Now that the season is over, I thought I’d start a thread for general discussion of the season as a whole. What worked for you? What didn’t? What were your favorite musical numbers? We seem to have lost a fair number of Glee thread participants over the course of the season, so if any of them are reading this one they are welcome to say what put them off the show.
I’ll also be posting the final results of the polls for each episode in a moment.
Okay, I had wanted to do this as a table, but if it’s possible to create a table using BB code then I couldn’t figure it out. If anyone knows then please feel free to post/send me a PM, because it took forever to do it this way!
First I assigned each episode an average score (5=Love, 3=Meh, 1=Hate) and ranked them by highest average. Here they are in broadcast order.
Title…Average…Ranking…Total Votes
Purple Piano Project…3.4…10…67
I Am Unicorn…3.5…8…44
Asian F…4.0…3…53
Pot O’Gold…3.3…12…48
First Time…3.6…5…54
Mash Off…3.6…7…49
I Kissed a Girl…3.5…9…50
Hold On to Sixteen…3.7…4…42
Extraordinary Merry Christmas…2.4…21…46
Yes/No…4.2…1…26
Michael…3.1…20…50
Spanish Teacher…3.2…17…42
Heart…3.6…6…35
On My Way…3.3…14…48
Big Brother…3.1…19…41
Saturday Night Glee-ver…3.2…16…32
Dance With Somebody…3.3…15…23
Choke…3.4…11…31
Promasaurus…3.1…18…30
Props/Nationals…4.1…2…29
Goodbye…3.3…13…31
And here they are ranked by highest average:
[ol]
[li]Yes/No (4.2)[/li][li]Props/Nationals (4.1)[/li][li]Asian F (4.0)[/li][li]Hold On to Sixteen (3.7)[/li][li]First Time (3.6)[/li][li]Heart (3.6)[/li][li] Mash Off (3.6)[/li][li]I Am Unicorn (3.5)[/li][li]I Kissed a Girl (3.5)[/li][li]Purple Piano Project (3.4)[/li][li]Choke (3.4)[/li][li]Pot O’Gold (3.3)[/li][li]Goodbye (3.3)[/li][li]On My Way (3.3)[/li][li]Dance With Somebody (3.3)[/li][li]Saturday Night Glee-ver (3.2)[/li][li]Spanish Teacher (3.2)[/li][li]Promasaurus (3.1)[/li][li]Big Brother (3.1)[/li][li]Michael (3.1)[/li][li]Extraordinary Merry Christmas (2.4)[/li][/ol]
The high ranking of “Yes/No” may be a fluke, as it was the episode that received the least overall votes. I suspect a lot of people just didn’t realize Glee was on that week, as it had been about a month since the Christmas episode.
There were somewhat different results if I sorted based on the combined percentage of people who voted “Liked” or “Loved”. “Hold On to Sixteen” did well on average because it was one of the least hated episodes of the season, not because it was one of the best liked. A higher percentage of voters liked/loved “Heart”, but that was a polarizing episode with a relatively high percentage of people who voted dislike/hate (23%).
[ol]
[li]Props/Nationals (90%)[/li][li]Yes/No (88%)[/li][li]Asian F (83%)[/li][li]Heart (71%)[/li][li]Mash Off (63%)[/li][li]First Time (61%)[/li][li]I Kissed a Girl (60%)[/li][li]Hold On to Sixteen (60%)[/li][li]I Am Unicorn (59%)[/li][li]On My Way (58%)[/li][li]Saturday Night Glee-ver (53%)[/li][li]Choke (52%)[/li][li]Purple Piano Project (49%)[/li][li]Goodbye (48%)[/li][li]Dance With Somebody (48%)[/li][li]Pot O’Gold (46%)[/li][li]Michael (45%)[/li][li]Spanish Teacher (45%)[/li][li]Promasaurus (43%)[/li][li]Big Brother (34%)[/li][li]Extraordinary Merry Christmas (22%)[/li][/ol]
I watch every week, enjoy the show, don’t get wound up about the utter lack of plausibility, and don’t bother to vote most weeks because my reactions aren’t usually quantifiable.
Glad they didn’t do as many tribute shows this year. Other than that – enh. It’s not as amazing as it was Season 1, which I have on DVD – will probably not buy any other seasons. But, still watching, still enjoying.
Not sure where that fits into whatever you’re trying to figure out here …
I’m not really trying to figure anything out, it just seemed like a shame to collect votes every week and never do a final report. 
I’m happy for this thread to just be general discussion on people’s feelings about the season.
The structure of episodes this season was really weird. Episodes tended to be just a melange of subplots rather than a single strong narrative supported by side stories. The best episodes of the season (to me) either worked because they were a melange of subplots with a strong unifying theme (“Asian F,” “Dance With Somebody,” “Saturday Night Glee-ver”) or… were “Nationals,” which had a strong emotional core but not much plot at all to speak of.
They were doing things like this as early as season two’s “Duets,” but that was an anomaly, and it was also another subplot-heavy episode that worked because of the strong theme. The people behind the show need to realize that something has to connect the various subplots, whether it’s characters or theme or motivation or narrative structure or whatever. Too many times this season, episodes have resembled nothing more than just a bunch of stuff happening, which to be fair is how I remember high school, but it’s not really how I like my fiction.
What Glee did well this season was most of the stuff having to do with high school ending and lives moving on (you may notice that theme present in all of the episodes I listed above as my favorites). That always felt real, like it was something all the characters truly felt and cared about, and it’s something that we all have felt: the end of high school, the end of relationships, the end of life as we know it, really. Among the best scenes in the season dealt with this: Finn’s explanation to Will that what he really wants is for time to stop (“Saturday Night Glee-ver”), Quinn’s advice to Rachel to break up with Finn because in a few months time she might not even remember why she loved him (“Michael”), and of course the tearful breakup of Finn and Rachel (“Goodbye”). That last scene in particular reminded me, in a good way, of the series finale of The Wonder Years, as it respects the real power and intensity of high school emotions and relationships while at the same time admitting that they don’t need to last forever, that sometimes they’re just fated to end… and that can be okay.
I hope that season four finds the writers more focussed and better able to work together, especially if they really split the series between the graduates and the people still at WMHS. I somehow see this ending in disaster, but I keep saying that about Glee, and yet it keeps sticking around and I keep watching and loving it.
Nobody seems to be sure how the split will be handled, although the idea tossed around the most, which usually means it came from the producers, is that any particular episode will either be entirely in New York or entirely in Lima - in other words, for all intents and purposes, there really is a “NYADA spinoff”, but it’s only 10 or 11 episodes.
There are still some questions unanswered.
What happens to Puck? Does he go off to Los Angeles and somehow you get scenes with Puck and Mercedes in them? (There has to be a reason they decided to put her in LA.)
Did Finn join the army, or didn’t he, and if he did, how does he get from Fort Benning to New York?
Does Kurt eventually get into NYADA? ("Yes, he does - they have already announced Sarah Jessica Parker is going to be his “NYADA Mentor” - “No, he doesn’t, at least not before the end of the season - they’ll probably have him doing odd jobs like every other ‘wannabe Broadway star’ for comic relief”)
Who that we have already seen is going to transfer to New Directions? The most popular guesses seem to be (a) Unique, and (b) that girl from the time Rachel and Kurt went to that “NYADA Hopefuls” group (at Sectionals, she said that she was a sophomore, as if the writers were sending out a hint that she might become a regular in future seasons).
I’ve stuck with the show from the beginning and never managed to muster the cynicism most people seem to have sometime around season two. Sure I wouldn’t call it as good as it was in season one, but the was practically an entirely different show. It was conceived with a little more edge, almost a dark comedy with elements of general inspirational moments, after the show become a super success it pretty much had to drop all the elements except the last.
I love musical threatre so I was drawn to this thing no matter what, hell I’d watch Cop Rock if it was on today. I was however so pleasantly surprised to find that my favorite genre actually could find mainstream success on TV, and it really did (and still occasionally) does have moments of pure musical brilliance. But the moment after it become the new hottest thing I knew the wolves would be waiting outside the gate, hovering eagerly over their keyboards waiting for Glee to “jump the shark”. I know the bloggers were just peeing the pants in anticipation, so it that sense Glee’s fall from public grace was inevitable no matter how the show was handled.
Now I’m not saying that the show has always been great, I am saying I’ve always liked it and it is still far from terrible. I recognize that there was a pretty serious drop off in quality in season two, but I truly believe that season three corrected for a lot of those problems and made for a much more compelling emotional story than did season two. Again, it’s still no season one, but most people had already assumed Glee had jumped the shark and there was no coming back from that, you can’t convince these people that yes season three actually had some great stuff, especially in the last several episodes.
Now as for season four, I want it to succeed artistically and financially, I really do. I can’t however think of a single example of a show replacing most of the cast or taking such a dramatic switch in direction, and possibly both in this case, and it working out. I could be wrong and I’d love to hear an example. I had always wanted them to end after three seasons at the logical conclusion to the journey of the underdogs finally achieving their long sought victory, but as soon as it became so huge I knew that wouldn’t be allowed to happen. So fingers crossed, but I’m prepared to treat season three as the last in my emotional memory of the show if I need to.
I was one of the people who lost interest this season - I hate musical theatre to start with, but somehow Glee in past years was entertaining enough for me to watch anyway. Last season, though, the stuff that was going on in the show wasn’t entertaining me any longer - it was actively annoying me.
And there wasn’t nearly enough Sue being hilariously evil. 
There’s always been a sort of “let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” quality to Glee, but I agree that more than in previous years this season did often seem like just a bunch of stuff happening. I think part of the difference was that in seasons one and two the writers managed to tie several of the running subplots together late in the season. The Quinn’s pregnancy, New Directions vs. Vocal Adrenaline, Rachel meets her birth mother, and Rachel/Finn’s romance arcs came together and reached some kind of resolution at season one’s Regionals. Something similar happened with the prom episode in season two. But in season three most of the story arcs seemed to have little to do with each other, and many of them were largely abandoned partway through the season.
Looking back, I think where I really started to get annoyed with this season was when it became clear that nearly all the story arcs that were introduced in the first few episodes were going to be either tied off or dropped by the winter break. That was fine for things like the West Side Story arc, which I really enjoyed and which had an obvious and natural endpoint, but not for things like the two election storylines which we spent a lot of time on but that turned out to be totally unimportant. By the spring I felt like anything that seemed like it was going to be of major importance for the rest of the season would actually be dropped a couple of episodes later, and I was largely right. The most glaring example of this was probably the OMG, QUINN IS IN A HORRIFIC ACCIDENT! SHE MAY BE DEAD! SHE MAY BE CRIPPLED FOR LIFE! plot. As it turned out, she appeared in a wheelchair for three episodes but completely recovered in time to dance at Nationals.
That said, this year’s Nationals episode was vastly better than last year’s, and made me feel better about sticking with this show through the season. I’m not sure I’ll do the same next season, though. Glee is moving to Thursdays, and if I have to choose between two shows I once really liked but have dragged on for too long then I’m going with The Office. I don’t have a DVR, and with FOX’s eight day delay in releasing episodes online I don’t know that I’ll care enough to bother keeping up with the show.
Of course, there were several times during season three when I seriously considered giving up on Glee but I kept crawling back anyway, so who knows?
I hadn’t heard that, but it seems like a better idea to me than splitting each episode between Ohio and New York. I didn’t think the writers dealt that well with the McKinley/Dalton split during the part of season two when Kurt was at Dalton – several episodes were set almost entirely at McKinley with one or two “Let’s check in on Kurt” scenes, and none of the Dalton characters aside from Blaine were ever developed – and it would be even more difficult to write episodes where the NYC and Lima plots had anything to do with each other. But if they alternated between NYC and Lima episodes then at least there wouldn’t have to be too much jumping around within each episode.
A couple of weeks ago on the Gleeful fan podcast, the hosts were talking about how Glee might be a better show if it had shorter seasons like series on cable. The writers might not feel the need to generate so many subplots if they had less time to fill, and might be a little more careful with the way they handle guest star/tribute episodes. So I can see Glee turning into two, two, two shows in one! being a good thing in narrative terms, although it’s an unusual enough approach that it may lose viewers entirely or lead to people watching only their favorite sub-series and skipping the other half of the show.
This show really peaked in the first half of the first season, it’s been pretty downhill since then.
Season 4 sounds like it will be a massive trainwreck, trying to keep all the original characters around despite being spread all over the country and splitting time with the new characters they’ll need to bring in to nude erections to keep them at 12 or more members. They’ve already had problems with the show as it is, now they’ll have to do all this other stuff on top of it.
I’m ready to be proven wrong, but this may well be final season of Roseanne bad.
This is a show I catch when I can and enjoy for what it is. I don’t get worked up (in most shows) about believability because I don’t really think it’s supposed to be taken so seriously.
I’m not so sure that next season will work but I’m sure I’ll record it and give it a chance.
The first season of Glee did have several characters who did almost nothing and were largely just there to fill out the choir – Mike and Matt barely even spoke, and even Brittany and Santana didn’t do too much except be Quinn/Sue’s henchcheerleaders – so I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem if some of the four required new members are little more than extras. Where I think the writers painted themselves into a corner was in not spending more time this season developing the characters who will still be at McKinley next year.
Taken as a choir the 2012-2013 lineup doesn’t look too bad: Blaine and Tina will presumably be handling most of the big solos, Artie and Sam are both good singers, and Brittany is a great dancer. If Rory and Joe stick around then they’re good enough to sing backup and do the occasional solo, and Sugar can be a backup dancer.
But Glee isn’t just one musical number after another, so it’s kind of a problem that many of these characters don’t even really have personalities. At least three (Sugar, Rory, Joe) are already little more than extras. To the extent that any of these eight characters had storylines in season three they’ve been almost entirely as love interests for characters who have now graduated. Artie is the exception, the writers were clearly trying to give him more to do in season three, but it didn’t add up to much. Since Artie dated both Tina and Brittany in the past and was interested in Sugar he’ll probably have a romance with one of them or wind up in a love triangle plot (Glee loves love triangles) with two of them, and I guess Blaine and Sam could compete for male lead, but beyond that I’m having a hard time thinking of potential storylines for this particular batch of characters.
I don’t give a rats behind about continuity. I don’t take GLEE seriously, I just enjoy the absurdity of the show.
Watch any old time long running TV show (before Internet) and the writers did not worry about continuity.
That said, I am ready for Rachel, Finn and Kurt to be off glee forever. I think the episodes since Xmas were too RFK centric.
I don’t mind the other seniors too much.
My favorite episode was the Saturday Night Fever episode. It starts with with Blaine, Mike Chang, and Brittany in the same class. WTF is Brittany doing that class? :eek: Aren’t Mike and Blaine supposed to uber smart? of course they break out into a rendition of You Should be Dancing Yeah which I really enjoyed. As a child of the late 70’s and getting laid for the first time after watching Saturday Night Fever (at the Drive In), it brought back some good memories.
I wish the show will continue to absurd.
YMMV
More glaring to me were the subplots with Kurt and Rachel auditioning for NYADA. That was built up all season long, and their actual auditions were turned into the smallest subplot in “Choke,” and episode built mostly on Shannon’s abusive relationship and Puck’s failing grades, both things that appeared completely out of nowhere.
Season three managed to simultaneously resolve plot arcs too easily or quickly AND fail to resolve plot arcs at all. For a ridiculous example of the former, Santana was kicked out of the glee club in “The Purple Piano Project” for playing double agent with Sue, something that she has been guilty of on multiple occasions. I thought that that would give us a chance to explore Santana’s dual loyalties and issues with her craving for popularity. I envisioned this as coming to a head when Santana came out of the closet, when she would need her glee club friends at her side. But no, Santana unceremoniously rejoined the club with minimal explanation two episodes later and then quit voluntarily one more episode later.
For an example of failing to resolve a plot arc at all, the most egregious example to me is Rachel and Mercedes’s feud over the West Side Story lead. The feud was so major that it split the glee club in two, but it was never ever resolved, even when the club merged back together. That left a gaping hole in the season because they made such a big deal about that plot arc and then never properly resolved.
There was a lot of wasted potential with Santana in season three, which I thought was particularly a shame since Naya Rivera has turned out to be both a better singer and a better dramatic actress than I would have guessed back in season one.
I’d expected that “gay teen comes out” would be well within Glee’s wheelhouse, but the show seemed weirdly uncomfortable with her sexual orientation while at the same time apparently wanting to get credit for having a lesbian character and dealing with Socially Relevant Issues. I thought it was bizarre and really pretty offensive that Santana would up being a background player in her own being outed/coming out plot, and that the whole thing turned into a story about how Finn of all people felt about Santana being a lesbian. Oh yeah, and what a great leader Finn was for blackmailing her into sitting in the choir room while everyone (except, oddly enough, her own girlfriend) made a huge deal about how she was a lesbian. Because that is totally a helpful way to react to someone who was afraid that people would treat her differently once they knew she was gay. :rolleyes:
Then after “I Kissed a Girl” the whole thing was basically dropped. There were occasional reminders that Santana and Brittany were still in a relationship, but there was no resolution to the seemed-important-at-the-time argument with her grandmother* and little indication that anything had changed for Santana as a result of her being out. I briefly thought the Christmas episode was building towards a plot about how Santana usually spent the holiday at her grandmother’s but couldn’t this year, but no. I’d thought she’d have some reaction to Karofsky’s suicide attempt since she was one of the few people who’d known he was gay and they’d both been popular/feared and closeted students who wound up being outed, but again no. I didn’t need to see Santana become president of the McKinley PFLAG chapter – although it would have been nice to know whether Kurt ever did get that off the ground – but there were plenty of opportunities to show that Santana being out meant something and the writers largely ignored them. If the writers wanted it to not be a big deal then I’d have been happy if they hadn’t tried to make it be a big deal early in the season. They didn’t need to do a multi-episode arc about Santana being outed, but once they started they should have committed to following through with it. I’m fine with Glee being a not-too-serious show, but there’s a big difference between not being serious and *trying *to be serious and just not being very good at it.
IMHO the only really worthwhile thing that came of that storyline was the Adele mashup in “Mash Off”. This was one of the best musical numbers of the season, maybe one of the best of the whole series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_uchIyNIvc The Troubletones could of course have done this same number regardless of the Santana storyline, but the lyrics were more meaningful in context and I think Rivera turned in not just a good vocal performance but a good acting performance as a character who was struggling with her emotions and then managed to channel them into the song.
*Several weeks ago my mother asked me on the phone if I thought they were ever going to reveal where Santana had been staying since her grandmother kicked her out. I explained that she actually lived with her parents and they were fine with her being gay. This has been mentioned so briefly that my mother had totally missed it. “I’ve been worried about her for months. I thought she was having to live with Brittany or something.”
I thought that “I Kissed a Girl” was a decent episode at the time, but in retrospect I agree that it was very weird that they made Santana’s coming out story about Finn, for the most part. I can’t say it offended me, though. A scene with Santana’s parents was conspicuous for its absence (and Gloria Estefan would have been put to much better use there than she was in “Goodbye”), but even worse is that there was never a good scene between just Santana and Brittany. Back in season two’s “Born this Way,” their confrontation over the “Lebanese” shirt was one of the best scenes of of the season and remains one of their best character/relationship moments. There was nothing like that in season three, despite Santana finally becoming comfortable with who she is and being open about her sexuality and relationship with Brittany: exactly was Brittany was confronting her about in season two.
But yeah, overall Naya Rivera was criminally underused in season three, and there was no good reason for it. Her arc was one of the greatest strengths of season two, and they pretty much just dropped her.
I have to admit, however, that “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” is probably my favorite musical number of the entire season. I thought that it was brilliant to turn the fluffy upbeat pop song into a slow lament for a part of Santana’s life that is passing away, now that she has to stop living just to have fun and deal with adult problems.