SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE EPISODE 14 “Hell-O”
The “spring season” or the second half of Glee season one started tonight and it really kind of pissed me off. I mean, the humor was still there and the songs were good but the decisions they made with the characters just completely baffled me. The more I’ve heard about the show during it’s hiatus, the more I worried that it had serious “jump the shark” potential (I really hate that term, btw). Sometimes a show can become a victim of it’s own popularity, you know? Tonight’s episode didn’t do much to quell my fears and here is why.
The first half of the season was built on the following major points:
- The glee club’s quest for sectionals and Sue Sylvester’s quest to destroy to the glee club.
- Mrs. Schuster lying about being pregnant and thus keeping Will from leaving her to get with Emma, the girl the audience knows is right for Will and really wants him to be with.
- Quinn being pregnant with Puck’s baby, but convincing Finn that the baby is his. Finn then stays with Quinn despite his obvious attraction to Rachel.
The first half of the season ended with sectionals. The glee club won their sectional, Sue tried to sabotage them but got caught and suspended, Will found out about his wife’s lie and left her for Emma (who also left Mr. Tanaka to be with Will) and Finn found out that the baby was Puck’s, Puck and Quinn got together as did Rachel and Finn got together. Everyone was happy and the audience got all the payoffs that it wanted. They built the season around the audience wanting these things to happen and then paid them off tremendously. Sure, the pregnancy stuff was pretty stupid but in the end we got what we wanted. It was a good ending and some could argue that they didn’t have anywhere to go from there. A good writing staff would have found new angles and worked off of those. Maybe found a new foe for Sue (like a student she wanted to destroy instead of the whole Glee club program), played with relationship stories with Rachel/Finn and Will/Emma and built towards regionals. Did they do any of this? No.
Instead they hit the reset button. The show opened with Sue Sylvester getting her job back and within like two scenes she is back trying to destroy the glee club. Then ty broke up Rachel and Finn and put a pretty sizable wedge in their relationship. They’ve stopped and started so many times with these two (in just 14 episodes) that it’s going to be really hard to get people to care about them getting back together if they ever go there again. Basically, in just 14 episodes they Ross and Rachel’d them. Not a good move (just ask Scrubs). They also broke up Emma and Will because Will wasn’t ready. (Earlier they even teased dissension with Puck/Quinn. I mean, why? Can no one be happy except the black girl and the gay kid, who are only really happy because they get no screen time? I don’t get it.) It makes sense story-wise, but it really felt forced here. And why did they have to do all three of these things in the first episode? Couldn’t they have given them a couple happy episodes before breaking them up? It’s ridiculous. The one thing they did do right was introduce the “big bad” (to use a Buffy term) of the rest of the year, the opposing school and it’s evil teacher and star, but overall I was not a big fan of this episode.
Everything they did made sense, I guess, and you could argue that they didn’t really betray their characters, but I thought this was some pretty lazy writing. They didn’t know what to do with these people next so they are just going to have them do what they did before again, but in a different way. I don’t get it.
