The Decline of Glee - Appendix

Hi there,

thanks for your interest in my two posts about 'The Decline of Glee'! After watching the last two episodes of 'Glee', I decided had to write a follow-up. Many of the aspects I wrote about, were adressed and - in my humble opinion - solved. I started enjoying 'Glee' again!

1. In addition to the first part, in which I accused Glee of focusing to much on the homosexual relationsships a friend of mine argued that Ryan Murphy himself is gay. I did not know that, but it could explain why he has such a good eye for the emotional drama of Kurt's, Santana's and Dave's situations. I repeat, that it was overdue that a prime time concerned itself with the problems of gay teens, but the heterosexual teens were a little bit lost.

How they solved it: More Balance. 

The last two episodes saw a welcome change: Almost all storylines were balanced, every relationship was adressed (except Tina and Mike). I can not list every scene, but it was great to see Artie and Brittany for a change. The scenes with Dave and Kurt were all very emotional and dramatic. The bit between Mercedes and Sam was touching and sweet.

To be honest: the scenes after the announcement of the Prom Queen were the best and emotional material 'Glee' had to offer for a long time. 

2. Part Two described the unemotional music-video like songs in 'Glee'. One of my friends pointed out that Glee got it's second and third season at once, which is very uncommon. So the creators knew they had 50+ episodes to fill, when they sat down to write the show after the first season. Perhaps one idea was to strech the character evolution over more episodes and fill the rest with music. I do not know, but it felt like this for me.

How they solved it: The Return of the Musical

The music numbers were approached differently, to a great effect. In Rumors, episode 19 of season 2, Artie and Brittany get into a fight. When she storms away, Artie starts singing right in the hall were she left him. Puck, Sam and Finn appear out of thin air and accompany him on the guitar. They all go through the school singing and dancing and end up on the stage of the auditorium. I welcome the return of these musical-style elements, as they are a oppprtunity to bring back the emotions and drama of each character into the songs.

And the choice of songs has improved. More songs were directly linked to the situation of the character(s) singing it, Santana's 'Songbird' or Rachel's and Jesse St. Jame's 'Rolling in the Deep' come to mind.

As always: the comment section below works without registration, just choose "Comment as Anonymous" - I am looking forward to your discussion.
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- Tristan