But yesterday was one of those days where you cook yourself some ramen and chill in sweatpants and watch that weeks TIVO with your mom. The last episode had like ten main couples break up because they were going separate ways and such. And while it was a fun time to remember that I actually do enjoy some of their covers, my sisters claim that Ryan Murphy (the creator) is a genius is pretty far-out.
For one thing, for a show that takes pride in its ethnic diversity, Glee is surprisingly racist. An article from Cracked, The 5 Most Baffling Racist Shows On TV Right Now puts it best:
"But then it was pointed out to me that every non-white character is such a non-white character that it's like the producers had actually just come here from an albino world and were so taken with the novelty of people who weren't white that they had no time to look into or care about their cultures at all. Hence the two Asian characters on the show have the same last name. The Jew's last name is Ben Israel and he's as sexually deranged as Gladstone. The Latina cheerleader is actually named Santana Lopez, possibly because they had to cut Conchita Luisa Mexicasa out of the script. There's even actually an Irish exchange student who is immediately believed to be a leprechaun."---Ian ForteyThe bad part is that he's not even exaggerating. And what's worse--is that this show is a recidivist of perpetuating the same stereotypes. Why? Because simply there are no new character types. They simply take one character, copy and paste their personalities and beliefs onto another actor, and change their name. Take Quinn and Kitty. They could be sisters. Both blonde, religious advocates, cheerleaders who don't practice what they preach and are overly cruel. Even the show calls her a "young Quinn Fabray, except that she's not pregnant."
Even the fucking background.
The writer's make little to no attempt at trying to create new people, simply sticking with their stock characters. And all of them are extremely one dimensional. And since I've mentioned Quinn, let's talk about her a little more. Quinn was one of the most disappointing characters I've ever watched on TV in my whole life. In season 1, she gets knocked up by the really hot dude with the mohawk, Puck, unfortunately while she is still dating the school's most popular jock, Finn. I mean they sing it out a lot, but Quinn had this really beautiful character development in the first season as she is forced to make the decision on whether or not to keep her baby, while handling getting kicked out of her house, lying to Finn that he's the father (who she was living with) and deciding to give the baby to her teacher's wife. And the whole falling to bottom of the high school caste system. We really got to watch her grow into this mature, kind, compassionate woman, who became more caring and accepting--almost wise--as she got further along in her pregnancy. And then she had the baby and her entire character development was thrown out the window. She completely reverted to her prepregnancy days. I understand that it could be rationalized as her way of trying to regain her life back and continue the way she had before, but Quinn had learned shit. And you just don't drop those kind of life lessons after you pop a kid out when you're like 16 years old. You just don't.
And that's a problem. While a lot of characters did develop in more mature ways from the first to last one, the strongest they came through was the first where everyone had to set aside their differences and learn how to accept one another. While the whole breaking the system is so unoriginal, they pulled through in such a powerful way that actually made you support them.
So Glee just got more and more popular, causing the spin-off The Glee Project, which is where a bunch of other young singing/dancing/quadruple threats of various disabilities and backgrounds (for diversity) compete against each other for a position on the show.....which just shows that the telecast thinks it's more important than it actually is. And so these kids would win and be entered on the show, literally just written-in, and it was always poorly (and offensively---remember the Irish kid who everyone made really juvenile Leprechaun and lucky charm jokes?) and the characters would be there for half a season with no real purpose to the overall plot, sometimes even the small subplots and it was all just really terrible.
So they have all these throw-away characters but there clasping with a death grip on their favorite characters who have already graduated, Rachel and Kurt, who moved to New York city to follow their dreams of Broadway. It's so cliche and painful, and it just makes me want to tear my eyes out. They should have either created a new series that followed all of the cast instead of just focusing on two of the old ones and footnoting a few others, and creating a whole new cast which no one really cares about. OR they could have followed the Degrassi style, where each generation gets their own focus, building on to each other.
So I'm pretty disappointed. The show started off really strongly, and it should of ended strongly, too. There are some other things I could talk about, like Santana's lesbian arc and the whole strange school funding thing and Sue Sylvester situation, but I thing I'm done with Glee. I'm just done.
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