‘Glee’-nalysis: Relationship Troubles

Alone together.
This and all screen caps from the indispensable AfterElton.com.

Watching Glee on a regular basis is a lot like having a difficult boyfriend, I have decided. Just listen to the way people complain about the show! (But change the pronouns a little.)

“He’s so cute and fun!” “His mood swings are driving me crazy! It’s like I don’t know who’s going to show up for our next date!” “He really knows how to make me laugh.” “His taste in music is so variable. I mean — rap? It really doesn’t work for him.” “Either he’s got amnesia or he’s got ADHD. He can’t stick to any subject.” “He can be really naïve, and he really doesn’t know how to make good use of his assets — if you know what I mean.”

And then of course consider how so many people brag about having broken up with Glee. “Oh, are you still watching that? I gave it up ages ago — I outgrew it.”

But breaking up is hard to do. Glee ended its back-to-school mini-season with one of its smartest, most deeply felt episodes yet — and the subject was breakups. Even as it sometimes felt I was watching Invasion of the ‘Glee’-Snatchers (“Where did this wonderful show come from?”), “Breakups” built on preexisting strengths, even to the novel extent of remembering prior episodes, and pointed to ways in which this season’s almost maddening Lima/New York split might actually work.

Heather Morris as Brittany S. Pearce.
What started as a dance turned into a joke that turned into an emotionally powerful story.

The first thing we have to understand is that Lima, Ohio, is blessed both with a first-rate train station that links directly to New York City (as witnessed by Rachel’s departure at the end of last season) and with a major airport served by airlines offering really, really cheap last-minute fares both to New York and to Los Angeles. This will help to link the multi-city plots in future.

But as we welcome the potential benefits, please note that they do come with a price tag, in the form of suspension of disbelief. Not only must we believe that Finn, Blaine, and Rachel could simply zip back and forth at will, or that Kurt could leave Lima a single day after deciding to give New York a whirl, but also that Puck could fly in from California for a surprise meeting with the half-brother he’s never heard of, stay for five minutes, and then leave again.

Presumably Mr. Schuester paid for this. On a teacher’s salary. Which is totally believable because my high-school teachers were always buying me plane tickets. As I’m sure your teachers did for you.

There have been token acknowledgments that our Lima lovelies are freakishly adept at finding cheap fares, just as there have been other acknowledgments that Kurt and Rachel’s vast New York apartment is “in a sketchy neighborhood,” so that we know the kids aren’t suddenly millionaires. But it’s more plausible to think that Santana simply drives home from Kentucky on weekends, as this week we learned that she’s been doing just that.

Acting! Naya Rivera, brilliant as Santana.

Nevertheless, poor Brittany feels left behind, to the point that she’s joined a club dedicated to the Christian apocalyptic Left Behind novels. Running the club is new head cheerleader Kitty, not with a whip but with an arsenal of Bitch Goddess behavior that makes her this season’s heir to the crown sometimes worn by Quinn, and sometimes by Santana. Because we really, really don’t like cheerleaders. (Except in Bring It On: The Musical.)

And since motherhood has taken much of the bite out of Sue Sylvester, we have a New Sue in the form of Cassandra July, Rachel’s pitiless dance teacher at NYADA. She has the advantages of being better motivated and less irrational than Sue (remember the David Bowie disguise?), and she’s played by Kate Hudson, but thus far I find her meanness too monotonous. With little to do but victimize Rachel, she’s one of the principal victims of the show’s bipolar “focus” this season.

Likewise Kitty’s primary nemesis, a new student named Marley (Melissa Benoist), whose freshness and singing I like. Here, too, the constant Lima/New York back-and-forthing means that her character remains largely undeveloped: she’s just a nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Likewise Unique (Alex Newell), a transgender student introduced last season, who sings like a powerhouse but has thus far been given little else to do.

What made this week’s episode special was that the multiple storylines were brought together over something basic and recognizable and true. Drawing on several years’ worth of plotting and aiming for an emotional center, the show’s writers advanced the characters, incorporated smart musical numbers, and wound up with a winner.

Ladykisses: Santana and Brittany.
Are boykisses more controversial? Guess so.

So when Blaine wanted to express his conflicted feelings about his relationship with Kurt, he didn’t sing any old song, he sang the very first song, “Teenage Dream,” with only a piano and no Warblers to accompany him — and who knew a song so dumb could be so emotionally resonant?

Four couples confronted similar but not identical predicaments, all predicated on the challenges of long-distance relationships but evolving in different ways. The two gay relationships were treated with exactly the same respect as that accorded to the straight relationships — instead of the comic relief or side-kickery one usually sees — and the cliff-hanger ending, beautifully staged as a musical number that, through spotlighting and arrangement, is nothing like an ensemble but instead eight anguished solos.* Every one of the actors responded with a spectacular performance, all night long.

Speaking of anguish, though, I’m disappointed to see that my beloved Jayma Mays is now listed as a guest star. Nevertheless, Glee will have a hard time persuading me that Emma won’t work things out with Will. I’m persuaded already that Finn would return to McKinley High to get his groove back: the glee club was the first and only place he’s ever been able to understand himself. Which does suggest that he and Rachel are finished — freeing her to be something other than the Drama Queen with a clingy crush on the Football Captain. Fine by me.

Really, it’s the camera angle. Kurt is not licking Blaine’s cheek. Believe me, they don’t do stuff like that.

The two other relationships may be determined by forces outside the narrative universe of Glee: Naya Rivera needs to get on with her career, and since Santana decided to go to college after all, it will be harder to incorporate her character into either the Lima or the New York storylines. Easing her out of the picture would give Brittany a chance to put the “Questioning” into the show’s LGBTQ agenda — and Sam seems eager to assist her.

Since Kurt and Blaine are portrayed by Chris Colfer and Darren Criss, their futures may depend on situations most likely to generate iTunes sales. Given how invested viewers are in the almost-perfect love of these characters, however, any lasting breakup is virtually guaranteed to provoke a backlash.

What’s certain is that Glee won’t be able to sustain the kind of coordination and conviction we saw this week. When the show comes back, it will screw up. Start with the fact that this year’s musical is Grease, obliging us to forget how many of the best numbers from that show Glee has already featured in previous seasons.

So, yeah, our bad boyfriend Glee has screwed up yet again. But look! He also brought us a big bouquet of gorgeous fragrant flowers to make up for it! See? He really wants us to stick around until November.

Should we break up? A quandary that should last about five weeks.
(Because, like other bad boyfriends, sometimes Glee disappears for weeks at a time without writing or calling.)

*NOTE: The exception to the show’s egalitarian treatment of the gay and straight lovers is P.D.A. While Santana and Brittany got to kiss quite a lot this week, Kurt and Blaine barely got a hello peck on the cheek, and the lack of physical contact between them — since the episode last season when they began having sex — becomes increasingly difficult to understand.

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‘Glee’-nalysis: Here’s What I Missed on ‘Glee’

Glee launched its fourth season last night on FOX-TV, and I missed it. And I didn’t DVR it, because, really, that’s asking a lot of a middle-aged English-lit major, don’t you think? Because of Fox’s mingy policies, I won’t be able to see the season premiere until next Friday — unless of course some friend managed to record it and invites me over to watch.

But in a very real sense, missing the Glee season premiere doesn’t matter. Because over the previous seasons, I have come to understand something very important: Glee is a state of mind. The show on your TV screen almost never matches the show in your head. So why not kick off the new season with an episode that I made up entirely?

Graduation for the Class of 2012:
Don’t think you’re getting out of here yet.

We open with a scene of Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), on the telephone. Why is he on the telephone, you may ask? Because — in my imaginary show — stuff that happened in previous episodes actually has an impact on stuff that happens in current episodes! (I know it sounds crazy. But it’s my mind.)

So the point is that, an eternity ago, Mr. Schue was the campaign manager for a congressional candidate — who won election! Burt Hummel is now a United States Representative for Lima, Ohio. This means a couple of things. First, Burt wears a jacket and tie much, much more often now. Second, he is up for reelection in November. And finally, even if Burt did the pragmatic, realistic thing and hired a new campaign manager who, oh, you know, actually has a background in politics and isn’t trying to hold down a primary job as a high-school teacher — even if — then Mr. Schue is still an influential political player in a hotly contested swing state in a close national election!

Incredible though it may seem, this man
once starred on a popular TV show.

So Mr. Schue spends this entire episode manning a phone bank and trying to get out the vote for President Obama. We don’t see him again for the rest of this episode. Maybe not until the November sweeps. Nobody notices his absence, however, and we’re free to continue with this exciting season premiere.

Next, we go to the choir room, where Artie (Kevin McHale) takes advantage of Mr. Schue’s absence to indulge his growing desire for power. He declares himself the King of All Glee, and tells all the new kids who just arrived from Glee Project that they have to sit in the back of the room and keep quiet, because he’s waited too long for his spotlight and he’s not about to let them upstage him, the way Rachel and Kurt always did. In fact, King Artie decides that he’s not even going to let them have names, just assigned serial numbers, and the new boys will have to wear bags over their heads.

Upstaged no more?
Kevin McHale (Artie) and Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina).

Just then, Blaine walks in, and since he is still played by Darren Criss, everybody immediately forgets about Artie, and Blaine sings a song that will hit #1 on iTunes by 4:30 this afternoon.

In the background of Blaine’s song, Brittany (Heather Morris) dances like crazy, and in my imaginary Glee, the camera actually lets us see her moves. And Sam (Chord Overstreet) keeps his shirt on because — have you noticed? — he’s lost a lot of ab definition since he made his debut on the show. Don’t tell me I’m imagining that.

Meanwhile Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) sighs and says, “I wish Mike (Harry Shum, Jr.) were still here. He really knew how to flex a number.”

Darren Criss as Blaine: And now for a musical interlude.

Meanwhile, back in New York City, Rachel (Lea Michele) has developed the strange habit of prefacing all her speeches with the words “Meanwhile, back in New York City.” This is deeply confusing to the people around her, although it’s at least reassuring that she hasn’t sustained a major head injury.

Happily enrolled at NYADA, although she’s forgotten what NYADA stands for, Rachel is taking a dance class with Kate Hudson, which we know because Kate Hudson is a huge, huge Hollywood star and Fox sent out clips and pictures weeks ago, so that all Kate Hudson fans would be sure to tune in.

Because, really, when you think of New York icons,
you think of Kate Hudson.
Granted, it’s probably Kate Hepburn and the Hudson River,
but close enough.

In a poignant scene, Kate reminds Rachel that she once had a promising movie career, but that even though no one comes to her movies any more, people still like her because her mother is a beloved star who could giggle while wearing a bikini at the same time.

Really. This is true. You can ask your grandparents. They’ll tell you.

Also, Kate says, wouldn’t it be great if they did a remake of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes?

Meanwhile, back at McKinley High, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) has had her baby! And she’s named her after her late sister, Jean. We’re all so happy for her. However, because Glee is basically a soap opera with dancing, Baby Jean will mature at a soap-opera rate. Look! There — she’s seven years old already! By the end of this episode, Baby Jean will be a sophomore at McKinley and, much to Sue’s consternation, she will join New Directions.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jean?
Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester

Naturally, obsessive-compulsive guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury (the sublime Jayma Mays) is the only one who notices Baby Jean’s rapid growth. “Don’t you think you’re pushing her a little hard?” she asks Sue.

“You think that’s hard? Try putting on a weekly musical comedy in which most of the so-called ‘high-school students’ are in their mid-20s and depend on AutoTune the way most people need oxygen! That’s hard!”

“This is a musical?” Emma gasps. “I had no idea!” She promptly sings seven entire songs in a row, to make up for lost time.

Jayma Mays as Emma.
I love her. There. I said it.

“Meanwhile, back in New York,” Rachel murmurs softly as she wanders the cold and empty streets, which are really a backlot in Los Angeles. Rachel is lonely, lonely, lonely, without her friends from home. But we know in our hearts that she’ll make new friends, each of whom will make this show even more confusing to watch. She sings the classic New York number, “Another Hundred People Just Got Off of the Bus,” as another hundred people join the cast.

One of these people getting off of the bus is, of course, Quinn (Dianna Agron), who in her latest radical changes of character, is now majoring in Feminist Theory at Yale and carrying on a torrid affair with her professor (special guest star Anne Heche).

Dianna Agron as Quinn: Extreme Behavioral Swings As a Response to the Male Hegemony in Contemporary American Society.

But what of Glee’s defining star, Kurt (Chris Colfer)? When we last saw him, Kurt had inexplicably not been admitted to NYADA, despite the fact that he gave the world’s greatest audition, which was supposed to teach us enduring lessons about life and art. When he was rejected by NYADA, he didn’t even get a reaction shot, much less a single line to express himself — and we’ve waited and wondered about him all summer long.

Well, over the summer, Kurt made a movie and wrote a children’s book. (Chris Colfer really did!) Now he’s living in Washington, DC, with his Congressman dad, where he’s starring in a gender-bending revival of One Touch of Venus* at the Kennedy Center.

Kurt’s NYADA audition taught us to be true to ourselves and to embrace risk. Until it didn’t teach us that.
It also taught us the importance of carrying a spare pair of tight gold trousers at all times in case of emergencies.

The president of NYADA (very special guest star Kevin Kline) comes to Kurt’s dressing room to beg for forgiveness. Kurt is magnanimous, but he belongs to his public now, and he can’t possibly accept the offer to come to NYADA on a full scholarship and a guarantee of a full Broadway contract. Dejected, the president of NYADA leaves, while Kurt looks wistfully at a picture of Blaine and sings “That’s Him.”

So that’s what I missed last night on Glee. But what of all the other beloved cast members? Aren’t you dying to know what’s happened to Santana (combustible Naya Rivera), Mercedes (volcanic Amber Riley), Finn (Cory Monteith), Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones), and bad-boy Puck (Mark Salling)? There are so many stories to explore!

Will Artie succeed in his fiendish quest for World Domination? Will he and Tina start dating again, or will he simply clone her? Will Jenna Ushkowitz have more to do if she’s playing two Tinas instead of one? Will Rory (Damian McGinty) develop a personality? Or will he just keep standing there like an idiot? In what fresh and exciting ways will Principal Figgins’ (Iqbal Theba) hands be tied this season?

We’ll have to watch to find out — or else make it up for ourselves!

*NOTE: They thought about changing the title to something more masculine, but Kurt declared that it was a big part already and they didn’t need to fiddle with it.

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‘Glee’-nalysis: ‘Goodbye,’ or Where to Start Listing What Went Wrong Here?

Welcome to a universe in which Kurt Hummel’s talent is unexceptional.
Also, welcome to a universe in which guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury didn’t advise these kids to apply to more than one college.

Season after season, Glee strained credulity when the show asked us to believe that New Directions — a high-school club made up of kids who, in real life, are mostly in their mid- to late-20s and impeccably rehearsed and choreographed professionals — didn’t cream the competition and sweep up every award on the circuit. Having made up for that, just last week, with a victory at the Nationals, Glee took a gigantic step backward into the universe of Whah? Out of nowhere, Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) didn’t get into drama school in New York — and we’re expected to believe that.

While it’s true that the road to this outcome was paved early in the season, the creators of Glee seem to believe that we don’t even remember Kurt’s NYADA audition, fearless and (of course) thoroughly professional and (moreover) praised by the judge (Whoopi Goldberg). Adding insult to injury, we got no reaction whatever from Kurt, not even a season-ending cliffhanger line like, “I have a cunning plan!” Santana was given that chance, but not Kurt.

Brothers by marriage, and by rejection from drama school.
Cory Monteith and Chris Colfer as Finn and Kurt.

Yet again, I suspect that the writers’ motivation was mercenary. Presumably the graduating seniors of McKinley High School won’t appear so frequently next season (despite creator Ryan Murphy’s insistence in the press lately that “anyone who wants to stay can stay on the show”), and that includes several of the best — and best-selling — singers in the cast. Clearly the character of Blaine Anderson was youthened, or held back a grade, because of nervousness that song sales would suffer if Darren Criss weren’t around. Colfer is another strong singer and the relationship between Kurt and Blaine has become central to Glee’s ability to generate buzz. So if it takes Kurt the entirety of the fall episodes to make up his mind where to go and what to do, so much the better — in financial terms.

Kurt and Blaine: Banking on Glee’s future.

The point of Kurt’s audition was that real art demands risk. He came to the auditorium intending to sing “Music of the Night” from Phantom of the Opera, and then on a whim performed a less conventional number that suited him better: “Not the Boy Next Door,” from the Peter Allen musical, The Boy from Oz. (Luckily, he just happened to be wearing crotch-hugging gold-lamé pants under his tuxedo trousers.) This experience was supposed to teach us something about art and therefore about life — and so it did, until this week.

The risk of art: what a winning audition looks like.

Rachel, on the other hand, stuck to her tried-and-true, “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” but choked. True to her character, she proceeded to hound the judge until she got another chance. (This entailed the highly unlikely willingness of the judge to attend the finals in the glee competition. No matter.)

What a losing audition looks like: Rachel rains on her own parade.

Since the beginning of the season, both Kurt and Rachel have worried what will happen if they don’t get into NYADA, what if their dreams don’t come true, what if they’re just big fish in a very small pond in Lima, Ohio. Kurt has had to cope with a couple of serious disappointments, including the loss of the election for senior-class president and the loss of the leading role in the school production of West Side Story. Now he’s got an even bigger disappointment, and somehow no time could be found to show us how he feels about it.

Free at last to get on with her life: Dianna Agron.

How much more interesting it would have been if Rachel had been rejected! Her character has always been depicted as an unstoppable force of talent and willpower: how would she respond to a setback like this? The ensuing plot would have been interesting — and dramatic — and it need not have overturned the lessons of Kurt’s Peter Allen number.

Finn’s decision to join the army and redeem his father’s legacy made sense to me. It also put an end to the marriage plans, and gave Cory Monteith his most effective acting scene ever.

Already, Rachel’s fears of failure led her into a downright foolish decision to marry Finn, so that at least she’d have him to fall back on, or conversely, so they wouldn’t break up when she moved to New York to become a star. This is not the behavior of a confident young woman. So — again — how interesting it would have been to see her fight her way to New York in spite of the obstacles that the NYADA admissions office put before her!

Mommy Sound Machine: Gloria Estefan as Santana’s mother.

I guess it’s up to Kurt to demonstrate that kind of ingenuity and fight now. He’s been a model of resilience since the show started, always ready to climb out of the dumpster where the bullies threw him, and now he’ll probably do it again — selling records all the while.

Murphy rejected what was, to my way of thinking, by far the most interesting option, when he vetoed a spin-off series in which Rachel, Kurt, and Blaine all moved to New York together. We got a glimpse of the marvelous potential when Rachel and Kurt met for breakfast at Tiffany’s, at the end of last season, and again in this season’s finale, when Rachel walked the streets of New York looking for all the world like Marlo Thomas in That Girl. But she was alone, and the possibilities are more limited now.

“I’m going to miss you!” “I don’t see how that’s possible!”
Quinn and Sue say goodbye.

I did enjoy the teary farewell between Quinn (Dianna Agron) and Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), as well as the guest appearance by Gloria Estefan as Santana’s mother.* And of course I loved Burt Hummel’s (Mike O’Malley) dance to “Single Ladies,” a graduation present to his son that was at once a beautiful, loving gesture and an absolutely squirm-inducing embarrassment.** Every now and then, it seems the creative team on this show remembers what’s happened before — “Single Ladies” was a callback to Season 1. But for the most part, week in and week out, every scene is just a set-up for a song: credibility, character, plot, and any chance of true and lasting glory are secondary at best.

Unrepresentative: Burt Hummel says goodbye to his re-election chances.**

*NOTE: Too bad that Jennifer Holliday was busy on American Idol that night and therefore unavailable to play Mercedes’ mother; we’re left to believe Mercedes has got no parents but rose full-grown from the sea, or something.

**Now that Burt Hummel is a U.S. Congressman, why wasn’t he worried that somebody with a video recorder would post his little dance on YouTube? Clearly, the guy does not have a political adviser or any staff at all. He’s the guy who hired Will Schuester to be his campaign manager, but you’d think by now somebody would try to look after him a little better.

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‘Glee’-nalysis: Senior Moments and Junior Blaine

Darren Criss as Blaine Anderson,
backed up by the New Directions kids.

Much of last night’s episode of Glee was devoted to the impending graduation of several of the series regulars, and the various ways they’re saying goodbye to each other and to those they’ll leave behind. While this sort of thing can get old very fast — and knowing this show, it probably will — it did produce a couple of good scenes last night. I note particularly the conversation between graduating Kurt (Chris Colfer) and his father (Mike O’Malley), characters who have inspired the series’ writers to come up with terrific material time and again. Really, the Kurt-and-Burt relationship provides the series with its only consistently strong scenes, episode to episode. I don’t think they’ve ever taken a single misstep.

Burt Hummel (Mike O’Malley), now a U.S. Congressman,
bonds with Kurt.

Graduation has meant some curious, seemingly arbitrary decisions as to who is and is not a senior. In what seems to be an accident, Brittany (Heather Morris), who won the office of Senior Class President earlier this season, has for the past couple of episodes given every indication that she’ll remain in Lima, possibly at McKinley High, while her girlfriend, Santana (Naya Rivera), moves on. The scriptwriters haven’t said this outright, but for example when Brittany and Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) announce that Santana has been admitted to the University of Louisville, they missed the perfect opportunity for Brittany to chime in, “And I’ll be going there, too!” Maybe this sin of omission will be corrected later, or maybe I’m a fool to look in Glee for consistency of even the simplest kind.

Love Shack, Baby: Valentine’s 2012.

Very different considerations seem to motivate the writers’ approach to Blaine (Darren Criss). When we were introduced to him, he was a junior at Dalton Academy. He transferred to McKinley, but suddenly he’s a junior, bracing himself to stay behind while his boyfriend, Kurt, goes to acting school in New York City.

What’s at work here is the result of financial fear, plain and simple. Glee is graduating two of its strongest singers — Lea Michele and Chris Colfer — one of whom also plays the show’s most important character, the one who has really set Glee apart from anything else on television and permitted the show to make important statements to a broad audience.

Kurt (with his trusty Margaret Thatcher dog visible in the corner) cheers up Blaine, who can’t handle the painful stress of being Matt Bomer’s kid brother.

Let’s put it this way: last night’s authentically thrilling “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” a celebration of the lesbian fabulousness of Brittany and Santana complete with an all-girl cheerleader dancing chorus, might never have happened if the Kurt Hummel saga hadn’t elicited such a powerful response from the audience.

Glee isn’t just a television show: it’s also a touring stage production, a theatrical-movie company (with only one film made but the contractual possibility for two more), and, above all, a record label. While the character of Rachel Berry and Michele herself divide opinion, there’s no question that Michele is a phenomenally gifted singer, and she helped to keep song sales strong during the early stages of Glee.

Santana (Naya Rivera) and Rachel (Lea Michele), friends at last.
Only lately does it seem that the producers realized how well Rivera sings — but Santana is graduating, too, so adiós to that line of revenue.

Darren Criss proved how much further the song sales could go: his “Teenage Dream” broke all kinds of records, and virtually guaranteed that the character of Blaine Anderson would survive the four-episode arc originally planned for him. I maintain that it was as much the financial question as any narrative or audience imperative that drove the show’s creators to choose Blaine — instead of Sam (Chord Overstreet) or Karofsky (Max Adler), each of whom was hinted at as a potential swain — to be Kurt’s boyfriend.

Keeping Blaine around for an extra season is just a little insurance that the Glee record sales won’t tank next year. The sacrifice of continuity is insignificant when millions of iTunes downloads are at stake.

Blaine casts his spell — once or twice an episode, actually.

It feels a little weird as an audience to be manipulated for such crass commercial cause, but on the other hand, television in the United States is virtually nothing but a commercial, popular medium, one that strives to give the buying public what it wants. Most shows try only to anticipate what they suppose an audience will want, but Glee has proved a remarkable ability to respond to what the audience demonstrates that it does want. Moreover, very few if any shows have ever been swifter or more nimble about this.

The elevation of Brittany, Santana, and Mike Chang to star status is one example. The elevation of Blaine to superstar status is another. I guess we should be grateful for what we can get, and forget about the monetary motivations behind the generous gestures.

Couples counseling in Emma’s office: Will Blaine be quite so compelling once Kurt has left McKinley?
Imagine, for example, the vituperative pandemonium that will ensue
if Blaine ever dares to date anyone other than Kurt.

Random Observation: Brittany had several of her patented clueless lines last night. My favorite was her assessment of Joe, the Christian boy with the Disney’s-Tarzan dreadlocks (played by Samuel Larsen): “Joe’s really pretty, but I hear she doesn’t shave her armpits.” Also awfully good: “Quinn, in my dreams you’re still dancing. And you can fly. And breathe fire.”

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‘Glee’-nalysis: Glass Closets and the Undead Quinn

Matt Bomer as Cooper Anderson.
Here, Cooper, a Hollywood actor, demonstrates “dynamic head shot poses”; a shame I didn’t see this a few weeks ago, when my godson was photographing me.

Glee returned with a new episode last night, and while I’m disappointed by the news that [plot spoiler] Quinn Fabray did not die in her car wreck, I was pleased by a number of other developments, notably those involving Sue Sylvester, the Gorgon cheerleading coach played by Jane Lynch. It’s as if the show’s writers made a solemn vow to do something with the character, and after nearly two full seasons of implausibility and aimlessness, Sue has been given a fresh start.

Her pregnancy delivers both laugh lines and legitimate emotional grounding, and her conflict with the synchronized-swimming coach, Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes), a worthy adversary, has raised the stakes even further. Suddenly, Sue has purpose and meaning, motivation and development: at long last we are not required to believe that a grown woman is devoting her entire life’s energy to thwarting a high-school glee club. She still fires off her trademark corrosive insults, but she’s a character again and not a cartoon villain.

The undead Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron),
bonding with Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale).

Or at least, that’s the case this week. Who knows what the future holds, on a show as scattershot as this one? And so, instead of dissecting the episode any further, I’d like to focus on the appearance last night of Blaine’s older brother, played by Matt Bomer, a man so handsome that his looks became a running joke last night.

Bomer’s character is named Cooper Anderson, in what must be a dig at a certain CNN anchor who’s the object of scorn and fury throughout the Internet for his coy refusal to admit publicly that he’s gay. He doesn’t deny it, either, and he’s hardly hiding his social life or his longtime boyfriend. The gay website AfterElton has even coined a useful phrase for his status: “the glass closet.” Everybody can see you, but you never come out. [Please see the update below.]

Poster boy for gay teens:
Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss)

So, whether you noticed it or not, the writers twitted America’s most visible closet case, lending his name to the brother of a character who’s the face of young gay pride today. (Or half of it, anyway: attention must be paid to the out actor Chris Colfer, who plays Blaine’s boyfriend, Kurt.) And just to stir up the pot a little further, the producers cast Matt Bomer — another resident of the glass closet, at least until recently. Bomer’s very existence has provoked gay bloggers and chatters just as acutely as Anderson Cooper’s still does. (An afterthought: would we care so much if either of these guys were ugly?)

This intriguing construct seems to have sailed right past many viewers, and it may have occurred by accident in any case. But it’s worth noting — and now I’ve done so.

Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester

UPDATE: Anderson Cooper has come out, as of 2 July 2012, in a message to columnist Andrew Sullivan. So I guess the glass closet is a little less crowded now. As part of the coverage of Cooper’s announcement, it’s been made clear that the term “glass closet” did not in fact originate with AfterElton and has been in use at least since 2007, in a number of publications; I regret my error (above).

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‘Glee’-nalysis: Quinn Fabray Must Die

Dianna Agron as Quinn Fabray

Glee has completed its winter season with a bang that promises to resolve at least one of the most significant dilemmas the show has faced: at least since the end of Season 1, the writers haven’t had a clue what to do with Quinn Fabray (the gorgeous Dianna Agron). Short of admitting that the girl has some sort of multiple-personality syndrome — which at this point is, really, the only way to account plausibly for her erratic behavior — then killing her off is surely the best thing for the character, for the show, and for the gifted young actress herself, who’s destined, I hope, for better things than, as Sue Sylvester put it this week, “singing ‘oohs’ and backup ‘ahs’” at McKinley High School.

The way has been prepared for Quinn’s demise, along with a Very Important Message in an episode that was heavy laden with ’em. On the chance that you haven’t watched yet, I won’t spell out the details — it’s a doozy of a scene, actually — but I will observe that Quinn effectively said goodbye to the entire gang, most notably to Sue, who will have the satisfaction of having said all the right things in their last conversation. There are no loose threads in the crazy quilt of her story.

How can a show that gets some things so right
be so inept about almost everything else?

Moreover, Quinn’s loss would mean that New Directions had something very real to cope with, all the way to Nationals. Not just Mr. Schuester’s arbitrary weekly themes, but genuine grief for a girl about whom most of the kids had pretty complicated feelings. (Complicated not least because the others can’t ever have known which Quinn was going to turn up: Evil Scheming Quinn, Devout Quinn, Punk Quinn, Honor Student Quinn, Quinn Who Thinks She’ll Never Leave Ohio, ad infinitum.)

Hello, my name is Batshit Crazy Quinn.

Unfortunately, the writers can’t knock off every single character who stymies them. Will Schuester himself, for example, is still in principle the central character in the show, so they can’t kill him — and yet it’s telling that the writers have no idea what to do with him, either.

How to kvell: At long last, Rachel’s gay dads turn out to be
Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes Mitchell, here listening
to their little girl and her big voice.

Even Will’s relationship with Emma (Jayma Mays, whom I love) posed a challenge to the writers, once they realized that her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which they’d treated as a joke for two seasons, is in fact a serious condition that observes certain rules, shall we say, that they couldn’t ignore any longer. So what to do with Will? “Hey! Let’s make him the campaign manager for Mr. Hummel’s congressional campaign!” Lotta mileage that one provided.

Weirdest Coming-Out Story Ever:
Inadvertently outed by Finn, Santana (Naya Rivera, right)
was targeted by a politician who clearly never heard of libel laws. With Heather Morris as girlfriend Brittany.

At least Sue’s pregnancy and her newfound goodwill, whether hormone-induced or not, is off to a promising start. Then again, her congressional campaign was promising, too, before it turned into yet another — and therefore tedious — way to lash out at the glee club. So who knows whether impending motherhood will make any significant difference in Sue’s character?

The Story Line to Nowhere.
Jane Lynch as Sue.

The fall and winter episodes have been enlightening. It’s now clear, for example, that there are certain things for which the creative team has a gift, and other things they simply don’t know or don’t care how to do. They write sensitive, sometimes wise material about gay guys, but the magic touch begins to falter when it comes to gay girls, and beyond the casting department, they’re hopeless on race. The soap-operatic quality of a serialized comedy–drama about angsty teens is pretty much a given — but even so, their plots manage to strain the viewers’ generous credulity.

Rachel (Lea Michele) and Finn (Corey Monteith) proudly announce
their ludicrous engagement.
Even by soap-opera standards….

It’s also clear that they’ve got attention deficit disorder. Sugar Motta? At the beginning of this season, she sang so badly that Mr. Schue broke his longstanding open-door policy and refused to let her join New Directions. When her own glee club broke up, suddenly Sugar traipses into Mr. Schue’s classroom and joins the gang, without as much as a mention of her tin ear. She’s a mildly amusing character, and I like the look of Vanessa Lengies, the actress who plays her.

Sugar (Vanessa Lengies) shows Mr. Schue (Matthew Morrison)
how not to suck all the life out of a room.

We may yet see some interesting conflict between spoiled rich girl Sugar and the penurious Sam (Chord Overstreet), but I wouldn’t bet on it. Sam’s family’s financial situation — the most interesting thing about him — is mostly forgotten now. Mom and Dad are off being poor in Kentucky, but Sam’s in Ohio, so everything is cool, right?

Chord Overstreet: They’re still trying to make
a Czech porn star out of him.

At least the show is giving him something to do occasionally, and that in turn has meant more spotlight for the sensational Amber Riley, who plays Mercedes, long one of the best indicators that the writers never had quite enough ideas at any given moment. She finally got a boyfriend, and he’s played by an actor who appears old enough to be her father’s older brother, but because she and Sam held hands once, suddenly she’s all conflicted and — well, whatever. Somehow Riley plays these scenes with astonishing conviction, and then she opens her mouth to sing, and you think, “She’s got a great career ahead of her, and some day none of this will matter.”

“I Will Always Love You”: Amber Riley as Mercedes.
The scene was produced before Whitney Houston’s death.

Part of the trouble, of course, is that there are so many characters on the show, and they keep adding new ones. The Irish kid! The Christian with the dreadlocks! Evil Sebastian Warbler! How do you find time for them all? When Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr.) got a story arc, in the fall, it was practically delivered in shorthand. Dad doesn’t approve of your dancing! Dance anyway! Even spread over a few episodes, the whole story was told in a matter of seconds.

Asian F: Keong Sim as Mike Chang’s disapproving father,
with Harry Shum, Jr., as Mike.

Glee keeps bringing minor characters back, too, notably including Karofsky (Max Adler), the closeted homophobic bully who was the focus of so much attention in this week’s episode. I’ve had reservations about this character from the start, and this week’s step-by-step instructional video, How to Commit Suicide the David Karofsky Way, didn’t help, despite the good intentions.

Karofsky (Max Adler) returned for Valentine’s,
primarily so that we could (almost) lose him this week.

You may not have noticed this — in fact, the gay entertainment website AfterElton.com didn’t — but this week’s episode was a pitch for the Trevor Project, a terrific outfit that’s trying to stop gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning teens from killing themselves. In addition to a public-service announcement from Daniel Radcliffe, who is exactly the right person to deliver this message to the right audience, the show featured Sebastian and the Warblers taking donations for the group. But Sebastian’s announcement was so rushed, and moreover surrounded by the hubbub of the Regional Competition, that it was easy to miss.

The Couple Most Likely:
Sebastian (Grant Gustin) & Blaine (Darren Criss).
Actually, I wouldn't mind losing a little of the exemplary, even pious behavior from the Blaine–Kurt affair.

So now Karofsky and Kurt are going to be friends, which is of course exactly where we left things last fall, before somebody decided to bring him back and teach us all a Very Important Lesson. And viewers like me are back to worrying that Glee will try yet again to force Kurt to date the boy who once threatened to kill him — which may entail sending Blaine off to sleep with Sebastian. Which, clearly, the producers intend to happen. And it will probably feature a Very Important Message about trust and fidelity.

The friendship between Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Rachel remains credible and satisfying.

Ultimately Glee is a show about acceptance: being accepted by others, accepting yourself for who you are, and (especially this season) accepting your own limitations. It’s at its best when it shows how people react when they learn they’re not getting the lead in the school play, not earning the football scholarship or the Broadway contract, not winning the student election or receiving the acceptance letter from drama school.

The cast rose to the occasion for the West Side Story episodes, featuring some of the show’s all-time best musical numbers. Here, our Maria and Tony, Rachel and Blaine.

What I’m trying to accept is simply this: Glee isn’t going to get any better. In fact, given the nature of American television shows, which decline in quality after a few years, it’s probably going to get worse.

We may yet see new episodes as good as the fall episode about sex and love, and we’ll probably see clever misfires like the Christmas episode, too. But week to week and scene to scene, Glee is what it is: hit and miss, and mostly miss.

Accept it.

“Love Shack” got it right.

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