META STASIS: So, Glee. On the one hand, last night's season premiere was one of the strongest episodes of the series. For me, the show is at its best when it is funny, and last night was full of funny moments. Some were good writing in its ordinary form (Britney's summer vacation, Coach Beiste's nonsensical Arkansan vernacular, Asian camp); some were just good performing (best deadpan comic timing by a person with Down's Syndrome, ever); a great many were meta (the intro reciting Internet complaints about the show; Finn's terrible dancing; Finn and Artie's half-baked idea of making Artie into a football player, which felt like a riff on the absurdity of the Kurt/football storyline last season). The new characters worked for me, especially Coach Beiste, an expertly-performed and fully rounded character who replaces the one-dimensional Coach Tanaka (the two new singing kids worked too, primarily because they didn't seem as square and out-of-touch as three quarters of the incumbent Nude Erections). I'm not capable of commenting fairly on the songs, since they're not up my alley, but at least they seemed well-chosen, well-staged, and well-placed within the smartly unambitious plot of the first episode.
But it wouldn't be Glee without some stupid decisions, would it? I thought the opening device of appropriating (for laughs) common criticisms of the show was brilliant. I thought Ryan-Murphy-as-Kurt's response to the criticism was petty and defensive. Yes, it is far harder to create something like Glee than it is to criticize it. That is true of literally every work of professional entertainment, from poetry to pornography. So nobody should criticize anything ever? Perhaps Murphy should develop a thicker skin.
And what about the way the show abandoned plots and characterizations it had worked so hard to develop credibly? Last season, Quinn grew up, had a baby, learned to be a supportive teammate instead of an icy queen bee, and chose to reject the Cheerios. Rachel developed a complicated emotional relationship with her mother, the long-time coach of the rival Vocal Adrenaline (a woman with some alleged sexual chemistry with the chemically inert Schue). Tina and Artie hooked up in a way that made more sense than other relationships on this show. But somehow, in an offscreen summer, Quinn reacquired her cheer-conniving (coming to school with a plan to backstab Santana and appeal to Sue's venality to get back into the Cheerios), Idina Menzel vanished, and Tina suddenly chose abs over Artie. I guess everybody should buckle in for another season of plot whiplash.
