I tried- honestly I did. I did my best to like this freak show but I just couldn't. It just doesn't appeal to my good taste and I find so many things wrong with it! While the rest of the world are proudly announcing that they are "Gleeks" on their Facebook status, I am contemplating hard on why the show has no appeal to me.
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| Glee On Fox TV |
I had no issues with teen drama. Growing up in a western culture, my teen years were spent watching teen drama on TV. I loved Beverly Hills 90210, California Dreams, Melrose Place, and even Dawson's Creek. But Glee is a totally different story. I couldn't bring myself to like it- let alone love it.
Maybe it's because everybody else loved it and I just wanted to be set apart from the crowd by hating what everybody loved. It might also be because Charice Pempengco is in it- and I hate her. She thinks shes way better than everybody else just because she's a Filipino who made it big in the U.S. Well think again, you're not that big a star yet Charice! You might want to do something with your face first before you call yourself a "big Star". Nastiness aside, I hate Glee because there's just so many things I find wrong with it that it just doesn't capture my intellect-ably high taste.
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| The Unbelievably Loser Cast Of Glee |
So seriously, what's with Glee that everybody loved it and I hated it? On the top of my head, I find so many things wrong with this show produced by Ryan Murphy. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said that Glee is four acts of darkness and two acts of sweetness. Ok, wait, did I just read that right? Where was the sweetness? I think he means the wearyingly repetitive slushies-thrown-in-faces gag. Slushies are sweet, right? I think Murphy may have some trouble identifying sweetness: these characters are too deeply cynical to be high-schoolers. And why do I find them unattractive? Subjective impressions of physical appearance aside: the men are doe-eyed, 'aw, shucks' goofball victims or total douche-hats, and the women are manipulative, evil shrews or crazier than lousy-house rats and they're not even pretty to be like that to begin with. Compared to Gossip Girl, Blair and Serena may be manipulative schemers but at least they look good! I just don't understand the fascination with Glee at all. Glee is just off-putting! I'd rather hang out with Sil from 'Species' than any girl on Glee. At least 'Sil' looks hot- and she's got personality. Who WAS I supposed to identify with in Glee or, for crying out, who should I LIKE?
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| The Fabulous Cast Of Gossip Girl |
People hate being lied to. Glee's pilot sold me on a premise: high school schlubs make good in glee club. Yay! Sounds like fine fare, musical comedy fun. I watched the pilot. I looked watched it with keen eyes. Then I let it slap my face for 10 episodes until I gave up. There was no character development. No plot. Just miserable, auto-tuned, stereotypes unable to connect with my life experiences as an uncaring universe heaps torment and humiliation upon them. Talk about real life issues. I was able to relate to every episode of Gossip Girl and yet I couldn't relate to a single episode of Glee... it's because Glee isn't REALISTIC!
'Glee' pretends to care about humanity, the pain of growing up, and the blight of high school, but I cannot feel its tacky happy endings. "Freaks and Geeks" was painful to watch, too, but at least it seemed more honest. I actually cared about those characters and when bad things happened to them, I felt bad for them. That's how drama's supposed to work. I think. Or is there some way to loathe everything the characters stand for and just enjoy the juiciness as they stab each other? It worries me how many viewers are probably doing just that. Glee oozes with all the shallow, soul-soiling unpleasantness of reality TV only somebody HAD TO MAKE THIS UP!
The problem with Glee is that it's trying too hard. It's deliberately setting out to say “Hey, look – life’s not so bad!". Welcome to the world people- life can be bad and life is unfair. Deal with it. Face up to it's challenges instead of singing your way through life like nothing else matters. Why is Gossip Girl better at this than Glee? It's because Gossip Girl doesn't try to hide the reality of life. Gossip Girl show's life's issues and deals with it upfront! Life is not about candies and rainbows. It can be dark, brooding and sometimes depressing. The best thing about Gossip Girl and the worst part about Glee is that Gossip Girl teaches us how to handle life in the most difficult of situations while Glee just basically instructs us which note to hit when you run into an obstacle. This is life huh?
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| Glee- Not Pretty Enough |
Another thing- and man, I'm just getting started. The glee club is supposed to consist of losers, very few of which might just end up trumping the popular kids at some later date if they make it as an actor or musician or whatever. But the stark truth is that most of its members won’t. They are, as a general rule, not thin enough, not good-looking enough, not straight enough, or not white enough, to make it in that culture. Glee takes place in an American high school, that most awful of environments for teenagers, where judgment is superficial and a strict caste system exists, with very clear winners and losers. And then, the storyline of the show goes, the meathead jock joins the club, along with his missus, and all of a sudden everything’s much better. Of course, the storyline has to focus on the good looking, white cast members for the most part, but there is the occasional metaphorical bone thrown to the others. The cheerleader gets pregnant (predictably) and decides to have the baby (predictably), although she plans to give it away.
I think what really annoys me is that the show has the potential, behind the gloriously over-the-top musical numbers, to explore real issues about the problems within American high schools. Instead, the operation of the hierarchy (and the arch-villain, Sue Sylvester) is shown in a light-hearted way. The show neglects the often very real problems of identity and self-worth that most teenagers go through and seems instead to yell, “You can do it!” at the top of its lungs. While I’m sure this gets a good reaction stateside, where life’s all about getting yourself out there and living the American dream, I’m saddened that even a British audience manages to swallow this kind of tripe without choking, or at least without it leaving a nasty taste in their collective mouth.
Perhaps that’s all Glee’s supposed to be – an hour to forget reality and curl up with a big duvet of suspended cynicism around you, basking in the warm glow of a universe where things aren’t decided for you, and you really can do it if you
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| Glee Is For LOSERS! |
