Can we talk about Glee for a second? There are many topics to consider here: How the departing seniors basically got mini-me twins; how there’s no conceivable way Kurt, Rachel, and Santana are living in that huge loft in New York with no income; and apparently teachers can leave for extended periods and hand-off their duties to a recent high school grad not currently pursuing higher education. But today it’s their recent and not-so recent handling of emotionally triggering subjects.
Now, I’m always up for a little controversial humor as long as it doesn’t cross the line into completely unnecessary and offensive. And I would even say I have a relatively high tolerance for that sort of thing, but lately this show has been making me cringe more than an episode of Catfish. The second-hand embarrassment I felt from Tina’s ill-advised crush on Blaine forced me to mute pretty much all of their scenes.
It’s upsetting how the writers have to take the glee clubbers completely out of character to drive the message home. Sam and Artie would never congratulate Ryder for being molested as a kid because a teenage girl had prematurely touched his junk. And Ryder would never demand that Unique to pick a bathroom because her gender fluidity confused him. Will is probably the worst teacher in the history of the profession. Don’t even get me started about the school-shooting episode, which handled a sensitive topic horribly and copped out without any real resolution. Am I the only one who would actually fight against having to do these types of scenes? There’s no way that presenting topics in this matter is actually helping to build tolerance and acceptance.
It’s getting more and more difficult to convince people that for roughly thirteen episodes, aka the first thirteen episodes of the series, Glee was genuinely a quality program. Because it was. There was little to no deliberate fan-service, songs were relevant to the storylines, the female characters weren’t treated like complete shit, and things weren’t presented solely for shock factor. This show has deteriorated faster than Heroes, (a feat unto itself) which at least had a great first season in its entirety. And I’m not saying there’s occasionally an episode that’s reminiscent of its glory days. As much as I despise all three of the core couples, “The Break-Up” was easily one of the best episodes of this craptastic season.
Insert the “I wish I knew how to quit you” line because I wish with all my tv-loving heart that I could officially cut this program out of my life. Sam and the occasional appearance by Quinn are seriously the only reasons I still have this show in my Hulu queue. Open letter to Glee writers: You have an amazing platform to which millions of teens are paying attention. If you’re going to tackle a pressing and serious issue, at least follow through completely. Don’t cop out with a trivial resolution or try to make light of the situation. It’s not funny nor helping in the long run.