UFO use to call me that all the time and I hated it!
Posted on 02/25/2015 7:11:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
So I was watching Glee the other day (yes I watch Glee, okay?!), and man has that show jumped the shark. It’s frustrating, because Glee went down in flames the way a lot of good shows do: it got too busy constructing a leftist fantasyland to tell a decent story. It’s another victim of what I like to call “liberal backslide.”
Bear with me here for a second. I realize Glee was never an elegant allegory of fiscal conservatism. And no one could claim that it ever had an ironclad grip on reality. The show takes place in an underfunded Ohio public school whose auditorium looks like it was sponsored by a generous grant from the Shah of Persia. The band students instantaneously arrange and perform professional-quality backup accompaniment whenever someone so much as walks down the hallway humming a tune. This is obviously not a show about the real world.
But it used to be a show about real people. Glee got its start as a sharp send-up of teenage life in the Midwest, a bubblegum caricature of self-indulgent angst and high school politics. So it spoofed all those kids you hung out with in public school: the pristinely polished cheerleader. The wan, sensitive artist. The befuddled jock. The neat trick was that those well-worn stock characters all had a slightly edgier secret to make things a little less cut-and-dry. The cheerleader cheated on her boyfriend and got pregnant. The artist was straining hard against the closet door. The jock belted out “Can’t Fight This Feeling” in the locker room showers when he thought no one was looking. The whole picture was just a shade more complex and “real” than you expected, one degree more nuanced than a show like Saved by the Bell.
That meant the characters were allowed to have their own beliefs and opinions — more or less the ones they might have had in real life. Mercedes, the choir’s queen of soul, was also the head of the Christian club, the “God Squad.” Quinn, the cheerleader, was in the Squad too. Pretty standard for an Ohio high school: think Youth for Christ. When Quinn got pregnant, she was devastated and terrified, but determined not to abort. Also not impossible to imagine. Kurt, the artsy kid, came out to his dad, a rough-spoken mechanic who wrestled manfully with his prejudices for love of his son. Look, I’m not saying it was Shakespeare, but this was imaginative, thoughtful writing — a glitzed-up version of some distantly plausible reality. Everyone got made fun of, and for the most part everyone got a fair shake.
Fast-forward to the current season, in which the entire architecture of the show has essentially been abandoned in favor of a ceaseless stream of inchoate progressive propaganda. In one recent episode, the glee club alumni march triumphantly back onto their old stomping grounds to save their beloved show choir. To beef up the choir’s membership, all the glee clubbers from conservative backgrounds reach out to their high school’s “Tea Party Patriot Club.” Our virtuous heroes come bearing muffins, and their message is a touching one. Quinn helpfully begins with an inspiring story of personal growth: “before I joined glee club” (i.e., “when I was a conservative,”) “I only hung out with people that were exactly like me.” But it’s all better now, Quinn explains, because getting pregnant out of wedlock fixed all her problems! “Point is, nerds,” says bad boy Noah Puckerman, “you need to take the three-cornered hats out of your loser butts and join [the glee club].”
But for some incomprehensible reason, those ignorant tea partiers (or “teabaggers,” as they’re called in the show, to their faces) aren’t won over by this thoughtful outreach campaign. Their leader, a pencil-necked bigot in a starched shirt, has some kind of crazy hillbilly idea that the Obama administration has been an economic disaster. And for no discernible reason, he isn’t keen on joining a choir whose members just strode heedlessly into the middle of his meeting to openly mock and insult him and his friends. Mercedes nobly scolds the entire club for being a bunch of “ignorant, backwards, lily-white, gay-hating Obama bashing clubbers,” and all the stars march out in a huff, taking their muffins with them. Yay glee club! Diversity! Inclusion!
Glee always skewed left, but it used to have a real sense of humor about itself. Sadistic cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester was the perfect anti-PC mouthpiece, cutting deftly through the show’s self-satisfied über-sensitivity right when it got too saccharine. But season six has been a relentless, tight-lipped progressive tirade against conservatism without so much as a glimmer of mirth from the other side. Needless to say, since progressivism is predicated upon a string of complete fantasies, the show is now utterly disjointed and incomprehensible.
It’s also utterly unfunny. Indiscriminate satire is hilarious. A series-long harangue is not. Take, for example, the storyline in which an all-male a cappella group is blasted for being “sexist and discriminatory.” The debate rages for an entire episode, with barely a mention of the (entirely legitimate) musical reasons for forming a men’s choir. The issue is treated with the kind of ferocious humorlessness that only progressives can deliver with a straight face.
Liberal backslide: it’s happened before. I wrote about it when it happened to the once-brilliant Parks & Recreation. It happened to 30 Rock, too. It’s always the same process: smart, tight, observational humor, slowly abandoned in favor of preachy nonsense. American TV comedies feature some of the best writing around, when the writers just get out of their own way. More often than not, though, they can’t keep their mouths shut, and their untenable worldviews cloud their comedic vision. It shows, too — there’s a reason Glee’s ratings are lower than ever. There’s a reason it’s going off the air. The only thing less funny than politics is stupid politics.
I actually enjoyed watching her psychologist character bust on Charlie Sheen's character in Two-and-a-Half Men before that show (and Sheen) jumped the shark. I felt guilty watching it...God Bless the starving pygmies in Africa...amen.
Not okay. Ritually disembowel yourself.
Had never heard that term, interesting.
From.a.practical standpoint the stars get too big for thew britches and want creative control. See Big Bang Theory. It used to be a playful romp on insanity and geekdom. Generally shows add a little kid character when they flounder. I’m about done with it even if they add a little kid.
The writers' other show from last season, "The New Normal" that was all about gay marriage, totally tanked. So they're mad. And they're having a hissy fit.
I actually find it amusing that the producers and writers of theses shows can’t help themselves. They start with a good show and say “now that we have your attention, we would like the indoctrination to begin.” Soon after the show goes buh-bye. Somehow, the idiots in Hollywood are immune from the economic impact of ruining their product.
Big Bang Theory?
> But to relegate an entire series, an ever ongoing parade of music as it pertains to social justice, progressivism or activism is lost on me.
I’m pretty sure they never had Country & Westen Music or real Rock N Roll on there. Too manly. Probably more like Cindy Lauper, Lady Gaga, Elton John, Etc...type tunes mixed in with music for for dancing drag queens...
UFO use to call me that all the time and I hated it!
I sat through ONE episode with my wife and daughter...
95% of the characters were gay. Gay was the ‘norm’ and straight was the rare, odd thing.
All the story lines were about gay-ness; about two girls’ gay relationship; about the VERY manly yet female BOYS football coach ‘coming out’ as gay (what a shocker)
It was gay propaganda tv is all. I saw NO redeeming qualities whatsoever.
I have never seen Glee, Parks and Recreation or 30 Rock. I only have to look at the cast to know how the program will skew. We lean toward crime/detective shows. The ones on today seem pretty much void of politics. Maybe occasionally I feel a political subtheme, but not too bad. I cannot identify a comedy show that we regularly watch as they (current TV comedy shows) all seem to scream Leftist politics and most of their humor today consists of humiliating/denigrating Conservatives for, well, just being Conservative.
And she was very good as part of the regular ensemble in the Christopher Guest mock documentaries, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Wish she could keep her personal bedroom perversities out of her work, but it’s her career and I don’t have to (or in the case of Glee never have) watch. It is ironic that people who abhor Christian preaching would be so gawdawful preachy about who and what they like having sex with.
I’ve never seen it. The ads made this look like the gayest show on TV, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I figured it was also very leftist.
Walking Dead just turned gay activist. I’m done.
Never heard of it myself.
I watched Glee some when it started, but I just didn’t care for the kind of music.
I have heard some of their ‘specials’ such as Broadway hits and Christmas songs. They are pretty good — sounding more like the originals than modernized reversions.
This last season, according to TV-by-the-numbers, is not getting very good ratings. It could be that Glee is one of several programs that got cancelled, renewed, cancelled, renewed. It is one of several programs that I say ‘is that still on? I thought it was cancelled a long time ago.’
I hate tvtropes.com. I can go there and suddenly it is three hours later. :-)
Typical of gay behavior. They can't just be gay and leave it at that. They have to shout it out and flaunt it to everyone and graphically rub it into everyone's face. My wife and audibly groaned when the scene just suddenly appeared and commented, "Not this crap again." Ruined the episode for us and may make us ex-fans of the series if the writers dwell on this gay relationship and graphic depiction of it, on an ongoing basis.
Not what we want to watch on a relaxing Saturday evening watching some TV...two guys graphically and gratuitously kissing each other on screen. Otherwise the series is well done. But there is only so much of liberal Hollywood one can take.
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