While it’s still Jim Henson’s 75th birthday for another hour, I’m going to share this fantastic Sesame Street parody of Glee.
(Source: popwatch.ew.com)
Last night on Glee, one of the male leads announced he was going to enlist. Glee is as campy as it is liberal, so it was expected that hunky but nosey teacher Will Shooster would try to stop Finn from becoming another dead hero, like his father. I was expecting the typical “don’t do it son; it’s not worth it” speech. The twist they threw down was much more honest.
In the scene, Finn’s mother reveals that his dad didn’t die in the war after all. In some fine acting from Romy Rosemont, she says, “I don’t know if he did something or saw something or just lost his way but…he broke.”
It was just a matter of time before the fiction of today began increasingly to deal with the plight of traumatized veterans and their impact on society. Post WWI we had Virginia Woolf’s shell shocked vets, while much of E.E. Cummings poetry centered around his own struggle with life during wartime and we saw a slew of post-Vietnam characters in 80s movies. The same theme is returning to our stories as more soldiers return from Iraq and Aphganistan. More writers will know vets who’ve lost their way, or will hear of their stories from others and want to write about them. Drug addiction amongst veterans is always higher than the general population—it’s a population that’s not scared of the dangers and often much in need of “better living through chemistry.” Moreover, often their position overseas gives them easy access to drugs.This scene in Glee where we find out Finn’s father died of a drug overdose could just as easily have been written about Vietnam. Yet because drug addiction amongst soldiers is seldom talked about it makes me wonder if the writer behind this scene knew a veteran in this situation.
Either way, we’re going to see more of this. In 2000, a show about bootleggers wouldn’t have focused on returing veterans. Today Boardwalk Empire is so interwined with the story of psychotic WWI vets that it states them as the cause of the bootlegging gangsterism the show covers. What other shows are there that deal with PTSD and drug use among returning veterans? I’d like to ponder this more. The plight of the returning soldier says “War is hell” better than any flag-waving or flag-burning speech ever does.
Tonight on Glee they played only Michael Jackson songs. They let Artie out of his chair and he got all saucy on us.
I remember when the video first came out CGI was still mad expensive and this face-switching cost them millions. Now it’s on network TV.
![This article completely misses the mark. The problem with Glee has nothing to do with the presence of musical numbers. The problem with Glee is one of pacing. Every episode some character someone falls in love with someone they’d barely noticed before, and this new relationship is culled before you can sing all the verses of “American Pie.” Will Schuester has happily done dance numbers with the show’s evil villian Sue Sylvester, just like they’re new best friends. Take the latest episode, where the Glee teacher lets the head cheerleading coach run his Glee boot camp. This from the woman who ran for congress on a “Kill the Arts” platform. Will Schuester is such a flip-flopper he could run for president. The plot moves so ridiculously fast that nothing feels real. The story can’t have depth if the audience knows that no betrayal will impact the characters’ relationships for more than three episodes.
The article is substantiated by the statement, “Glee produces 26 one-hour episodes per year, and it’s proven excruciatingly difficult to tell stories through song serially at that pace.” But Glee has no trouble coming up with plot, the biggest problem is that the show moves too quickly. They could easily cover half the emotional landscape in a season and it would make the show stronger. The audience won’t object to more songs on the same subject. For a show-about-a-show that gets pacing, watch Slings and Arrows. The Shakespeare Troupe depicted in that drama would take an entire season to cover a single play. Similarly, the plotline mentioned above—Sue turning over a new leaf and helping out with New Directions—could have been stretched to fill a whole season.
The point is, this problem has nothing to do with the fact that Glee is a TV musical. In fact, the pacing on the show is so terrible that your average Gleek basically sees the plot as a loosely-strewn together excuse to create high-production music videos. Those of us over age thirteen don’t fret over whether Rachel and Finn will live happily ever after. We’re not here for the story. We’re here for musical numbers.
In some ways, the author may be right: the fall of Glee and the failure of Smash may be a sign that TV musicals don’t have a bright future. But that would only be because producers think the same way this author does—-it’s the same assumption that because I like True Blood I’ll like Twilight, or that a story is worth funding simply because it’s about zombies. The hidden premise is that branding is more important than story. The Atlantic has told us that the brand of TV musicals isn’t doing so well. There’s something deeper going on here. Good writing matters, and the fans of Glee are responding to that. But it doesn’t mean we don’t want another TV musical. It means we want one so badly we’re even willing to sit through it when it gets silly or preachy or when the characters do something inconsistent.
theatlantic:
Smash, Glee, and the Death of the TV Musical
So, a musical TV show debuts to standing ovations, praised for its ambition and bravery in daring to merge the worlds of theater and television—only to soar off the rails in such grand a fashion that even its biggest supporters can’t help but shake their heads in dismay. Sound familiar? It’s exactly the plight of Glee, the cheeky song-and-dance soap opera whose initial success arguably paved the way for Smash. What started as a candy-colored breath of smart-and-snarky air quickly became muddled by overly earnest “message” episodes, laughable dialogue, a glut of unlikable characters, and jarring tonal shifts. Currently, both shows are at a crossroads: Smash recently received a second-season renewal, but fired the showrunner responsible for its cacophonous premiere season. Glee returns after an extended hiatus Tuesday night to close out a season that will see a crop of pivotal characters graduating high school—and perhaps the show. Some might view these as opportunities to regroup, restructure, and reboot. But perhaps a better idea would be to face the music: The TV musical experiment has failed. […]
Glee and Smash both gave it the old college try, producing undeniably fantastic moments of television along the way—historic moments, even, in the case of Glee. But every good theater performer knows when it’s time to take a graceful bow and exit the stage. Let’s draw the curtain on the TV musical.
Read more. [Images: FOX, NBC]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m29rg1eY1J1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
This article completely misses the mark. The problem with Glee has nothing to do with the presence of musical numbers. The problem with Glee is one of pacing. Every episode some character someone falls in love with someone they’d barely noticed before, and this new relationship is culled before you can sing all the verses of “American Pie.” Will Schuester has happily done dance numbers with the show’s evil villian Sue Sylvester, just like they’re new best friends. Take the latest episode, where the Glee teacher lets the head cheerleading coach run his Glee boot camp. This from the woman who ran for congress on a “Kill the Arts” platform. Will Schuester is such a flip-flopper he could run for president. The plot moves so ridiculously fast that nothing feels real. The story can’t have depth if the audience knows that no betrayal will impact the characters’ relationships for more than three episodes.
The article is substantiated by the statement, “Glee produces 26 one-hour episodes per year, and it’s proven excruciatingly difficult to tell stories through song serially at that pace.” But Glee has no trouble coming up with plot, the biggest problem is that the show moves too quickly. They could easily cover half the emotional landscape in a season and it would make the show stronger. The audience won’t object to more songs on the same subject. For a show-about-a-show that gets pacing, watch Slings and Arrows. The Shakespeare Troupe depicted in that drama would take an entire season to cover a single play. Similarly, the plotline mentioned above—Sue turning over a new leaf and helping out with New Directions—could have been stretched to fill a whole season.
The point is, this problem has nothing to do with the fact that Glee is a TV musical. In fact, the pacing on the show is so terrible that your average Gleek basically sees the plot as a loosely-strewn together excuse to create high-production music videos. Those of us over age thirteen don’t fret over whether Rachel and Finn will live happily ever after. We’re not here for the story. We’re here for musical numbers.
In some ways, the author may be right: the fall of Glee and the failure of Smash may be a sign that TV musicals don’t have a bright future. But that would only be because producers think the same way this author does—-it’s the same assumption that because I like True Blood I’ll like Twilight, or that a story is worth funding simply because it’s about zombies. The hidden premise is that branding is more important than story. The Atlantic has told us that the brand of TV musicals isn’t doing so well. There’s something deeper going on here. Good writing matters, and the fans of Glee are responding to that. But it doesn’t mean we don’t want another TV musical. It means we want one so badly we’re even willing to sit through it when it gets silly or preachy or when the characters do something inconsistent.
Smash, Glee, and the Death of the TV Musical
So, a musical TV show debuts to standing ovations, praised for its ambition and bravery in daring to merge the worlds of theater and television—only to soar off the rails in such grand a fashion that even its biggest supporters can’t help but shake their heads in dismay. Sound familiar? It’s exactly the plight of Glee, the cheeky song-and-dance soap opera whose initial success arguably paved the way for Smash. What started as a candy-colored breath of smart-and-snarky air quickly became muddled by overly earnest “message” episodes, laughable dialogue, a glut of unlikable characters, and jarring tonal shifts. Currently, both shows are at a crossroads: Smash recently received a second-season renewal, but fired the showrunner responsible for its cacophonous premiere season. Glee returns after an extended hiatus Tuesday night to close out a season that will see a crop of pivotal characters graduating high school—and perhaps the show. Some might view these as opportunities to regroup, restructure, and reboot. But perhaps a better idea would be to face the music: The TV musical experiment has failed. […]
Glee and Smash both gave it the old college try, producing undeniably fantastic moments of television along the way—historic moments, even, in the case of Glee. But every good theater performer knows when it’s time to take a graceful bow and exit the stage. Let’s draw the curtain on the TV musical.
Read more. [Images: FOX, NBC]
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Glee goes Alice Cooper
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I laugh every time I look at this.
(Source: rafi-d-angelo)
Gosh Rachel, just because you lost one doesn’t mean you should bury the rest of them in the basement.
It’s not unrealistic. Recent studies have shown that telling kids they’re special and talented makes them scared of pressure and easily set back. Talent is less a measure of success than grit, and telling kids they are exceptional is no way to reward perseverance. Rachel put everything on this one audition and now that she’s failed it she’s lost the thing her self esteem was attached to—-not being a singer, no matter what but being the best, most talented singer.
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“I want everyone to know how proud I am of my brave, handsome, bushy-haired boyfriend.”
Well then maybe you shouldn’t have freaked out about it, crushing his self-esteem and joining in his public ridicule.
“What’s a guy gotta do to get a candy situation up in here?”
Last night, for six glorious seconds, Kurt and Blaine went all Jersey Shore.
