Glee, Season 4
May. 13th, 2013 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI’m going to throw out Glee S4 spoilers left and right, just in case you’re behind on watching and care about such things. (Because, if nothing else, sometimes I care about such things.)
Honestly? Season 4 has been a mess. They added too many characters, but don’t know what to do with most of the ones they have, so they’re just throwing out dozens of plotlines and resolving them just as fast, often without any tension. (The resolution to the Rachel vs. Cassandra arc is just another “I was pushing you because I think you’re great”? After not touching in for months?) They underplay things that could really have used focus (If you’re going to give Burt cancer, especially after giving him a heart attack two seasons ago, then you need to actually do something with it, not introduce it, forget about it for six months, and then act like it’s been weighing on Kurt the whole time when you snap resolve it. Similarly, the dropping and re-picking-up of the Vogue.com plotline, and the underuse of any tension with Kurt/Adam vs. Kurt/Blaine. Kurt just didn’t get the focus his setups demanded.) Then they pick the weirdest things to drag out. The Ryder “catfishing” arc lasted for a third of the season? Seriously?
They clearly didn’t have anything to do with Joe or Sugar, both of whom would just vanish for months at a time. And they keep coming up with excuses to drag Puck, Mercedes, Mike, Quinn and Santana in for a one-episode blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dramatic plot that then gets smiled and nodded away. The writers apparently feel the need to really use the characters for the one episode they have the actor for, but that results in too much crammed-together stuff in too little time, and with too few emotional beats and no follow-through. (This is true for the guest star and celebrity-cast characters, too. Given that Bieste is Will’s only adult friend, you think we might see a little more of her?) Finn makes a deal to be equal partners running the Glee club with Will, resolving an ongoing tension between them, then doesn't appear for the next three episodes, which include regionals and Will and Emma’s actual wedding.
The new younger cast is obviously an attempt to replicate the group dynamic, both performance and character-wise, and it’ll be interesting to see what they do for the next season (and who they bring in): Marley is Rachel if she cared more about being liked than being famous. Jake is Puck if he were smarter but less confident. Ryder is Finn if he was more secure in his own identity (and didn’t need to define himself in terms of others). Unique is Mercedes if she were trans. Kitty is Quinn if she hadn’t gotten pregnant.
On that topic: Unique is seriously under-utilized. Kurt and Blaine have been front-and-center since early on, even if the network still limits how smoochy they’re allowed to get. Pushing those characters to the front has worked out well for them, if the fandom is to be believed; and I think it’s actually been educational to some of their audience. (Especially whenever Burt makes a speech.) They could do that again and push that same envelop with Unique, but they need to actually commit to using her and present her story as something other than a background bit. If you’ve been watching carefully, all the right thoughts are there (She has a line about not going to a camp for boys who like wearing dresses, a brief bit about taking birth control pills, a one-off bit about conflict with her parents, and exactly one use of the word “trans.”) but you wouldn’t notice them if you weren’t looking.
The season finale was a particularly strong example of so much of this. Though this isn't a proper season finale, in any case: They only do the first two-thirds of the school year, and I can get behind RM's theory that Season 5 will be the final third of this, and then the first third of what will be Season 6. Holiday episodes will be interesting. It’s clear this wasn’t really intended as a “stopping point”—there’s no payoff for Rachel’s audition; Kurt/Blaine isn’t just a cliffhanger, they introduced a whole new plotline there; and the Sue/Becky situation is left hanging. They did resolve a few things, though in the usual ridiculous ways: The Catfish is Hawk instead of Captain Atom (Unique, who'd been specifically ruled out before; which also means they were using her without actually using her). Britney is given a convenient excuse to leave at the half-season mark (and take with her a certain cartooniness that isn't represented in the younger generation). The father of Sue's baby is revealed in an entirely pointless way long after anyone who originally cared had stopped (and I'm pretty sure most of the writing team forgot Sue's baby existed).
Really, I think this continues the series’ trend of not really knowing what works or who their primary audience is, so they just keep throwing shit to see what sticks. They refuse to commit to “Follow Rachel and Kurt to NYC” versus “Stay with Will in Lima”, which should have been a major branching point for the series—they don’t know if the draw is the characters or the setting, and hedging that bet keeps hurting them. Similarly, they still bounce around between being absurdist humor, wish-fulfillment musical comedy, and semi-realistic drama, sometimes all in the same episode. (“Shooting Stars” sticks out as the worst offender, spending 20 minutes absurd and lighthearted and then taking a whip-turn into Very Special Episode.)
Overall: They seem to have lost track of the original theme that drew us to the show—horrible people who sing and dance—and Jethrien skipped half of this season because of lack of interest. I’ll probably keep watching, just so chunks of my Tumblr dash continue to make some semblance of sense (and because the musical numbers are still pretty good), but my interest in the actual plotlines appears to be flagging.
Honestly? Season 4 has been a mess. They added too many characters, but don’t know what to do with most of the ones they have, so they’re just throwing out dozens of plotlines and resolving them just as fast, often without any tension. (The resolution to the Rachel vs. Cassandra arc is just another “I was pushing you because I think you’re great”? After not touching in for months?) They underplay things that could really have used focus (If you’re going to give Burt cancer, especially after giving him a heart attack two seasons ago, then you need to actually do something with it, not introduce it, forget about it for six months, and then act like it’s been weighing on Kurt the whole time when you snap resolve it. Similarly, the dropping and re-picking-up of the Vogue.com plotline, and the underuse of any tension with Kurt/Adam vs. Kurt/Blaine. Kurt just didn’t get the focus his setups demanded.) Then they pick the weirdest things to drag out. The Ryder “catfishing” arc lasted for a third of the season? Seriously?
They clearly didn’t have anything to do with Joe or Sugar, both of whom would just vanish for months at a time. And they keep coming up with excuses to drag Puck, Mercedes, Mike, Quinn and Santana in for a one-episode blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dramatic plot that then gets smiled and nodded away. The writers apparently feel the need to really use the characters for the one episode they have the actor for, but that results in too much crammed-together stuff in too little time, and with too few emotional beats and no follow-through. (This is true for the guest star and celebrity-cast characters, too. Given that Bieste is Will’s only adult friend, you think we might see a little more of her?) Finn makes a deal to be equal partners running the Glee club with Will, resolving an ongoing tension between them, then doesn't appear for the next three episodes, which include regionals and Will and Emma’s actual wedding.
The new younger cast is obviously an attempt to replicate the group dynamic, both performance and character-wise, and it’ll be interesting to see what they do for the next season (and who they bring in): Marley is Rachel if she cared more about being liked than being famous. Jake is Puck if he were smarter but less confident. Ryder is Finn if he was more secure in his own identity (and didn’t need to define himself in terms of others). Unique is Mercedes if she were trans. Kitty is Quinn if she hadn’t gotten pregnant.
On that topic: Unique is seriously under-utilized. Kurt and Blaine have been front-and-center since early on, even if the network still limits how smoochy they’re allowed to get. Pushing those characters to the front has worked out well for them, if the fandom is to be believed; and I think it’s actually been educational to some of their audience. (Especially whenever Burt makes a speech.) They could do that again and push that same envelop with Unique, but they need to actually commit to using her and present her story as something other than a background bit. If you’ve been watching carefully, all the right thoughts are there (She has a line about not going to a camp for boys who like wearing dresses, a brief bit about taking birth control pills, a one-off bit about conflict with her parents, and exactly one use of the word “trans.”) but you wouldn’t notice them if you weren’t looking.
The season finale was a particularly strong example of so much of this. Though this isn't a proper season finale, in any case: They only do the first two-thirds of the school year, and I can get behind RM's theory that Season 5 will be the final third of this, and then the first third of what will be Season 6. Holiday episodes will be interesting. It’s clear this wasn’t really intended as a “stopping point”—there’s no payoff for Rachel’s audition; Kurt/Blaine isn’t just a cliffhanger, they introduced a whole new plotline there; and the Sue/Becky situation is left hanging. They did resolve a few things, though in the usual ridiculous ways: The Catfish is Hawk instead of Captain Atom (Unique, who'd been specifically ruled out before; which also means they were using her without actually using her). Britney is given a convenient excuse to leave at the half-season mark (and take with her a certain cartooniness that isn't represented in the younger generation). The father of Sue's baby is revealed in an entirely pointless way long after anyone who originally cared had stopped (and I'm pretty sure most of the writing team forgot Sue's baby existed).
Really, I think this continues the series’ trend of not really knowing what works or who their primary audience is, so they just keep throwing shit to see what sticks. They refuse to commit to “Follow Rachel and Kurt to NYC” versus “Stay with Will in Lima”, which should have been a major branching point for the series—they don’t know if the draw is the characters or the setting, and hedging that bet keeps hurting them. Similarly, they still bounce around between being absurdist humor, wish-fulfillment musical comedy, and semi-realistic drama, sometimes all in the same episode. (“Shooting Stars” sticks out as the worst offender, spending 20 minutes absurd and lighthearted and then taking a whip-turn into Very Special Episode.)
Overall: They seem to have lost track of the original theme that drew us to the show—horrible people who sing and dance—and Jethrien skipped half of this season because of lack of interest. I’ll probably keep watching, just so chunks of my Tumblr dash continue to make some semblance of sense (and because the musical numbers are still pretty good), but my interest in the actual plotlines appears to be flagging.
