Glee: "Original Song"

Once I firmly show my support for “Big Ass Heart,” I'll offer up a review of last night's episode, after the jump...

I want to say that I liked this episode, because I did, but that “like” comes with a whole mess of caveats. This was one of those episodes of Glee where even if the storytelling was fairly solid, the episode was still hindered by the meta-textual circumstance that surrounded it. (And how sad is it that this is only “one of those” episodes, as opposed to the first of its kind?)

Like Todd VanDerWerff said in his review, there is no real reason for the kids of the glee club to write their own songs; it is actually more realistic for these kids to continue to cover popular songs, even if it means that this show has to play into the cultural zietgiest. (And since when did the show care what Community's opinion is on all of this?)



But that's not my problem with the show attempting to include original songs. No, my fear is that will keep doing it, until long after the novelty has worn off. Of course, I can't know that this will happen, but if the return of a “deliberation” scene during Regionals (and Ryan Murphy's general tendencies) are any indication, the smart money says that we will hear some more original compositions within a year's time. And regardless of what you thought of the songs tonight (I found “Get It Right” and “Loser Like Me” to be solid pop creations, even if they are more obviously geared toward the show's fan base than anyone actually within the show), this show's track record almost guarantees that the original compositions will only get worse over time, until it becomes just another aspect of the show that we bitch about. (For a case study, see Cop Rock.)

But that worry is mostly concerned with the show's future, and has little to do with the episode at hand. As a plot device, the idea of having these kids come up against a creative challenge, and then showing them taking on that challenge, avoids a path that the show has followed far too often, where they just skip all of the hard work in order to show the flashy end result. But even more, we had the first relative Dalton subplot in a long while, as that glee club was also faced with the creative dilemma as to how to mix up their singing arrangement. While this was not the body of the episode, I wish it had been, because their was something engaging about watching these two clubs challenge themselves in order to give better performance, as well as achieve the goal of beating the other team at Regionals.

The song-crafting also served another purpose, by having these creative sessions work as a way for the kids to express their inner thoughts and desire. Now, the show has done this on numerous occasions with already established hits, but more often it chooses songs because they are "fun", which requires either saying nothing about the characters who sing it or (even worse) requires a complete break in characterization in order to have the song work within an episode. So while the show producing original songs on a regular (or even semi-regular) basis would never work long-term, it is at least some comfort to know that the songs will (at least in theory) always be grounded in the characters.

Yet I'm not sure that I want original songs for all character beats, at least not for the character beats we had in this episode. Even if I was a bit soured on the execution of the idea of a serious Santana/Brittany relationship, I do like the idea of it being an ongoing plot point moving forward. Yet tonight's minutes geared toward this development were wholly useless at best (the latest conversation between Santana and Brittany didn't tell us anything we didn't already know) and confusing at worse (so Santana wrote a  song for Sam in order to make Brittany jealous, but then it's called “Trouty Mouth,” which mocks him, so....what?).

The return to the Rachel/Finn/Quinn triangle was equally problematic, though for different reasons. Putting aside for a moment the fact that the break-up of Finn/Rachel and the reuniting of Finn Quinn was poorly executed, which tends to sour my reception to any part of this storyline, a whole lot of tonight's action was predicated on Quinn suddenly turning into a bitch. (And with the line “And you're relatively sane for a girl,” the show's rampant misogyny once again rears its ugly head.) Not only is turning Quinn mean just an easy way for the show to get out of this jam, but it also sells out any sort of dramatic tension they may have has concerning this love triangle. When it appeared that Quinn and Finn have actual feeling for one another, and that there's some sort of compatibility between them, it made it much harder to predict who he would end up with. (The sign of any good love triangle is that Person A has good chemistry with both Love Interests 1 & 2.) But now that Quinn's back to her shallow self? Well, we know Finn's going to choose Rachel, so everything until then is just going to feel like wasted screen time.

The last relationship we dealt with tonight, Blaine and Kurt, was perhaps the most enjoyable, though still highly problematic. While I like the idea of Kurt finally finding someone, I'm not sure if that someone is Blaine, even if he was originally set-up as a love interest for Kurt. The show has spent so much time telling us why the two of them shouldn't/can't be together, that for them to finally do so feels a bit too sudden, and a perfunctory follow-through to Blaine's original functions. I want to be happy for them, I really do, I'm just not sure that I buy it; I much prefer Blaine as Kurt's gay brother-in-arms, not his boyfriend. (And then there's part of me that feels the Ryan Murphy is doing all of this – including the excellent explorations of Kurt's sexual side – just so he can shock people with the “gayness” of it all, but since I can't prove it, I'll just let it slide.)

And then there was the competition itself. I would like to say that I enjoy the competition episodes, as those in the first season were fantastic, but given the way that the past two have played out, I'm not so sure. The show has become so involved with the characters personal lives that they tend to add in all of this competition stuff almost as an afterthought, and given how they don't even try to infuse them with drama anymore, they too have become another pointless additions to the show. If you're not going to make the outcome uncertain, if you're going to undersell all of the work that goes into winning a competition, why even show the competition at all. Oh, right, so you can work in five more musical numbers.

What did everybody else think?


Additional Thoughts:

“I think Pavarotti would roll over in his tiny, tiny grave.” “The placement of which has yet to be determined.”

“She literally threw sticks at me.” Cue the funniest sight gag the show has ever had.

“The drummer I slept with was from that band Jimmy Eat World.”

From the Department of Stating The Obvious: “Oh my god, they're doing original songs.” Thanks, Kurt.

“That Dalton Academy – its that a gay school, or just a school that appears gay?”

“My hair dresser is a gay, and for 15 years he's been with his partner, also a hairdresser. I so no reason why they shouldn't buy allowed to marry and raise a family of wigs.”

“We do nursing home shows all the time. And do you know how many Gaps there are in Ohio? Tons.”