For the past several years I have been a major fan of the “Glee” series. I really liked the series for it’s excellent musical arrangements, great performances, and intelligently written story-lines. However once the first set of students graduated at the end of season 3, the plot and stories have drifted in a major way. The focus has shifted to glee club and Rachel story lines which I felt really split the show in half.
I tolerated this in season four and their was some really spectacular song arrangements and some decent crossover between the two “worlds”. However in season five with the passing of Cory Monteith, this has all but evaporated. One episode of the current season had included the Glee cast using puppets, once I saw this, I knew it was time to move on.
The Glee club is now merely an afterthought for the cast members who have been on the show since the beginning. They will be graduating at the end of the current season and will mostly be forgotten as the show will transitioning to focus mainly on Rachel and her NYC cohorts in the sixth and final season. (1)
When I got word of that being the future direction of the series I realized that this show was going to be derailed. I think that this is the equivalent to what Scrubs had to do in season 9. Most people would consider Scrubs over in season 8, while the last season (I will jokingly refer to the med school as the “New Class”) is merely an afterthought.
Glee was a great proof of concept and shed public light on a lot of issues that most shows don’t have the opportunity to do so. (Especially in prime-time). One can only hope another show will take up the torch and continue this process.
I will miss the music most of all, I hope another show will be able to fill the void that Glee filled for a several years.
I also wanted to talk a little about the last episode for me. “The Quarterback” was a very well written episode that was a fitting tribute to both Finn and Cory Monteith. It also was an excellent episode showing how all different people deal with grief, and you could tell for many of them the grief here was genuine. I was glad to see that most of this episode was done in single takes, and I think that is a tribute to all of the actors in this show.
My one complaint was the opening song. “525,600 minutes” was a very cliche choice song for this episode, and essentially felt out of place compared to the rest of the songs in this episode. My own opinions on “Rent” aside, I could have thought of several other songs they could have performed that would have been more fitting.
Matthew Morrison (Mr. Schuester), Dot Marie Jones (Coach Bieste), Mark Sailing (Puck), and Mike O’Malley (Kurt’s Dad) really shined in this episode. I was really impressed in how genuine their emotions were. I didn’t really feel that any of it was forced, which I think also shows how much Cory meant to all of them.
It was nice to see most of the cast (Former and new) was in the episode. I think Diana Argon was truly missed, and I think a better attempt should have been made to have her in the episode. It feels like she was snubbed.
All in all, an emotional but fitting end for me to a great series. I hope that what happens in the next season in a half won’t tarnish the great work they have done up until this point. But for this Gleek, the ride is over.
1 - http://www.hypable.com/2014/01/13/glee-season-5-exclusively-set-nyc/
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