Here’s a weekly routine in my household:
I sit down to watch Glee. Maybe five minutes in, I start to cringe. Maybe ten minutes in, I start banging my head on the table, because I cannot believe the writers and producers of Glee have really, truly, actually decided to take the episode where they’ve taken it. Such a talented cast! This show could be so great! Why do they keep mucking it up? I swear to myself that this is the last episode of Glee I will ever watch. I pause my TiVo so that I can get up and rant to a few friends (who I’m pretty sure wish I would stop watching Glee) about why Glee offends me. I sit back down. I start the TiVo up again. The show (finally) gives a solo to one of the characters I care about (Kurt gets me every time) and the solo is GREAT, voice, emotion, performance, the way it fits into the plot, wardrobe, set design. I watch it numerous times. Then, at the end of the show, they air an ad for next week’s episode, in which Neil Patrick Harris is singing Aerosmith, or Kurt is wearing something fabulous, or Mercedes or Puck or Quinn finally get to sing, or something else tempting happens.
“No more Glee,” I tell myself. “NO MORE GLEE.”
I set the TiVo to record the next damn episode.
There’s a lot of chatter on the internets about Gleefail. If you’re not aware of it, or if you disagree with it, or if you’re curious, or if you’re just like, “Huh? What’s she talking about? I love Glee!” — well, don’t forget, I watch it, too, and can’t seem to stop — and now I’m going to link you to three short posts that explain (only one of the reasons) why the show disappoints me. (Hint: in this case, it has to do with disablism.) They’re all from the blog Dis/positional. The first isn’t about Glee specifically, but has relevance — do read it before you read the others!
- iSpire. Inspire.
- Fox: You’re Doing It Wrong. Again. (Click through to the links referenced in that one, too — also good reading specifically about Glee.)
- I dreamed a dream… that you’d stop making disability depressing.
I leave for France on Sunday, so off I go to do preparey things.
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ETA: This just in — a few more bloggy links to thoughts about character representations on Glee, this time about representations of gay characters and casting choices. These are from Lee Wind’s blog, I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read? Thanks, Laura, for the links!:
