I May Be Gleeked Out

I admit it.  I’ve been a big fan of Glee since about the second episode of season one, but I may be getting close to my stopping point now.

Last season saw the graduation of most of the original class.  Despite thinking that I would miss them, I was excited to see if the show could survive a rotation to new cast members and their new stories.  I’m particularly a big fan of Samuel Larsen and Damian Mcginty (the first winners of the Glee project) and I was looking forward to seeing them featured in greater proportion.

So when this season began I was surprised to see a branched off storyline involving two of the graduated characters (Kurt and Rachael) in New York city, but since they were two characters I loved, I was pleased as well.

My pleasant surprise turned to dismay however, when instead of developing existing characters, the writers began to pile on new ones like a ravenous guy at a buffet overfilling his plate.  To make matters worse, the new ones who are receiving most of the air time, are incredibly boring.

Marley (who I referred to for a long time as “hat girl” because I couldn’t remember her name) is basically Bella from Twilight.  She’s unspeakably gorgeous and all the guys desperately want and fight over her, but she spends all her time in total, self-absorbed contemplation of her own inadequacies anyway.  But it’s okay that she’s vapid and shallow, because she’s so sweet.

I desperately want her to go away.

I’m slightly more interested in her evil counterpart Kitty, but mostly because she’s vaguely funny and fun to hate.  She still lacks the depth and bite that Santana or Quinn had.  Quinn was another character I thought was desperately under-utilized anyway and consistently portrayed in a horrible light, I frequently wondered if the actress who played her didn’t go home and sock the crap out of her pillow every week in frustration.

There’s a Puck-replacement character (his apparently secret little bother?  Um… okay) who is again only vaguely interesting.  They’ve also inserted the most current winner of the Glee project who manages to be about as intriguing as a slice of white bread.  I have no idea what his character’s name is because I fast forward through his dialogue.

And that’s it.  The overstuffed, bloated scripts are managing to give air time to basically these four, extremely boring new characters as well as some to Kurt and Rachael in NYC.  Everyone else is set dressing.

Samuel, my favorite actor on the show, can be glimpsed on occasion trying way too hard to be noticed in the back of group scenes or song numbers, and Damian is just gone this season without a trace.

Yes, there are still good things.  Yes it’s interesting that they added an overweight character in Marley’s mom – however, it would be lovely to see an overweight character whose allowed to have a single conversation that isn’t completely about her weight.  As with all other characters in media of that size, she’s not a character, she’s a fat character.  Every story in which she appears is about nothing but the size of her body.  And as always, for me, that’s just not good enough anymore.

Yes the Kurt and Rachael in NYC storyline is interesting and good, and Kate Hudson as the addition of an evil dance instructor is outright amazing.  Sarah Jessica Parker as Kurt’s boss at Vogue isn’t half bad either.

But overall it’s just too much.  Way too much going on to really focus on anything, way too much stupid camp, and way too much mean spirited humor.

Isn’t one of the main themes of Glee supposed to be that it’s not okay to bully anyone?  Yes, absolutely, unless they’re Christian in which case – enjoy!  I’m mostly referring to the persistent desire on the part of the writers to find the characters with the worst behavior possible and slap that label on them so that everyone can point, laugh and say, “look how awful they are!”  If they were doing that to any other religious group, well – heck there’s no point in speculating because they wouldn’t do that to any other religious group.  This has always been the case (I’ve even blogged about it before) but it’s actually managed to get worse this season.

This week’s past episode was vaguely enjoyable, and I realized pretty early into it that was because it was the Thanksgiving episode and most of the original cast was there bringing back their old magic.  Next week though they’ll mostly be gone again, leaving us with Hat-Girl, Puck-Jr, Danny Zuko and Faux-Quinn.

And I’m just not interested anymore.

I desperately tried to send feedback to the writers of the show, but after searching (and searching, and searching) could find no way to do that.  They seem to have a deep aversion to feedback from fans.

So I’m putting my disappointment in the only spot I can – here on my blog.

I’m sad and I miss my Glee.