The Bad-
For any good storyline that has appeared on the show, there have been many more problematic ones. I’m not sure why false pregnancies are in style lately—Peggy on Nashville—or teacher-student crushes/fling/relationships have been trendy—Ezra and Aria on Pretty Little Liars—but Glee made sure to at least touch on them. Thankfully they haven’t touched on the other disturbing-yet-popular TV plot of late: incest (Jamie and Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones). Added to the problematic plots is the fact that story-lines and characters are dropped and picked up again seemingly arbitrarily, as if the writers are making it up as they go rather than working from a season outline of some sort. My roommate is particularly bothered by the fact that the timelines are all messed up because of the way seasons 4 and 5 split up the 2012-2013 school year. It is only so bothersome because it breaks with the way the shows has established itself to run. Instead of touching on these, because honestly, the list would be so long you’d have to spend a year sitting here reading them, I’m going to focus on execution.
The graduation of its major characters was majorly mishandled on the series. For starters, it seemed arbitrary who was and wasn’t a senior in that first round. When the series started, the only people who absolutely had to be sophomores were Finn (he was the team quarterback and captain, an unlikely position for a freshman), Puck (only because his dynamic with Quinn and Finn seemed too ingrained to be new and because he looks SO old), and Quinn (she was the cheerleading captain, as unlikely a position for a freshman as Finn’s situation). Santana and Brittany would likely be sophomores because of their dynamic with Quinn, but since they were initially introduced as her underlings, not necessarily. Pretty much anyone and everyone else from the original cast could 
have been freshman and probably should have been. (Though if I’m being totally honest, I’m wishing Tina had been a senior just so that she could be off the show already. The fact that #GoHomeTina is all but an apartment motto at this point does not bode well for how she is being received.) Then there was Blaine, who gave every impression of being older than Kurt until suddenly he wasn’t. If anyone should have graduated first, Blaine should have. Sam, as a latecomer, could have been given any age and it would have worked out just fine. Of course, the main reason to make so many of the original cast into sophomores at the start of the series (a fact which isn’t really revealed until around season 3 when graduation is looming) is because their graduation would be that much more meaningful if it happened with them all together. However, graduating the entire class all at once left a massive hole at McKinley High, leading to problem number two…
Integrating new characters. Blaine and Sam were both slowly worked into the show. Blaine who started off in another school and only because of his relationship with Kurt did he eventually decide to come to McKinley. Sam, like Finn, needed to be coerced into joining the New Directions. Each of their introductions was done by themselves. There weren’t a half dozen other characters introduced at the same time, making them all into a blurred mess. They feel as integral to the show as the actual original members of the cast and it is easy to forget that they weren’t part of that initial Journey song performance. Then there was the way they introduced the newer members of the glee club, added in season 4 to replace the graduating seniors. Here is where the show ran into some big problems. Because the show decided to graduate everyone at once, they suddenly needed an absurd number of the characters to bring in. The show should have taken a lesson from Degrassi, which is still going strong after many cast turnovers. The only original cast member on the show is Principal Simpson, who only appears onscreen to step in to return order when things get too out of hand. Why does it work though? Because the show has a built in system for bringing in new members. Every couple of years or so, a small handful of students graduate, and a group of freshmen are brought in to replace them. The majority of the cast does not change for another couple years when the next oldest group then graduates and yet another small group of freshmen come in. The newcomers never overwhelm the old, so that by the time those freshmen are seniors ready to graduate, they have been on the show a long time and serve as the show’s grounding while newer characters are being brought in to take their place. That is precisely what Glee failed to do. It graduated virtually all of the popular characters at once and then had to find a way to let us get to know them. In fact, not only did they add 5 new New Directions members, but upon realizing that they had made Kitty too mean, they added the meaner Bree and her cheerleader posse. Not to mention the need to add characters to populate Kurt and Rachel’s NY world, which brings us to…
Post-graduation plans. Glee was faced with a choice that every show centered around high school has to make: move on with the characters to college or stay with the high school and bring in new people. Perhaps because Glee had not properly prepared itself for either option, it opted for doing both. The problem here is multi-faceted, but here are some of the largest issues the lack of decision had:
- It makes it that much harder to get to know the new club members because there simply isn’t time for everyone and the cast was already fairly large to begin with.
- It forced us to directly compare the new and old members of New Directions rather than allow us to look at them in their own right. (There was literally a plot line where the characters fought to be “the new Rachel”.)
- It gave us new, more adult scenarios that made the high school drama look like…well, high school drama.
Speaking as someone who absolutely loves the New York story-lines (I loved seeing Rachel, Santana, and Kurt living together though this newest Santana-Rachel mess is way over the top and out of character for everyone involved), I wonder if the show would have been better if they had stayed at McKinley. Or if they should have just moved to New York (as they will be doing in a few weeks). This past week’s episode took place entirely around the New Directions, with the exception of a single New York scene that would have worked even if the show had not followed any of the cast to New York. [SPOILER ALERT!] Kurt rushed into the diner to inform the still-feuding Rachel and Santana that the glee club had been disbanded. Which, presumably, is what prompts them and so many of the other alums to return for the 100th. “For the First Time in Forever” I wasn’t bothered by the newbies and the high school drama. The story made sense. It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t trying to balance an entirely different lifestyle and tone in New York. It felt like the Glee of old. Even if they thought that the ever-talented Skylar Astin could pass as a high school student. Spoiler alert: he can’t.
The thing that has always bothered me about the show (though admittedly my roommates do not feel the same way) is Will Schuester. He is meant to be the show’s heart in the same way that Coach Taylor was in Friday Night Lights (you can’t help but feel your heart rally when you hear the words “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”) or Mr. Feeny was in Boy Meets World (I dare you not to get teary eyed when he looks at the empty classroom and says “Class dismissed” at the end of the series). But he’s just…inappropriate. All the time. There was the time he planted pot in Finn’s locker to blackmail him into joining the New Directions (that opener should have thrown up some red flags). Or the time he desperately wanted to be a part of the Rocky Horror Picture Show performance, ignoring the fact that he thought this was an appropriate school play in the first place, and joined the class in only those tight gold shorts. Or when he decided to show the glee club boys how to move by…dancing without his shirt on and singing “You Wish You Could Sex Her.” When Rachel has a crush on him, he sings a love song with her even though he knows how she feels. Or that time when he got Puck and Finn to sing “I Wanna Sex You Up” in his acapella group. And when he performed “Toxic” with the glee club on stage despite thinking it was inappropriate. Saving the best for last…he had sex with his wife in a classroom on school property during school hours and then was caught by a student (somehow they weren’t fired). These are by no means all of his transgressions, but they certainly are telling.
NEXT: What was just plain bizarre.
SHARE:
