Glee.

I will preface this blog with two things. (1) I have not watched the latest Glee and (2) I think it is an okay show, just one that’s been glorified within an inch of its life through some brilliant marketing.

Glee is High School Musical‘s gayer and more popular older brother. I said it.

A lot of television shows and movies want to break away from the “high school molds” and destroy stereotypes, but… they don’t. This show is especially guilty of that. But let’s start with the HSM comparisons.

Troy/Finn– Good-looking sports star whose singing makes him unpopular with the team.BUT THEN the team totally gets into it, and they love singing and dancing too! Pretty girlfriend whose relationship is strained by the music. Both of these characters are the heart of their teams and their musical productions. Because that’s obviously how things work– everything is based on one person.

Sharpay/Rachel– Rachel wears less glitter, but all in all, they’re both the “I will cut you for a part, but I can also learn a really important lesson at the end of the show/movie just to forget it by the next show/movie so that the show/movie can have a plot” showgirl. Of course, I think Lea Michele is beautiful, and she can sing, but her singing on the show isn’t very good compared to what she has done- and won a Tony for.

Ryan/Kurt– Token gay.

Monique/Mercedes– Token black girl who sometimes says stuff.

Chad/Puck– The best friend with the stupid hair.

And so on. Say what you will about HSM, but they do have original songs. Glee has a capella versions of popular songs, and usually they’re pretty difficult to listen to. And despite all the Facebook statuses that I saw– No, Puck’s version of “Sweet Caroline” was not better than Neil Diamond’s, are you kidding me?

But then I realized, maybe most of the target demographic hasn’t heard the original versions of these songs, which is just sad.

It’s weird to see everyone so obsessed with Jane Lynch now. Um, she was around before. She was funny then too.

The plots are contrived (Kristin Chenoweth? Accepted back into high school? Really? I love K-Cheno, but c’mon), the characters are flat and it’s just awkward most of the time. I feel like Mr. Shu’s relationship with the kids is pretty inappropriate– even after that “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” rendition. Everything is just very forced, nothing seems natural.

That’s another thing about it– the kids just seem to sing some songs (perfectly, once, on the first try), but they never actually practice. The way the music is handled is very strange because the cast is very obviously lip-synching, and I hate how Lea Michelle pretends to show emotion because I know she’s better than that. It just seems like a really awkward music video rather than any type of practice.

I don’t like the Shu/Emma relationship. I know we are supposed to want them to be together, but Shu is married, and essentially, we are hoping for a marriage to end, which isn’t really okay when you think about it. And we are happy when it does end. Like. What. Have we become that insensitive? Emma’s a little too neurotic- and that’s coming from someone whose favorite show was Monk for eight years. And Shu knows what he’s doing. He’s not a sympathetic character, and Emma’s doe-eyed nature does not make her more endearing to me.

The camerawork is also pretty uncomfortable. I guess it’s supposed to be innovative, but it’s just way too close to the casts’ faces.  I guess they have to be innovative with the camerawork since everything else about the show is a stale trope.

Anyway, Glee enforces stereotypes under the guise of breaking them. The gay boy is flamboyant and fashionable, the star is a diva, the football player is an idiot, etc. They just push it more than HSM because Kurt is openly gay and Quinn is pregnant. No school is as polarized as the media makes them out to be, and their representations of high school are wrong, but the kids who watch them think that’s how it’s supposed to be, and it just becomes a vicious cycle. I know I contridicted myself there, but what I mean is that the kids who watch the show are going to try to make their high school experience like the show– because it’s what they know, it’s what they think is “right.” That’s why prom is a big deal when in reality, it’s just everyone in high school looking a little prettier in a hotel ballroom and you realize that there’s nothing that important about it.

Glee is the high school prom of television.

Quote of the day: “Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.” – Gregory Macguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West