Later we typed “Is Lea Michele p” so we could ask if she were Persian. One of the suggested questions was “Is Lea Michele pretty?”
We quit after that because we figured it would break the Internet.
I’m glad we live in a world where Blake has a homosexual brother.
- The show is fond of juxtaposition, of smashing stories up next to each other and seeing what parallels seep out. Sometimes, that works. Other times, it doesn’t. But every once in a great while, we get an episode like this, an episode so wrong-headed that it becomes amazing just how thoroughly the show’s producers don’t understand basic tenets of TV drama. You can have a straightforward, dramatic story with huge emotional stakes. You can have a comedic story with small stakes. You just can’t equate them. Indiana Jones can outrun the boulder. The Millennium Falcon can outrun the explosion of the Death Star. Indiana Jones can’t outrun the explosion of the Death Star. (I really like this metaphor; sue me.)
- This wants to be an episode about failure. Rachel chokes in her audition. Puck fails the test and will have to repeat his senior year, instead of getting his pool cleaning business off the ground. Beiste leaves her abusive husband, then takes him back at the end after he asks her for a second chance.One of these things is so the fuck not like the other.
- The episode ends up addressing domestic abuse with less emotional depth than an NBC “The More You Know” 15-second spot.
- The problem is that Glee has bought into the myth of its own importance so thoroughly that it thinks raising an issue, then explaining what you should do in that situation, then going off to have Puck draw awesome rocker demons on his history final, is an adequate way to discuss serious topics.
- The series sees itself as a force for good in the world—and, yeah, if this episode helps one woman get out of an abusive relationship, that’s a good thing. But that doesn’t make the show good art or even good crappy television. It makes it painfully, woefully obvious art and crappy television.
- The show thinks it’s a sweet, satirical comedy, but it also thinks it’s the most important TV series to ever have aired. There’s not a lot of room to move between those two poles, and the more the show attempts to, the more its tone problems arise.
The Onion’s AV Club provided a take down of last night’s Glee with so much vitriol, even I was pleased. Todd VanDerWerff’s words were some of the most brutal I’ve ever seen written in relation to the show - and they deserved every single one.
Just Stick to Singing Teenagers
I don’t want to tell TV shows like Glee (hell, I don’t want to tell anyone) that they can’t or shouldn’t talk about domestic violence. It’s important to talk about stigmatized and silenced issues. But it’s equally important to talk about them in a way that’s nuanced, respectful, sensitive, and real. If you can’t figure out how to do that, then stick to being an hour of television about singing teenagers.
When you have the platform that Glee has — millions of viewers in prime time and millions more online, to say nothing of the hashtags and the sheer Tumblr re-blog potential — you have the opportunity to bring about change, to expose people to material that shifts the way they see the world. Glee’s managed to do this in the past, not just in the halcyon days of my beloved season one, but in recent episodes like “The First Time.” But that’s not what Glee chose to do last night. Instead, Glee reminded America that sometimes women on TV shows have husbands who hit them for not doing the dishes. What a damn waste.
What a brilliant way of framing this. I have hated Glee for years (and for a litany of reasons), but this encapsulates so much of the issue at hand here. Lauren Hoffman at Vulture highlights why a show that considers itself to be so important cannot provide social commentary unless it actually commits to the nuance and time necessary to discuss the issue at hand.
Ryan Murphy will never stop being self-righteous enough to actually unpack what happened to Bieste - just like he never discussed Karofsky’s suicide attempt after the fact. Domestic violence is not a plot twist, and shouldn’t be treated as such.
So, in case you want to know why I hate Glee, read the article.
The word’s on the streets and it’s on the news:
I’m not gonna teach him how to dance with you.
Just because a show features marginalized groups doesn’t mean it’s doing a good thing
Whenever I see people talking about how good Glee is for disabled people, I get so mad that I genuinely debate eating my own shoes because it would be more productive than arguing with people about it.
Featuring queer/disabled/other marginalized groups =/= respecting them
This is one of the problems I have with Modern Family, which gets thrown an inordinate amount of kudos for having gay characters featured prominently and sympathetically. That doesn’t change the fact that half their lines are jokes about gay stereotypes.
Couldn’t agree more - it’s why I continue to tell people that Glee and Modern Family are shows that I can’t stand. They deal with tired and damaging stereotypes of gays, people of color, immigrants, and people with disabilities. Just because you have a token minority character does NOT mean you’re respecting that character or their community.
Ryan Murphy and Steve Levitan have built their shows on tokenism and nothing more. The only problem is that Hollywood and America are stupid enough to eat it up and pat themselves on the back for their “progressive” beliefs.
(via bjcg-nofriends)
I found out this week that my good friend Dave Page was on Glee.
I love that guy. And yes, I’ve seen him naked.
I gotta testify, come up in the spot lookin' extra fly...
