How Glee Became Unbearable in ten uneasy steps - Part 8: Musical Chairs and Character Assassinations...
At least Matt Rutherford got a 'eulogy'.
When you're making a weekly scripted TV show, you can either be really good at one-off shows, like Seinfield, or carrying multi-character storylines over many episodes, like Dallas or Beverly Hills, 90120. It's next to impossible to do both well. Lost did a good job of it, but then was that there was a mini-series type of storyboard to go on. The problem is, with Glee's many different characters portraying both adults and kids, it's tough to keep the audience involved with the storylines unless you have good control of how the season will flow, given the limited amount of episodes. With a soap opera, which Glee in part resembles, there is the ability to carry on many stories even detached from another, because with the daily showing, the time allowed to take for each story is there. Of course with something like Glee that is almost physically and mentally impossible, even given the great resource of acting acting they were so lucky to have. But attempting to carry on as such on a weekly show is risky, and by its third season, the show exposed all the pitfalls of doing it wrong.
I think the first season worked so well because Ryan, Ian, and Brad mapped out the season (in two parts) before everything started. That way all the intertwining stories between the kids, Will, and Sue were paced, had good development time (think the pacing of Kurt coming out and Rachel, Finn, and Quinn's love triangle). However, as the second season rushed in (most especially in the second half of it), the writing turned less formatted and more reactionary, as it seemed that RIB or Fox was responding to either ratings pressure, fanbase mania, or simply ran muddled with ideas. While Murphy and Falchuk, mastered both short and long storyline threads on Nip/Tuck (which only focused on two main actors), I think the amount of characters in this different type of show was too overwhelming. What suffered not only was consistency (coming up in another installment), but its rich bench of characters. And the biggest symptom of that was the show's eventually treatment of its cast.
The first season of Glee already had the weight of 15 main characters between the kids, McKinley staff Will, Sue, and Emma, and Will's wife Terri. With the need to bring "fresh and new" things to the second season, New Directions itself was expanded, adding Sam Evans, Lauren Zizes, and former backup Mike Chang, as well as giving significant storylines to reforming bully Dave Karofsky, rival glee club Warbler Blaine, Sue sidekick Becky, as well as a revolving door of guest stars and character actor adults. With all this swirling around, the show started to get detached (other than the constant Finchel drumbeat) from itself, and characters would pop off into never never land, leaving watchers attached to them dumbfounded. And the most used prop in this was character-assassination.
The most egregious example of this was the banishment of Lauren in season 3. With merely a shove-off meant to turn off the audience on the brash, forceful girl by making her unceremoniously dump Puck and the New Directions and disappear from all McKinley life, the writers clearly meant to just obliterate her memory from the show. Matt Rutherford, one of the final New Directions first-year alums, was transferred off with a sentence-long mention by Mr. Shue. They almost did it with Karofsky, making his character disappear after prom (definitely more on that in part 10) until fan clamor and media notice got his back (temporarily) in season 3. Now Cooter, the man written in to be Coach Beiste's first love, is now written over to be this horrible abuser (with no notice) it seems just to be able to dispose of him (I predict by the end of this season). To people identifying with Beiste's "Never Been Kissed" misfit character, and were so moved to her finally finding her true love, this kind of sudden whiplash I feel could even have been harmful, giving a bad message to them possibly making them dread even finding someone.
Even Quinn and Mercedes, whose actors it's been rumoured to have had trouble with Murphy, were given demeaning character arcs that painted them into such selfish corners as if it were planned to alienate their fanbase. What it did instead was alienate the fanbase - towards the show.
Sure there has to be conflicts and good/bad character arcs, but with some of these storyline the characters are tarnished beyond a simple episode redemption, with no continuity happening for them in the future.
And then in season three, with the myriad of different writers working on different episodes (part 9), even main characters started "disappearing", not even showing in the background in group scenes. Quinn, Rory, Sugar, and Puck were hilariously absent during whole episodes for no reason, even to create a fan "where's Quinn" movement". And to start inserting random cheerleaders as backup (the "Troubletone" blip) that it's almost insulting the viewer to keep a concrete idea of who's actually a part of this whole Glee world.
And meanwhile Jacob Ben Israel is being held in an undisclosed location.
If the writers would spend more time collaborating on the character arcs of the show way beforehand (instead of coming up with inane "hashtag suggestions" to blare on the screen) then maybe they can rein it in. But......
Coming up next: too many damn cooks in the kitchen.
Comments
They need to take a day to sit in a conference room, lay out all the characters and storylines on index cards and make sure Writer A who only ever deals with Characters B/C KNOWS how the other characters relate to B/C. They need to do some creative visualization and think of McKinley as a REAL PLACE: how would these people and their stories interact? How much would they be aware of? We should see that awareness reflected in the characters. These people are a part of each other's lives - it should look like it.
Second, they need to look at all the storylines and see how much they can reasonably cover in a season. The more there are, the less the viewer can focus on/care about them. Figure out where they should fit together. DO THINGS THAT MAKE SENSE.
For some reason, and I suspect it's coming from on high (meaning Ryan Murphy and the network), they stopped mapping out the show logically and, as you said, became entirelt reactionary. It was a snowball rolling downhill from there.
The more what they were doing wasn't working (meaning, not keeping viewers, not inducing viewers to download music), the more they resorted to desperate moves like stunt casting and theme episodes. I also think they were so desperate to capitalize on their popularity, particularly amongst their celebrity fans, that anyone that expressed an interest in being on the show, wrote their own ticket. And if one worked out well (ratings/$$), why not try it again?
And in the wake of all this crap that was NOT related to the story of these kids, they had less and less time to devote TO the kids. In the search for the Flavor of the Month, for the Magic Bullet that was going to get them back on top (RM - I see you drooling over Darren Criss with all those silly fangirls...) people started to disappear. Characters either evaporated or developed personality disorders. Tina, Mike, Quinn, Puck, Lauren, Jacob, heck, even KURT was lost in the overwhelming wake of Klaine, absorbed into one, never to really be seen - and certainly not heard - anymore.
Frankly, I think Glee is a lost cause. I don't even think the triumphant return of Dave Karofsky could save it for me. (Though I'd like to see them try. I'd like to be wrong....)