Wednesday, April 14, 2010
DOLPHINS ARE JUST GAY SHARKS: Even though we briefly got the return of Ben Linus and John Locke as high school teachers, we also need to talk about the return of Glee. Sure, there was a lot of solid stuff--Sue's plot with Brittany and Santana (and their inability to execute the plot), pretty much every moment Idina Menzel and/or Jonathan Groff were on-screen, and about half of the musical numbers ("Hello," "Gives You Hell," "Highway To Hell")--but I was left a little flat. Yet another Finn-Rachel plotline repeating pretty much every variation we've seen before, and relegating the rest of the cast to the background? Over-reliance on Cory Monteith's blatantly auto-tuned vocals? ("Hello, I Love You" was not the best choice for the first musical number in the episode, right?) Confirmation that Teri isn't gone, but without any narrative progression for her? Let's get a narrative train rolling, OK?
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I mostly enjoyed the hour, but am amazed a show can do so well when the two main UST couples have little to no chemistry.
ReplyDeleteMy problem is that Rachel is not that interesting a character to me, and this episode was built too much around her. I liked the Finn stuff, I even liked "Hello I Love You". But all the Rachel stuff was overwhelming. And I simply do not buy that Shue "forgot" that "Hello Again" was his & Teri's song. That's not the kind of thing a music teacher would forget.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that bothered me just a bit was that they seem to have become unmoored from even their own internal "reality." Finn's montage was one thing -- what exactly, I don't know, fantasy? -- but the final in-costume number? What was that supposed to be? Dress rehearsal, for what? Where did they get the money for the costumes? We're never going to hear that song again, so I just did not understand why we were seeing it, except that they wanted to include another big production number. Speaking of: Vocal Adrenaline's "Highway to Hell" was awesome on so many different dimensions (which made it jarring when their director castigated them!)
I wish the cast on this show had names that were easier to spell... Teri (Jesalyn Gilsig?) was scary awesome last night.
As with many shows, one of the strengths of this one is the quality of the 2nd tier characters. This episode was all Finn and Rachel and Shue. Kurt, Artie, Mercedes, Quinn, and Puck were just scenery here, and usually we get at least a little bit for each of them to do and often a song from at least one of them. As has been mentioned before, the Finn/Rachel storyline was more interesting as a counter-pont to the Finn/Quinn cliche; on their own, it's not interseting enough to be the main story.
ReplyDeletedjg, thanks for saying everything i was thinking!
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, i find the rachel character grating
so while i enjoyed last night's episode
i wish we had seen more the glee club members
i do love me some puck!
I'll have to watch again later to figure out when everything is going on. However, as someone who paid pretty close attention to the Road to Sectionals, I have to ask:
ReplyDeletewhen did Finn and Rachel start dating?
I don't think they actually dated. Rachel just decided they were dating.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mind the Finn/Rachel plot last night, in part because I think it was disposing of the "will they get together as Rachel so desperately wants?" plot in one episode. It had to be an open question, because of the Finn/Quinn breakup in the last episode, so here they dealt with it and got rid of it. With crazy cat calendars.
ReplyDeleteI thought it did a good job. Yeah, I missed the secondary characters, but much like Lost, you have to deal with the stars first when you come back. Plus we still got a sense of how say, Puck and Quinn were doing on the sidelines.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought it did a good job balancing the musical numbers while still showing plot--getting a sense of how Finn feels during the song, even though it's bouncing between reality and what's probably in his head during it, and at the end showing how Rachel was feeling about Finn.
And they finally addressed the fact that a girl with rampant OCD can't really uh, date. I look forward to future sorta-hatesex between Will and the VA coach.
Nitpick much? All is well in Glee-land when I get Britney one liners and Sue Sylvester nastiness. And of course, the singing. Yes, any Doors song is bad news, but it was more than made up for by "Give You Hell" and "Hello, Goodbye." Remember, it plays like a comic book, not a soap opera.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who was bothered by the Will/Emma of it all? We spend 15 or so episodes watching Schu try to grin and bear his awful marriage while pining for Emma. They finally get it together and (SPOILERS) one episode into the new "season" and she's gone from quirky to stunted crazy virgin, he's ready to drop the relationship because it's "not working" after what seems like one date. And then he's making out with Idina Menzel two minutes after meeting her.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm not a shipper, and I get that the show is more about caricature than character, but is it too much to ask for a little internal consistency? If the characters are all capable of pretty much anything at any time, why do I care what happens? Why am I going to invest in Will and Emma's feelings for each other if Will is going and making out with some random woman he just met a mere 30 minutes after he and Emma finally get together? Why am I going to invest in anything he does?
Aaargh, why don't these people follow basic rules of storytelling?!?
Interview with Brittany, Heather Morris on Playing Glee’s Resident Dummy, Brittany.
ReplyDeleteCreepy Ryan Murphy: "he always just asks me to dance for him, like, “Entertain me!”
I think you're right about the level of storytelling on the show, but I'm not sure that the storytelling matters that much to anyone who works on the show, as plot and characterization has varied wildly from episode to episode since the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI've found that the way I can best enjoy the show is if I view it like the guy from Memento watching an anthology. It's often funny, has many solid performances, is nice to look at, does interesting things with the music, and, sometimes, has resonant, self-contained stories within an episode, and that's enough for me.
In other words, I think watching Glee for the storytelling is like reading Playboy for the articles.