So, Glee premiered this week. Not the most excited of opening sentences, and that does a reasonably good job of summing up my feelings.
First, a quick summary of my thoughts on Glee. When the series started, I loved it. Loved the musical numbers, loved the backdrop of underdog high school kids, loved Jane Lynch and the smartly written wisecracks. Definitely a break-out hit for me. Season 2 started uneven, and took a while to get its footing. But once it did, I was back on board. Unfortunately, it ended poorly for me. And for a pretty simple reason: for me, the story-telling is mostly just a framework (this can be interpreted as “an excuse”) to set up the musical numbers. These numbers make or break it for me, and the introduction of “original songs” ruined it. Because “original songs” = “crappy songs” more often than not.
Anyway, it wasn’t horrible enough to make me quit, and I’m holding out hope that they will somehow ban “original songs” from the competitions this season, either as a plot point (Sue trying to sabotage the group by eliminating their “secret weapon”) or they can just pretend it didn’t happen last year.
So, the Season 3 premiere: felt a bit flat to me. Too much “reset button”, and lots of it rings false or stretched. Quinn was just embarrassing. The fact that the club is still at the bottom of the food chain seems a bit lazy. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to see how the club dealt with a bit of social success? The less said about yet another Sue Sylvester reset to villain the better, it gets tiring to see her redemption arcs and then go right back to being the villain. At this point she is better served as a thorn/annoyance than villain. Even Rachel and Kurt’s confidence shaking storyline seemed a bit forced. And I’m never a fan of “Tough Mr. Schue”, it just never feels like it will last. That said, the banning of Santana worked for me, although I like her character and want her in the club. Although I would argue that setting the fire to the piano at the end of that performance actually made it cooler, and was more likely to attract new folks.
What did I like? There was still good stuff. Brittany is always good for a one-liner (Are you working on a time machine too?), and most of the performances were good. The Glee Project actually worked against the confidence shaking scene, as we spent the summer watching the actress being a second-rate Lea Michele and then she is cast as someone who is supposedly more talented than Rachel. That said, I really enjoyed the number. Which is even more enjoyable if you mentally insert Magnitude from Community into the background, btw. I also liked the line about self-diagnosed Asperger’s syndrome.
Overall a shaky start though. The preview looked promising though, if just for another hilarious Brittany line.