Glee

Anyone else given up on Glee?
That presuposes you were watching in the first place. Let me put it another way, if you were a big fan of the all singing all dancing ratings sensation of last year are you still watching?

What I liked about the show when it first hit the screen was the irony. It knew it was a piss-take on High School Musical and relished its place in the world. Will Schuester had a terrible wife, Terri,  who put him down at home, had a 'special room' in the house for them to experience crafts together and when it looked like he was falling for the weird looking red-headed pop-eyed woman with the cartoon voice she announced she was pregnant - except she wasn't and several different sized pillows later the cat was out of the baby bag.

What was great about Terri was her scheming and controlling. It was something for Schuester to push against, now all he has is Sue Sylvester. Sue began as a demented cheerleading coach with surreal turns of phrase and a weird eye on the world. In season one she was a comic creation to savour.

There were plots that kind of made sense.  Kurt got dumped in the skip at the beginning of every show. Things happened that didn't always involve a production number. There were surprises. Okay, every week another reference to 'regionals' but hey. Quin was a cow, Finn  was getting shafted, Puckerman was the bad boy and Britney the dumbest dumb blonde for a generation.  When the musical numbers came they were fresh and often funny and an antidote to High School Musical. And they had a kid dancing in a wheel-chair, way to go.

Cut to

Season two. Where it's pretty much become High School Musical. The tension and scheming has all but gone - as have most of the plots that don't involve a song. We've had some bullying issues and some lame guest appearances - come back Kristin Chenoweth please - and now I've given up...

Kristin Chenoweth and The Boys

I need some grit in the ointment. Sue's become one note, Terri's disappeared, the strange woman who looks like a rabbit has got married so Will doesn't even have the doe eyed dear to swoon about or croon about. It's all got a bit...boring.

It feels to me like they sat down with the Network after the first season and someone said - everybody loves the songs, next season let's give them more songs. But nobody said 'great, but let's twist and turn the characters and make 'em squeal'. They made too many nasty characters too nice too soon - then went back and tried to make them nasty again. That didn't work.

There's still a big audience and LOTS of kids buying the music - which explains the ratio of songs per show - but wasn't it richer and more fun in series one? Somebody do me a favour, let me know when the show's got it's squeal back.