I’ve never been a big fan of musicals. The big choreographed dance numbers and random people all somehow able to sing in harmony at a moments notice goes beyond my suspension of disbelief. I only enjoy musicals when it’s clear they aren’t taking themselves seriously (like Spamalot or Avenue Q) and don’t try to pass themselves off as realistic. Disney animated movies usually involve talking animals, so it isn’t much more of a leap for musical numbers to break out there, either.
Though there are limits
So when Fox first aired Glee back in September 2009, I avoided it pretty hard. The show did not look particularly bad, I just don’t take to musicals very well, and so spent my time on other shows (like the fantastic Modern Family). I never begrudged the show or assumed it was terrible, just wasn’t my cup of tea. Also, knowing plenty of theatre kids in college, I felt I had lived through a lot of that “drama” anyway. While I wasn’t looking, however, Glee fucking exploded. It garnered critical praise and amassed a feverent fan base calling themselves Gleeks (get it?!?!). It went on to win the Emmy for Best Comedy, and its return from it’s winter hiatus was heavily promoted with 5 zillion ginormous pop up ads that invaded my internet in the weeks leadin up to premiere of the second half of it’s season (season 1.5?).
With the promotional blitz, friends going on about it, and seeing it on the cover of every other issue of Entertainment Weekly, I began to get curious. Was I missing out on something special? Could I be a Gleek deep down? I certainly don’t fit in with most of the people around me, maybe this show will speak to me! And then I saw a commercial for the new episode, which featured a character uttering the line “You know a dolphin is just a gay shark.”
What a real gay shark looks like
I groaned and rolled my eyes, and assumed that it was merely a throw away line, and that the producers where saving the good stuff as a surprise. But then, the day after the premiere, that same line was quoted all over Facebook and Twitter. Really? That was funny? I began to wonder if I had given the show too much credit. I normally try not to trash entertainment I have not actually experienced myself, but perhaps I had gone too far in the other direction. Well that settled it, I told myself. I need to watch Glee and see just what this show everyone is talking about is.
So I pulled up the Glee pilot on my computer one afternoon this week, prepared to marathon the hell out of the show and try and catch up. I hit the play button. Once the pilot was over, I turned my computer off. I could not keep going.
Now, I had prepared myself to sit through musical numbers. What I had not prepared myself for the volume of camp and melodrama it contained, and the groan inducing forced jokes (for the most part, anyway. I did laugh at Matthew Morrison’s “They feel like they’re invisible. That’s why they all have Myspace pages” line, however dated the joke may be). And it seemed to me that the show was trying just too hard with Jane Lycnh, who I consider a fantatstic comedic performer otherwise. Her first line of the episode (“You think that’s hard? Try waterboaring, that’s hard!”) just felt way too blunt and on the nose for setting up who they wanted her character to be, and it continued throughout the episode. Surprisingly, the musical numbers were fewer and more entertaining than I had anticipated, but they hardly made up for the rest of the show. It seemed to me like Glee was merely trying to wear you down into liking it by smiling a lot.
Criticism aside, I did find things to appreciate. Matthew Morrison gives his character a lot of added depth, which is needed amongst all the high school drama cliches. And despite my aversion to the show, there is a certain charm to it’s underdog nature. The show is about people who feel alienated by the world they live, and struggle to be taken seriously by those around them. The show itself mimics the theme, by being unsure of how campy/melodramatic/satirical it wants to be at any given time. Glee is that dorky kid with big dreams, trying to get noticed in a world full of the big popular kids like House or Lost.
And unfortunately, it’s doomed to fail.
But it's too big to fail!
This isn’t because I’m not a fan of the show. Like Twilight, I’m outside the target demographic. They will not lament my loss. If I were to complain to the producers about not liking the show, they’d probably shrug and say “Why would you?” They could give a shit about my opinion, and rightly so. There are plenty of other people who adore the show. Everyone loves an underdog. And that’s the problem.
Something major happened during the first half of Glee‘s first season: it got immensely popular. Which is for the most part a good thing for a show. But I feel Glee may be a bit of a special case. Like I said, even for someone like me who doesn’t like it, there is a charm to it’s “lets just put on a show!” attitude. But this persona is somewhat undercut by the massive promotional push and vibrant popularity. Granted, the promotional blitz featured on magazine covers and online ads aren’t the shows doing. But it does highlight an important fact; Glee isn’t an underdog anymore. It’s a full fledged phenomenon.
And that creates problems for any show. Especially considering the onslaught of ads that preempted this weeks premiere, backlash is all but inevitable. It’s highly unreasonable and unfair to expect a show to live up to such extensive hype. And a show like Glee, which seems to want to be so many different kinds of shows at once, will have a particularly hard time meeting expectations. Fans are finicky, and when things get really popular really fast, they’re even worse. And Glee has the added problem of being simultaneously a show about underdogs and one of the most popular programs on television. This makes it’s message a bit shallow. Kind of like how Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” ends up being sung by the same preppy popular girls the song vilifies, or how “Born in the USA” has gone from a critique of the violence of Vietnam to a chest pounding “Amurrrrrca!” patriotic anthem.
But that doesn’t even touch the biggest hurtle Glee now has to face. Like a number of other shows, Glee has adopted a bizarre shooting schedule, which essentially splits the season into two mini-seasons (a strategy that upsets me for a whole batch of other reasons, but this is neither the time nor place to air those grievances). The first half was filmed with no fan reaction. The second half that is now just starting to air, however, was produced with mountains of fan reaction to build off of. More Songs! More Relationship Complications! More Sue Sylvester! (judging by the new promos, it looks like the producers definitely ran with that last one) But fans don’t know what makes a good show. Ever read fan fiction? Yeah, they’re terrible.
"... and then Harry Potter took my virginity."
Glee hasn’t even made it out of it’s first season, and it has already had to content with message board wish lists of what the fans want to see. And if the show tries to please everyone, it will become even more center-less than it already is. Remember what happened to Heroes when they started taking in fan reactions? It wasn’t pretty.
Granted, I’m basing this off of viewing the pilot episode, random bits and pieces of other episodes, and what my many friends who love this show tell me. And perhaps I am a bit bitter and am subconciously hoping for the show to fail. I’m watching a program I have no interest in get the full support of a network that abandoned Arrested Development (aka the funniest show ever) to fend for itself and scramble for ratings, and chose to run Firefly out of order so no one knew what was going on, and then act all surprised when the ratings weren’t there. Neither of those are Glee‘s fault, and I really wish the show no ill will. But that won’t matter if the show collapses under the weight of it’s own hype and too eager fanbase.
