show though, that's for sure. He also seems to be one of the primary offenders when it comes to Mr. Schue rapping, so, you know, that's unforgivable.

All in all, I think Glee is going to go down in television history as one of the most aberrant successes on record. It really is a marvel that this hodgepodge of genres has some of the highest demo ratings on air. There's a lot of backlash for the show lately, and I can see where that would happen with such a popular show, but I'm hanging in there. By all accounts, this is a show that should have tanked. It doesn't fit into any of the standard genres and is a musical for god's sake. Just because it's a rollicking success doesn't mean it isn't a trailblazer, even at its worst. I'm hoping the show can keep up the momentum and I have my fingers crossed that Brad Falchuk will start writing more than his allotted third of the episodes. If not, at least I can theoretically count on every third episode or so being a classic. Quite frankly, with the exception of maybe a half-dozen network shows, that's a ratio to be proud of.