What a diverse and interesting range of predictable stereotypes.

Why I’m Giving Up On Glee

Look, I’m quitting OK? I just can’t do it anymore. It’s a bad habit, and I don’t want to endanger my health. I know it’ll be difficult, but I’ll find a substitute. Hell, I’ll go and get High School Musical on DVD. You never know, it might be better for me. I might laugh, I might tap my feet, I might be momentarily happy and secure in Zac Efron’s piercing blue eyes.

Four episodes of all-singing, all-dancing US smash TV show Glee have now aired on British telly, which makes this the perfect time to review it. I watch any new TV show on a three strikes rule, which filters out the possibility of being overwhelmed by any hype. Three shit episodes, and you are outta there. But what’s this, I hear you cry? You’ve watched FOUR episodes! Surely Glee has already surpassed the three strikes rule and therefore must be watched forever and ever and ever amen? Well, that’s almost true. While I was shocked at how woefully awful the first two episodes were, I was pleasantly surprised that Episode Three, ‘Acafellas’, showed glimmers of hope. It was the first episode where I knew who some of the kids were by name instead of race or sexual orientation. The songs featured were creatively interesting, and it was darn funny. Yes, I thought, this is the beginning of something beautiful.

And then episode four came along and ruined everything, shattering my hope like a hot girl telling me about her ‘boy troubles’. Thanks episode four, you bitch. Gone were the interesting character relationships of episode three, gone was the humour, and most shockingly, gone was the music. The episode has been nicknamed ‘The Single Ladies One’, because a significant chunk of the programme is used to promote Beyoncé’s hit song, but aside from this and a quick nod to West Side Story, the episode didn’t really have any Glee in it. Now, Single Ladies is a really good song, but it was used so much that watching the show was like being tortured by a Beyoncé Knowles creep who wants to make a suit out of your skin. You know, ‘it puts the Dreamgirls soundtrack in the basket’ kinda stuff.

The main problem I have with Glee is its lack of irony. Another Cambridge newspaper claimed that Glee ‘delivers all the same punches High School Musical always did, but this time, they come with an ironic, mildly self-deprecating smile,’ which could not be further from the truth. Sure, the kids think about sex and drugs, but high school hierarchies are not being challenged, they are being adhered to. The fact that the choir consists of Jew, Jock, Asian, Wheelchair, Gay and Diva is not a satirical comment on breaking down social barriers, but just lazy characterisation. Oh I know, let’s have the black girl sing ‘Respect’ and say ‘Hell naw!’ every five seconds, oooh, and the Chinese girl can be kooky, and, and, yeah, the Jew can talk about Barbara Streisand and Natalie Wood, and the Jock can be bullied by his football playing friends, and the gay one can talk about fashion and musicals, and the wheelchair guy… well, he can just be ‘there’ cos he’s part of the quota or whatever. I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t play up to the stereotypes so much in a desperate bid for laughs, when originality would fare much better.

And that’s another thing. It’s just not funny. Sure, there are titters here and there, and the introduction of a mental dance coach in episode three was promising, but the characters have such a smug look on their face when they’re about to do a joke that the punchline falls hideously below the mark. Ooh look Mr. Schuester, I did a joke! I suppose the main source of laughs for the easily impressed is Sue Sylvester, a kind of gym teacher version of Hitler who wants to take over the school. She’d be funny if we didn’t know that everything she says is going to be a joke, and she lacks any real humanism to be considered a comic character. In fact, some of the recent Sylversterisms have gone from humorously offensive to just plain offensive. In episode four she was heard saying ‘Hey! Homeless person! Have you ever tried not being homeless?’ Edgy.

So if Glee isn’t about breaking high-school stereotypes, or about being funny, then surely it must all be about the music? Right? Wrong. While those of a whimsical disposition have been enthralled by Glee Club version’s of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’ and Journey’s chart-invading ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, they have failed to notice the pitiful attempts at creativity that go into these musical set pieces. Kenny Ortega (the guy behind the sequences in High School Musical) really goes to town when it comes to a good ol’ knees-up, adding glitter and sparkles to what would otherwise be a mundane classroom scene. Glee takes a similar approach to Ortega, but they remove the glitter. And the sparkles. And the imagination that makes High School Musical 3 in particular so watchable. The result is a selection of disjointed songs which do not add anything to the narrative and seem artificially imposed on the high-school drama that Glee tries so desperately to portray.

While Glee is not awful enough to enter TV Hell along with ‘Wild at Heart’ and anything with Martin Clunes, it is also not consistently good enough to be worth my time. However, if there is anything that will keep me watching, it is Kurt, the overtly homosexual yet lovable Glee Club member, whose story is by far the most engaging and intimate. My appreciation of Kurt is no reflection on my own life, but he truly is the only teenage character who doesn’t say anything that induces pure, unfiltered cringe on my little face. Being the hypocrite that I am, I’ll probably end up watching the rest of this season and feeling grumpier and grumpier about everything wrong with it until I implode with disappointment. Or I might just change my mind and conform to the rapidly growing army of Gleeks. I’ve always wanted to  be part of a group…

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