Are you watching Glee?

Isn't that kind of the point? That's why I watch the show, I find it hilariously corny. That plus Sue's insults are great.

So what's this about "Quinn" being in the doghouse? I noticed the lack of her, too.

 

Not a good episode. I'll say this, though, they're sure throwing in the kitchen sink into these shows. But I didn't like that they're cutting the songs back to about 2 minutes each -- the abbreviated "Readers Digest" versions.

Note that the ratings have gone down to a 2.4 -- the lowest in show history.

 

And an update: let me just say for the record that the show for this past week (May 1, 2012) was not only the Worst Episode Ever, but possibly the worst Fox show I've ever seen. Horrible from start to finish. Stunningly, jaw-droppingly bad.

 

It was the theme that killed everything. Apart from a tribute to G.G. Allin, or a very special episode against incest, I don't see how they could make a bigger mistake in taste or judgement.

 

Glee has been horrible lately. That "Whitney Houston" episode was terrible, the worst ever. Embarrasing.

 

Agreed: the "Whitney" episode was the worst... until the "Battered Wife" episode.

My only chuckle: Rachel chokes singing "Don't Rain on My Parade." My take was, "why sing a song where you're basically doing an impression of Barbra Streisand?" You think they haven't seen that before? Sing something new, don't try to imitate somebody else. That would've been a lot more realistic.

The second laugh: they're trying to get me to buy that Whoopie Goldberg, a woman with a frog-like voice, is a world-class opera singer? (Actually, I'm sure that was intentional, but it was bizarre.)

I also laugh at how they throw together songs at the last minute with no rehearsals, no costumes, no lighting cues, and somehow it comes out perfectly. This show is veering from "Musical Fantasy" right into "Fringe & X Files" territory...

 

...wait! So, they're NOT going to sing King Crimson's 'Dinosaur' at the prom???!!

I thought that was the whole reason to have a dinosaur-themed prom. No?

I'm beginning to suspect that the producers aren't going to do ANY King Crimson music on this show. But they just keep teasing the hopeful, expectant audience...

 

I was hoping for "Walk the Dinosaur" by Was (Not Was).

 

It was played in the background during a scene.

 

And let me be the first to say... the finale sucked. My biggest problem was fighting to stay awake through the whole thing.

It ends with a whimper, not a bang. This does not bode well for next season...

 

Yes it does. It was really lame. Usually I get sucked into goodbye /finale type episodes but not this one.

The graduation episodes from last week were really good.

 

Well, there's no question but that the show will be different next year. I can't imagine the show without Lea Michelle and "Finn", who were essentially the stars in this ensemble cast. Assuming they aren't gone from the show altogether, the show will have to follow them to wherever they are next season, which for Lea/Rachel, appears to by NYC at the moment. The more talented performers have all graduated, leaving the lesser knowns to try to carry on in high school. I suppose it's a built-in problem when you set your show in high school or college. If you don't just suspend time, the characters eventually have to move on. Does anyone know how long the Sweathogs lasted on Welcome Back Kotter before their graduation episode?

 

They should have ended on a high note with the Nationals.

I'm not sure how much Ryan Murphy is involved in this show but it's really gone down hill from the first season.

 

4 seasons, 95 episodes for Kotter. My problem with that show and Glee was, towards the end, it looks like most of the cast is 27 (which is what they were). It's really hard to round up a group of kids who are a) available, b) are at least 18 [so they can legally work 14 hours a day], c) can act, and d) can sing and dance. This is not easy.

They're definitely gonna have to take it to another level to survive. My suspicion is that the show creators have moved on to so many other projects, and the ratings are so down, nobody's going to want to take the effort and spend the money to keep the show going more than another year. And I think the ratings will still be not-so-great. On the other hand, the show's making money in music: as of April 2012, the cast has sold more than 43 million songs and over 12 million albums worldwide. (I've lost track of how many charted Billboard hits they've had -- well over 100.)

On the other hand: 21 Jump Street lasted five years, and god knows, Beverly Hills 90210 lasted a whopping 9 seasons (with various casts). So it can be done -- it's just tough. And Glee has the double-whammy of also having to keep up with current trends in music, and perform whatever's hot at the moment. The risk there is that audiences get bored and move on to the next big thing.

 

Oh, come on.

We both like Smash, and its season finale featured Tom & Julia writing a new song fifteen minutes before showtime, and teaching it to the understudy in between the understudy learning all of the other songs for the musical right before the curtain went up. These shows are indeed musical fantasies.

The all time champ in this regard is Beverly Hills 90210: towards the end of that show, "college student" Ian Ziering looked like he was 35 (which is what he was).

 

Anybody else think it was kind of cheap that only Rachel moved on? Seems like they were trying to come up with excuses for their graduating (or not) seniors to stick around for another season.

Glee: The (Never Going To) College Years?

 

But that's actually happened before: somebody had to throw together a new song (and/or a new ending) the day before a Broadway premiere, and it worked. It stretches belief, but doesn't defy it.

The stuff in Glee goes way too far to me into fantasy land. In this case, it was just all-over-the-place stupid.

 

Which is a big part of why I quit watching two or three weeks into the current season. Obviously, something kept you hooked and making the same observations about the show's unreality that you've been making since season one.

 

I know people who work on the show, plus I occasionally like the one-liners from Sue and some of the musical numbers. Not so much this season, though.

I only watch about 6 hours of TV a week, so hey, 45 minutes of my life isn't a huge deal. Very definitely this season I've been inclined to fast-forward through the occasional bad musical numbers, which I never did before.

 

Doh... and a major character departs in the latest episode (4/11). I won't spoil who it is, except to say it torpedos the entire show for me. I think I'm done.

Dumb, dumb, dumb show.

 

I gave up on Glee right before some of the original cast members graduated and moved to New York. I was getting tired of how they were glorifying the Sue Sylvester character. I know the producers were just trying to create friction between characters. What they did was just create a character in Sue that came across as a bully. This is something that should not be glorified or tolerated in real life.

 

Well... she was more than that. It's fair to say they were trying to create a complex character, and she was a bully in certain situations. But the series needed a villain, and now that's gone -- for the moment.

Incredibly, the ratings are still doing OK, so I expect it'll be renewed. One hopes they'll get rid of some of the 27-year-old "teenagers" they have in the cast now and will bring in some new blood.

 

I don't think she is leaving the show; I think it's most likely they wrote her out because of something else she's doing.

 

The plot was so heinous, I'm not sure what arbitrary gimmick they could use to get Sue back into the show. To me, the whole thing was a major "jump the shark" moment.

 

And just as an update: I finally got around to watching the 2014 season finale, which might be the worst episode yet. Man, has this show run out of gas. Beyond bad. I'll say this: some of the songs were OK, but the story was off-the-charts horrible, really cringe-worthy. Fox has acknowledged the horrible ratings slide and, while they're locked into one more season, the word is that the show won't be back until January 2015 and they're only going to shoot 15-18 more episodes.

I think their pivotal error was not in replacing 2/3 of the cast a couple of years ago, just dropping the lesser characters as they aged-out and putting in new, different, younger characters as they started high school. I suspect this casting problem was heavily debated between the network, the producers, and the studio, but my guess is that they were afraid to rock the boat and opted to stick with the devils we know.