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...when I was snowed in with my family, the week of Christmas. It's taken me a while to figure out what I think about it. I had heard so many good and bad things about it, and the thing is, they're basically all true. I found myself agreeing with both the show's fans and its detractors.
I've finally decided that the detractors have it right. Where it all really crystalizes for me is in a single line of dialogue in the semi-finale, "Sectionals":
"Because sometimes, being special... sucks."
That's not a bad line, objectively, in isolation. It has the makings of a great line. If the circumstances under which it was uttered were difference, if the characters in the scene were different, it could have been great. But these words of wisdom were directed not at the any of the cast's racial minorities, the student with a disablity,the one with a speech impediment, or the gay student but at the straight, white, able-bodied football hero main character.
What is his special quality that sucks so badly to have?
Leadership.
The writers don't seem to have any idea how to depict this quality other than to suggest that the rest of the Glee Club is totally lost without him. When he's there they can pull it together and win, when he's not they fall apart. In the show's universe, his popularity definitely helped the Glee Club but that's not the same thing as leadership. Being popular and athletic and clean-cut (and ah, demographically advantaged) in high school is often equated with "leadership" by middle-of-the-road educators, but it's not the same thing.
Among the criticisms that have been (accurately) leveled at Glee are the following:
1. Among the students who make up what is in theory an ensemble, they consistently put the least likable ones front and center.
2. The rest of the cast consists largely of a series of "tokens" rather than well-developed characters.
3. They abuse the hell out of autotune and other suchlike exciting bits of auditory jiggery-pokery.
And the thing is, these criticisms are all tied together... and they all tie into why that line of dialogue killed Glee for me.
They cast the least experienced singer as the guy they made into a main character, the selfsame football hero. Because he's the main character in a show that revolves around a show choir, they shine every note he sings to a high polish, and as a result you end up hearing a voice that doesn't begin to match the face you're looking at. It would be less jarring if they brought in another person to record the vocals. They overuse digital trickery in general, but it's worst in his case because his voice needs the most work to bring it up to the "quality" demanded by the premise that he's the best.
If they didn't have the idea that the show needs a storyline about an All American Guy (who must be an athlete, not a "choir geek") and an All American Girl running through the season, they wouldn't need to put this guy and everybody tied up in his plotline (basically, the two straight able-bodied WASP kids and the two straight able-bodied Jewish kids) front and center constantly, they wouldn't have to lean on the quite exciting computer magic in such an egregious and transparent (and not particularly ear-pleasing) fashion... and they wouldn't have this ridiculous moment where the guy who is just now for the first time in his high school career having real Problems complains about how many Problems he has and is told, in all seriousness and without a trace of irony, that he has Problems because "being special sucks".
That line is not the most offensive, questionable, or problematic thing in the show... not as a whole or even that episode in particular*. It just sums up so much of what's wrong with the show, in every sense of the word.
(*The Mercedes vs. Rachel thing from the same episode was pretty egregious, for example. Do we really need TV shows that actively preach the moral "tokens belong in the background"?)
I've finally decided that the detractors have it right. Where it all really crystalizes for me is in a single line of dialogue in the semi-finale, "Sectionals":
"Because sometimes, being special... sucks."
That's not a bad line, objectively, in isolation. It has the makings of a great line. If the circumstances under which it was uttered were difference, if the characters in the scene were different, it could have been great. But these words of wisdom were directed not at the any of the cast's racial minorities, the student with a disablity,
What is his special quality that sucks so badly to have?
Leadership.
The writers don't seem to have any idea how to depict this quality other than to suggest that the rest of the Glee Club is totally lost without him. When he's there they can pull it together and win, when he's not they fall apart. In the show's universe, his popularity definitely helped the Glee Club but that's not the same thing as leadership. Being popular and athletic and clean-cut (and ah, demographically advantaged) in high school is often equated with "leadership" by middle-of-the-road educators, but it's not the same thing.
Among the criticisms that have been (accurately) leveled at Glee are the following:
1. Among the students who make up what is in theory an ensemble, they consistently put the least likable ones front and center.
2. The rest of the cast consists largely of a series of "tokens" rather than well-developed characters.
3. They abuse the hell out of autotune and other suchlike exciting bits of auditory jiggery-pokery.
And the thing is, these criticisms are all tied together... and they all tie into why that line of dialogue killed Glee for me.
They cast the least experienced singer as the guy they made into a main character, the selfsame football hero. Because he's the main character in a show that revolves around a show choir, they shine every note he sings to a high polish, and as a result you end up hearing a voice that doesn't begin to match the face you're looking at. It would be less jarring if they brought in another person to record the vocals. They overuse digital trickery in general, but it's worst in his case because his voice needs the most work to bring it up to the "quality" demanded by the premise that he's the best.
If they didn't have the idea that the show needs a storyline about an All American Guy (who must be an athlete, not a "choir geek") and an All American Girl running through the season, they wouldn't need to put this guy and everybody tied up in his plotline (basically, the two straight able-bodied WASP kids and the two straight able-bodied Jewish kids) front and center constantly, they wouldn't have to lean on the quite exciting computer magic in such an egregious and transparent (and not particularly ear-pleasing) fashion... and they wouldn't have this ridiculous moment where the guy who is just now for the first time in his high school career having real Problems complains about how many Problems he has and is told, in all seriousness and without a trace of irony, that he has Problems because "being special sucks".
That line is not the most offensive, questionable, or problematic thing in the show... not as a whole or even that episode in particular*. It just sums up so much of what's wrong with the show, in every sense of the word.
(*The Mercedes vs. Rachel thing from the same episode was pretty egregious, for example. Do we really need TV shows that actively preach the moral "tokens belong in the background"?)
