Thoughts on… Glee season 2.
To say that this post has been a long time coming is an understatement. I honestly felt that from an early part of Glee’s sophomore season, that something had shifted in the Gleekdom. Something didn’t feel the same way as with the 1st. The joy, and the actual glee I felt before, during and after the episodes was missing.
Where do I start? Each time that I had an obviously informal chat with fellow Gleeks, there were barely any coherent words to convey the disappointment I’ve had with the plot and character continuity of the season. Most of the responses I had contained sounds that might be conveyed as ‘argh. Urgh. Grrrr!’ and such. You get what I mean. Where did it all go wrong? I have a few bullet points. Maybe you care to add to these;
- The songs became primary to the story, rather than a supporting factor.
- Character development and continuity; what?
- Event episodes
- Emma just getting married like that, to a dentist, and then, oh getting a quickie divorce in the background. Nice use of John Stamos, or weak comeback ploy?
- Quinn had a baby. Pretty much never got mentioned, nor she only seemed to get bitchier in the second season.
- Kurt became the poster boy for ‘Born This Way’ and from then, any sort of ‘message’ episode really hinged on how Kurt was feeling. He became the ultimate hero, and anyone that might have sneered at him became homophobic. Including Finn.
- Finn became needy and possessive, a skirt-chaser if you will and it was never clear why he liked Rachel or why he liked Quinn (or how he could get back with her after, I don’t know, having someone else’s baby)
- Puck became the biggest cliché of a school bad boy, he was practically Fonzie. A 1960’s bad boy and barely one that would be ‘bad’ in say, 90210.
- Artie and Brittany. REALLY?
- Will became way too wrapped up in ‘winning’. Oh, and at one point, directly alluding to Brittany’s intellect. Hmmm. Nice teachering there, Schuester.
- Jesse St James’ return. WHY?! Why bother really. It was just grasping at straws to give closure to Jesse and Rachel’s romance, and what; he was in the finale for all of 2 minutes?
These are huge in my book, particularly plot being secondary to the song choice alone. And when did it become okay to release songs and/or video of the songs before the actual episode. The element of surprise is a lost pleasure. I know, I know in the realm of the interwebs where nothing can be secret or shocking for more than 12 hours (whatever time zone you may be in) you still had ways of avoiding it. Not really the case when Fox happily promotes the upcoming ‘event’ song of the next episode, and not even a teaser, but the full deal. Out of context, they don’t care. It becomes about the song, the performance and which artist/band gave Glee rights to have the Glee stars cover their work. It just infuriates me to no end about how the Jesse/Rachel storyline was just.. thrown out. Or how Mercedes just became a minor supporting role, Tina and Mike Chang became the token random couple, cute because they were of the same ethnicity?
 Quinn became a bitch without a cheerleader’s uniform, and there was no reference, really whatsoever to the fact that she had a baby and just happened to give it to Rachel’s birth mum. Kind of a turning point in a young adolescent’s life wouldn’t you think?
All I can think is that Glee has become about money, and about iTunes. It works, sure. Most of my iPod IS Glee, but when I think of the show I was JOYFUL about in season 1, and glad to be a fan of, I surprise people by being objective and saying Glee deserves little credit for anything this season.
