Glee. Humbug.

I gotta say, it takes a big man to admit he was wrong. And I, dear reader, was wrong about Glee. When I first watched the show, I was smitten. I was taken in by the singing, the dancing, Jane Lynch, and the sense that the show's writers knew that these characters weren't going anywhere in life (and that the characters knew it too). But something changed.

I lost track of the show sometime in the first season. I decided to catch up on some of the newer episodes this weekend and was dismayed. While I was thrilled to see that Mr. Shuster's wife is out of the picture (that fake pregnancy thing was terrible), the feel of the show was different. Glee (the show) had become very, very popular, and, unfortunately, it seems as though that went to everybody's head. All of a sudden, the undertones of despair were gone. These used to be kids striving for the one great moment of their lives before they sink into mediocrity forever. Now, they were all misunderstood geniuses or something. At least, that's how it feels to me when I watch it now. But that's not the only problem that has arisen.

The best musicals tailor the song to the moment, not the moment to the song. And that's where Glee has really gone off the rails. The first episode featured several different genres of music (and some of them weren't even overproduced). The thing that tied them together was that each song made sense for the character who was singing it. But as I looked at some of the newer episodes, I saw themes. There was the Brittney Spears episode, the Madonna episode, etc. They were shoehorning music into the show. You could almost hear the writers saying to themselves, "Hey, guys! We got the rights to a bunch of songs by *insert name of singer/guilty-pleasure-movie-musical here*!! How hard do you want to try to find a reason for the kids to sing them? Not very? Cool! Me too!!!"

It's a real disappointment. All I'm saying.

Glee: 1.5 out of 5 skulls