The Beginning of the End of Glee
A preamble to a 3-month expedition to capture my very own white whale
Despite being casually called a Glee Scholar, I have not finished the show. I have watched ⅚ of the seasons, and I have academic, synopsis-based knowledge of its final season. I haven’t been able to finish the show, despite my years-long adoration of it. Maybe I haven’t been able to finish it because of this legacy I’ve built up around it in these 8+ years of becoming 5/6ths of a Gleek. As I embark on this journey, I will be keeping the Substack apprised.
I’ve always had a lot to say about the show. People who know me in person might know that I engage critically with Glee via verbose rants, which means it’s a perfect fit for a season of my newsletter.
As a fan, that has been my mode of engagement since 8th grade. I graduated from college a few weeks ago. I’m embarking on a new phase of my young adult life, which means that it’s about damn time that I get to the end of Glee.
This trek is dark. It’s emotional. It stirs up wounds that I forgot about. I have attempted to reach the end of Glee 4 separate times. I only finished season five a few months ago. This odyssey I am suiting up for will be the topic of my newsletter for the summer, and this season is bound to be interesting. I’m setting up the outline for a Glee tarot guide, and my brainstorm list is already a little unwieldy.
For some insight on how I’m organizing this project, I offer up a sneak peek at the spreadsheet I’m using to track episodes.
I’m writing this particular newsletter as I’m working through the familiar, easy ground of the first 11 episodes. The show gets off to a strong start, missing those first-episode growing pains that so many comedies face when they’re beginning. I’m reminded of my first impression, back when I was watching these episodes on DVD. Much to my surprise, my initial sentiment was echoed by my boyfriend after he watched the pilot episode: the teachers’ plot is much more interesting than the students’.
As the show continued, this changed for me. For me, the “adult” plot of Glee ceases to be compelling after Season 1 (or right after S1 Sectionals, depending on how generous I am), but why? In a television show structured around having multiple plots bouncing around the ensemble, how did the adults lose their sparkle? After all, Glee didn’t have to turn Will’s arc into an excuse to put him on screen with as many famous guest stars as possible.
Glee’s adult problem stems from a lack of sustained energy and a crisis of personnel. It turns out that a compelling story about a man who decides to forgo financial stability for his family so he can relive high school by teaching Glee Club runs out of juice when it’s crammed entirely into the first episode. When Terri’s drama was phased out of the show, an older “big bad” never really took her place. Why go to the trouble when Glee Club has 12+ members who can be fleshed out? I don’t think that the writers made a mistake when they pivoted away from focusing on Will, Emma, and Sue.
All this being said, as I rewatch this section, I’m pleasantly surprised by how strong they are in this first leg of the show. They gave the show momentum, and helped launch it. The adults are a part of the show’s explosive start.
When I think about Glee writ large, I think about it as a case study of artistic potential energy. There are so many paths that the show can take that a viewer gets sucked into the expansive universe that looms behind each potential direction. The show is rife with powerful setups, and many of the punchlines meet the occasion. As the show goes on, however, entropy fills the system with rot. There’s waste and dissatisfaction with the fact that out of all the potential plots the showrunners could have picked, they went with that one. In my own conversations with people who’ve watched the show, they express a sense of dissatisfaction with the later seasons. Not disgust, necessarily, but a sense of missed opportunities. Usually, they have an opinion on what they think the show should have focused on. The vision for the ideal Glee is not consistent across the fan base, nor its casual viewers.
What is agreed upon, however, is that the first few episodes had a spark. There was something there that was interesting or funny or true, and we felt it. The show wouldn’t have become a big deal if there wasn’t a spark.
As I harness Glee’s spark and attempt to transform it into a season of Planet #1248 posts, I can’t help but wonder why this show imprinted on me the way it did. Post-graduation, this kind of retrospective feels especially relevant. In between the hours of starting a business and gazing solemnly at my own visage in the mirror, I will be doing what they call “The Work”: examining and sharing my feelings about this middle school obsession.
To wrap up this little prelude, I want to invite you to watch along with me for the rest of the summer. I post on Mondays, and I’ll be watching half a season every week. This week was the first half of Season 1, and I’ll be reporting back on June 9th to share my findings on Episodes 12-22. If you watch along or consider yourself a fan of the show, reach out to me, because I’d love to get interviews with Gleeks for an upcoming article in this series.
So excited for this odyssey!! I’ll be reading each week to stay up to date on Glee :)