Glee 4/24: "Dance with Somebody"

[Sampiro]

Bob Jones University (aka B.J. U) student expelled for watching an episode of GLEE at a Starbucks

Slightly misleading headlines: the story in a nutshell is that BJ student Chris Peterman was very unpopular with BJ administration because he had embarrassed them about the presence on their board of a preacher who covered up a statuatory rape by a member of his church of a 15 year old girl (who said preacher publicly shamed in front of his congregation). BJ dismissed the guy from their board and agreed to amnesty for Peterman and others, but they began giving major demerits wherever they could, including 50 (1/3 of the 150 demerits needed for explusion) for watching “the morally reprehensible” GLEE he was at a Starbucks. (If it was the Christmas episode I might be BJ U’s side.)

[Lamia]

What did you guys think of Darren Criss (Blaine)'s acting in this one? I ask because elsewhere on the Internet I’ve seen people saying they think it was some of his best work, he’s much better at doing drama than they’d realized, etc.

Personally, this and “Big Brother” served to convince me that Criss was better off when this role only required him to be the confident, handsome love interest for Kurt. It doesn’t help that the writers seem to think that giving his character more depth means making him a whiny hypocrite who can’t handle criticism, but I think he’s also just not that good at playing hurt/angry.

[Sampiro]

[QUOTE=Lamia]
Personally, this and “Big Brother” served to convince me that Criss was better off when this role only required him to be the confident, handsome love interest for Kurt. It doesn’t help that the writers seem to think that giving his character more depth means making him a whiny hypocrite who can’t handle criticism, but I think he’s also just not that good at playing hurt/angry.
[/QUOTE]

It proved he can cry on cue but that’s about it. I won’t judge anybody too harshly on how they play Glee dialogue; mix mediocre actor with Glee writing and George Lucas directing and you’d have the absolute perfect storm needed to forever wreck prime time network television.

[Lamia]

@Sampiro

It proved he can cry on cue but that’s about it. I won’t judge anybody too harshly on how they play Glee dialogue

True enough. We’ve had some talk in these threads about why we’re still watching a show that we feel is so flawed, and for me I think part of it is just that I feel sorry for the performers. I’m sure they spend a lot of time going “WTF?” over their scripts.

Actually, I even feel sorry for the fictional characters, whose lives and behavior often make little sense. Several months ago the AV Club’s Glee critic wrote a review from the perspective of Mike Chang, Sr., a device that didn’t entirely work for me but that he used to make some good points about the show:

“It’s almost as if someone somewhere… was pulling the strings to make sure that no plots carried over in any way from before, as if they wanted neat and tidy resolutions to problems that were simply too complicated to wrap up in an hour’s worth of…a week’s worth of school time. It’s as if we’re all stepping up to an abyss filled with feelings and grief we can’t even name, much less acknowledge, then backing away and forcing ourselves into untenable positions, just to move on to something else. It’s as if we were all living out short-form dramatic arcs on a television comedy-drama that weren’t horribly well plotted.”
[…]
Most of all, he longed to sit and clap politely, to not be a slave to the machine of the plot machinations. Most of all, he longed for something beyond what he’d been given to do, even though he knew this would probably be it. Most of all, he longed that when he opened the auditorium doors and walked out into the autumn sun, he wouldn’t simply cease to exist.