How Glee Became Unbearable in 10 Uneasy Steps - Part 4: "Tribute Episodes"

Whitney. Rumours. Madonna. No.

The writing of Glee, when it's at its best, is when the writers take the time to develop character development and a consistent plot progression. They did it well with Kurt's coming out story. They did it with his bullying story. They did it for a while with Quinn's pregnancy arc. But when it's at its worst, it when it lets the storyline go and fall prey to distractions. And the biggest distraction was the producers and writers using the gimmick of the "tribute" episode, where all plot and character development is tossed to co-opt whatever act or movie they felt could give them a ratings bump or a break in the tedium or iTunes sales or whatever. What they end up doing is being a timesuck and a clear pander, to most likely an older gayer audience, given the artists involved.

In the first season, there was one of these episodes, the Madonna, episode, so it wasn't too much of a bad thing. But the signs were there. The big promotion, where Madonna "granted" her permission to use her catalog. The convoluted plotlines about the influence of a performer so not in with real high schoolers at this time. But hey, whatever, Glee.

But with a positive response and a #1 EP to boot, all bets were off on what to co-opt for seasons two and three. The second year, three one-offs and a Christmas episode counted for a big chunk of the season. They all seemed like vanity projects, most especially Brittany/Britney. which had absolutely no relevance to the story arc, it clearly capitalized only on the popularity of Heather Morris (who does rock so it isn't her fault), and existed to give a tabloid hot mess a cameo.

But at least in the that season there were sparks of relevant narrative.That went out the window this year, where we went from living hot messes to dead hot messes, as Whitney and Jacko were given the whitewash, with such a suckup job that it felt like an infomercial for their respective greatest hits albums. But even worse was us to suspend belief in the relevance of bringing up a disco movie that supposedly will be used to nationals (which already has been promoted that its not), while completely ignoring other important stories and characters, that, ahem, HAPPENED JUST TWO EPISODES AGO. And the Whitney episode was the worst-written episode with plot-holes and inconsistensies all-over (two more "steps" coming up).

Even the ill-concieved West Side Story gig was a vanity project, disjointing the cast and detaching the plot from reality. They spent all this time solely trying to keep enough members to even compete, but now they not only can split up, but have time to pull off a crazy-ass musical in the process and trying to pawn off tickets.

The reason why I get so annoyed with these sidejobs is that they are so detached from even the normal outsized reality of Glee that whenever its said that there's no time for all the stories they picked up and dropped, there's these glaring unnecessary reacharounds that are nothing but record company merchandising. And at least it's starting to backfire. The Saturday Night Gleever trainwreck was the first episode since 1st season's "Mattress" to place a single on the US pop chart. If they would've radically transformed the music, or written a really coherent script to justify why the show is doing this, maybe they could have more success with it.

In fact, there seemed to be no reason for the Whitney episode at all other than to capitalize on her recent death, and after promising to cut down on these stunts, Murphy trolled us all four times this year. And that's too much.

But then again, I'm just a crotchety middle-aged gay man. I guess who these stunt episodes are targeted for. But no. Just no.

Seriously, out of all Glee's missteps, this is a really minor one, and more rambling than most. Next time, Glee shoots its wad in the Thai hooker den of reality television.