Great Brittany line “You were enemies, then friends, then enemies, and then we all stopped caring”
I kept waiting for another Rachel scene, but has been pointed out there was none. One possibility is she becomes an understudy.
Brian
Bumping this to say that I thought the recent Gleeful podcast discussing “All or Nothing” was quite good. Josh made a lot of interesting points about why this might have been a fine mid-season episode but was an awful finale. Jen, who is usually pretty positive in her critiques of the show, was so disappointed that she said she actually regretted having spent four years watching this show and doing a podcast about it. Ed remains upbeat about the show and even this episode, although he admits he’s basically alone in this. They all had so much to talk about that the podcast episode is actually considerably longer than the Glee episode. If you’re interested, check iTunes or the Gleeful website at http://gleefulpodcast.com/
Some of the highlights for me were their discussion of the catfish plot and the Blaine proposal plot.
The catfish plot:
Jen pointed out that the revelation that the catfish was Unique was both too obvious and out of character; Unique has always been presented as very open and confident about her gender identity, appearance, and opinions, and doesn’t seem like someone who’d pretend to be a skinny white girl online because she had a secret crush on a boy.
There was general agreement that the catfish storyline dragged on way too long for it to be resolved in such an unsurprising manner. Josh said that if the catfish had to be Unique, the writers still could have gone for something unexpected by having Finn 2.0 get over his anger at being deceived and decide he was willing to give dating Unique a try. While this doesn’t strike me as a particularly likely outcome, I agree it would have been more interesting than what we got.
The Blaine proposal plot:
Josh suggested that this actually would have made more sense if the events of the last two episodes of the season had been reversed, with Blaine meeting Patty Duke and Meredith Baxter in “Wonder-ful”, hearing about their 40+ year relationship and their decision to marry (in some other state) now that it’s legal to do so, and getting the idea to propose to Kurt. Then in the finale he could have discussed this with Burt, heard Burt’s advice about waiting, but been shown with the ring box in his hand at the end to establish that he hadn’t given up on the idea.
This change in the sequence of events wouldn’t have solved all of the problems I had with this storyline – it went nowhere and told us nothing new about the characters involved – it at least would have given us an explanation for Blaine’s sudden interest in marrying at 18 and would have made the Duke and Baxter characters seem like an actual part of the story rather than a PSA that got dropped into the middle of an episode.
With regard to season four in general, Josh and Ed both seemed to agree that the show had shifted to being a more typical teen drama plus musical numbers. Ed was fine with this, but Josh said that if Glee had been basically Gossip Girl with singing from the beginning he never would have started watching it in the first place.
I didn’t watch any of the episodes live this season, but spent the last few weeks watching on Hulu. I regret the latter.
The resolution to the Brody subplot was completely disgusting. Finn beat up a sex worker and Rachel was happy about it. :mad: There are plenty of valid reasons for Rachel to not be in a relationship with Brody, but Brody is not a villain. It’s a fucking double standard. Would the writers have dared have Finn unknowingly dating a call girl, Kurt find out & tell Rachel only for Rachel to beat her up, then have Finn mock her for being a prostitute and express glee at her being beaten? :rolleyes:
They wasted other opportunities too. Like giving Brody male clients as well, but have still identify as straight (which is true for many male workers as well). But that probally would’ve made him to sympathetic and/or creeped out viewers. Finn’s a fucking jackass and Rachel’s a spoiled hypocritical bitch.
I like Colfer, but I agree he’s going to be typecasted. BTW was I the only one who thought it’d be more interesting if Kurt decided on pursuing a career in fashion instead of musical theatre? With a recommendation from [del]Carrie[/del] Isabelle I’m sure he could get into an expy for Fashion Institute of Technology.
I feel like the forgot that Burt’s supposed to be a Congressman. Nice to see that Carol still exists.
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Child molestation is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect Glee to fuck up (witness their treatment of domestic violence last season), but I thought that they treated with an unusual amount of realism and respect. Sam and Artie’s reactions were realistic for their age, and it was sad that Ryder pretty much just had to accept it. They were never going to understand.
While it is extreme, I think that this episode did a better job of humanizing Kitty and turning her into a sympathetic character than anything else has. Even aside from the admission of molestation, her obvious sadness at being rejected by Ryder actually made her relatable. Imagine that.
I didn’t think that Santana’s subplot was done all that well, largely because it didn’t even seem like Santana was the main character. We spent so much time with Kurt, Rachel, and Isabelle. Isabelle even symbolically stole “At the Ballet,” which started out being by and about Santana and ended up being a showcase for Sarah Jessica Parker.
It could be worse; Rachel could’ve really been pregnant, spent an episode or two debating what to do, then had a miscarriage. Personally my ideal story line would be for her & Finn to have a nasty break-up, Finn goes off to war, Rachel finds out she’s pregnant & aborts without telling anyone (well, maybe Kurt for drama), then finds out that Finn died in combat. That’s something you won’t see on American TV, at least on a network in primetime.
BTW, the actress who plays Brittany (Heather Morris) is pregnant in real life, thus she will not be a regular next season…but they have hinted she will perhaps come back late in the season or the following season.
IIRC, it ended with
Emma suddenly showing up with a minister, and “Wemma” (the minister even called them that) having a sudden wedding right then and there, as Blaine put away his ring without saying anything to Kurt.Also, the head of Fox programming has said that the show will take an “extended break” next season (to air the planned 13-episode first season of Rake), then return with a “creative twist” (your guess is as good as mine…and mine is, they’ll be concentrating much more on New York and much less on Lima) and have the season run into June.
No, I think that would have been more interesting too. And it’s not like they couldn’t have found a way to work in musical numbers, since they’ve had several that tied in with his internship one way or another.
This was briefly alluded to in the Stevie Wonder episode when he mentioned that many of his colleagues weren’t supportive of gay marriage. It did take me a moment to realize he meant other politicians and not other mechanics, though.
It remains unclear to me why they had Burt go into politics in the first place. To the best of my recollection, it’s made absolutely no difference on the show. I thought at least they’d use it as a justification for doing a performance of CCR’s “Fortunate Son” at some point, but no.
It seems like that’s what most of the rumors/gossip/speculation is going with – that early season five will finish out the 2012-2013 school year in Lima, and then the show will shift to being set primarily in New York.
IMHO a big reason why season four went so very, very wrong was that they didn’t commit to either fishing or cutting bait from the beginning. It just did not work either from a storytelling or a production standpoint to split the show between Lima and New York. While there were real-world reasons why some characters has to disappear for a while (Cory Monteith’s rehab), this happened so often and with so many different people that I can only assume the show just couldn’t logistically or financially handle such a swollen cast. It should have been either a show about the McKinley glee club with a bunch of new students or a show about Rachel, Kurt, and Santana living in NYC.
On paper at least the latter sounds a lot more interesting to me, but the Rachel storylines that dominated the New York scenes this season were so awful – boring, pointless, and offensive in a way that was weird even for Glee – that I’m not confident that it would have worked out well. Still, if the whole show had been in New York and not just a few scenes in most but not all episodes then presumably other things could have been happening and it wouldn’t have just been “Rachel is pregnant only she’s not and her boyfriend is a gigolo or maybe a drug dealer no a gigolo and isn’t it romantic that her ex showed up to beat him senseless?”