Let’s Talk About Glee: Or, Why Am I Still Watching This ****?

Oh look, Rachel's sad! What a unique and compelling plot point!

So, I’m still watching Glee, although I’m now only hanging in on the show by a thread. It has gotten pretty dire in recent weeks though.

For one, the creators seem to have the same problem that every high school-ish show seems to have – clinging desperately to characters that are horribly eff’ed out and that no longer fit with the rest of the show.

Yes, I understand that the singing of Lea Michele (Rachel) was a big draw for the first couple of seasons, as was her on-again, off-again and finally on-again romance with Finn. However, for the love of God, why do we need a fourth season of this?

It would be more tolerable if Rachel-Finn was the only relationship shown to be in constant danger, but it isn’t. Kurt-Blaine, Emma-Will, BritTana, NewRachel-NewPuck and pretty much everyone else on the show have Serious Drama going on in their relationships. A general rule of thumb for Glee is that nobody is ever legitimately happy.

If anything, that’s the direction I’d take in Glee’s fourth season – Just having the kids be effing happy for once. They won nationals to close season three, but in the very first episode of season four, it deals with the “piss in your Cheerios” storyline of the newest member of the club and her mom, the lunchlady who gets harassed by popular kids.

By the way, this storyline seems ripped from an era that no longer exists. I graduated from high school in 2002, and we weren’t doing shit like picking on lunch ladies, because we didn’t live in a 1970s sitcom. I can stretch belief that jocks might pick up the glee club kids, but not that they shit over every member of the student body, and the tone of the show has drifted from the first season, where it was more of a satire in my opinion.

So yes, Glee is another show I’m mostly hate-watching this year, and I didn’t even comment on the other things I found excruciating, like the new Puck, the ridiculousness of the actor ages and how they manage to make Heather Elizabeth Morris somehow look like crap. The only thing I’ll credit the show with – some of the songs and mash-ups are still really good to me. So, they do have that going for them.