Glee

“Glee”, for those of you that don’t know, is a comedy, drama, musical television show mostly concerned with teenagers and their lives, or more correctly, their love lives. Well, that’s not strictly true, but I’ll get to that later.

I started to watch “Glee” from the very first episode. Frankly, I was attracted to the show because of the humour that was shown in promos on Channel 10 (this was before they went and ruined everything) here in Australia. The music seemed to be an afterthought to me, and still is.

Let me get one thing straight, I like “Glee”. I really do. I just wish that they would do things right some times.

There are so many controversial storylines in “Glee” that I feel the only good way to talk about them is to list them.

•  Teenage pregnancy involving the head of the celibacy club lying to her boyfriend about the baby’s father. 
•  Racism. 
•  Homosexuality and homophobia.
•  Eating disorders.
•  Teen alcoholism.
•  Depression.
•  Texting while driving resulting in a car crash.
•  Suicide
•  Spousal Abuse 

Of course, this is a condensed version, but you get the picture. The problem with doing controversial storylines is that the writers need to find ways to make the consequences real. In this respect, “Glee” has been very mixed.

While the storylines involving teenage pregnancy, racism, homosexuality and homophobia and underage drinking are done reasonably well, the rest aren’t done nearly as well. The depression storyline begins in Season Three and only lasts a few episodes and then it’s resolved. This was something they could have really used to help people, but it was over before it got good.

But worst of all are the storylines about texting and driving and suicide. One of the characters, Quinn Fabray (who seems to be involved in a lot of the controversial storylines), is driving, receives a text and replies. This leads to her car getting plowed into and wrecked.

But the next episode she is not as bad as she should have been. Sure, she was in a wheelchair, but she was looking as good as usual and one of the first things she said was that she was having the best day of her life.

What?

That’s absurd!

If you do a storyline like that it needs to show the true consequences. That means the aftermath of the crash, the hospitalization, the destroyed parents. All this is telling people is that it’s fine because you will actually feel better! Stupid.

The suicide one is better in that the suicide scene itself is very well done. 

I kind of just realised that the crash and the suicide happened in the one episode. Intense.

But, ultimately, the character who attempted suicide was found by his father and revived. At least they had the thought to show him in a hospital, I suppose. Not that he looked terrible. And then they resolved it in the very next episode, which didn't really help things. It was a good message, but they didn't follow through on it greatly. Although, I have to say, his father finding him was heart-wrenching to watch.

My point is, if you are going to do storylines like these that are going to have an impact, let them have an impact. Don’t use them for ratings, which is clearly what they were doing. Use them to actually have meaning. These storylines could have been brilliant if they had the time to play out. But they didn’t.

Ultimately, I like “Glee” and what it stands for. It doesn’t try to mend racism by raising the formerly oppressed above the oppressors, it makes them equal. It has a good message. It tackles big issues. The characters are fun. It’s funny.And it has okay music. I just wish they would include some music I like. I mean, how hard would it be to use something by Placebo, really?

I absolutely cannot believe I got this song in somewhere.

~Benjamin~