When Time gave Glee its #8 slot on its list the best TV of the year, virtually every sentence in James Poniewozik's explanation was defensive. "Consistency is overrated," Poniewozik wrote preemptively. "Some of its story lines (especially the fake pregnancy of the choir director's wife) are distractingly implausible...It can be a mess, but it's what great TV should be...When it hits its high notes, nothing else matters."
I can relate to Poniewozik's stubborn defense of the erratic series, because it's what I could have said about creator Ryan Murphy's previous shows, Nip/Tuck and Popular. The thing that worries me, though, is that while Glee can sometimes nail the over-the-top thrills that are Murphy's trademarks, it's already running into some of the problems that sunk his other shows (and trust me, you do not want Glee to become the mess Nip/Tuck currently is). Here are four things I hope Murphy fixes before the show returns next spring:
1. Dumb Central Characters
After suffering through the later seasons of Nip/Tuck, I thought no central characters could be stupider than Sean and Julia McNamara (Dylan Walsh and Joely Richardson), who Murphy appeared to make purposefully dim and naive so that they could, time and time again, fall for the transparently evil machinations of whichever lover/coworker/serial killer decided to take advantage of them. Then, Glee introduced us to Will (Matthew Morrison) and Finn (Cory Monteith). The former has a wife who managed to fake her pregnancy because Will is written to be too stupid to ever touch her, see her naked, or question her story. The guileless latter, in the internet era, believes that he got his cheerleader girlfriend pregnant by sharing a hot tub with her.
The fake-pregnancy storyline was a notorious patience-tryer (The A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff called it "the worst thing I've ever seen on a show I otherwise enjoyed") and though the show finally resolved both that plotline and the Finn one after countless infuriating episodes, I fear that the characters will still be just as dumb as ever. On a Ryan Murphy show, many of the protagonists tend to be hapless fools who plots happen to (only the crueler characters have any sort of real intelligence), and it's never a good sign when the audience is strumming its fingers, waiting for the leads to realize something that the audience figured out eight episodes ago. Unless Murphy and his co-creators enact some tweaks, you can expect Will and Finn to be just as gullible when the next character takes advantage of them.
2. Erratic Continuity
In a magazine article I read a long time ago, one of the Popular actresses recalled a script she was handed where something didn't feel quite right. A lunchtime scene had her sitting next to a girl she'd spent the last episode despising -- wouldn't they still be keeping their distance, she asked Murphy? His response: "It's just a TV show." Suffice it to say, when Will spent the first two episodes of Glee talking about how the glee club gives his life meaning and purpose, then abruptly quit it in the third episode to join an a cappella group, I was less than surprised.
3. Exhausting Romantic Pairings Too Early
It's clear that Lea Michele's Rachel will eventually end up with Finn, and on a normal show, that romantic tension could be stretched out over more than one season. On Glee, she's already mooned over Finn, made out with bad boy Puck, developed an intense one-episode crush on Will for some reason, then come back around to Finn, and it's only been 13 episodes. On the one hand, I'm all in favor of busting up the conventional wisdom of how drawn-out a TV romance needs to be. On the other hand, when you've already disposed of so many potential plot threads so early, you end up doing what Nip/Tuck's had to resort to: pairing Christian with Liz, turning Julia into a lesbian for a season, and exhausting so many romantic plotlines for Matt that they made him into a mime who robs banks. You might enjoy the brisk pace of these hookups now, but call me in season three of Glee when Sue and Will's wedding is interrupted by a jealous Artie.
4. Autotune
OK, OK, autotune was never a problem on Nip/Tuck or Popular, but seriously: that shit's out of control on Glee. Are these high school students or singing androids? Cut it out, please.