I agree, actually. It’s perfectly fine way to explain what we mean when a show has reached the point where it will never return to its former quality.
Well, it wouldn’t have done much since he was barely involved after the first few episodes. But, yeah, they should have given it to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
I agree the show has gotten worse, but more importantly, it’s just a different show. It used to be the music served the plot, now the plot serves the music. It’s basically an hour-long advertisement at this point. I suppose it’s still enjoyable on some level, but it was far better when they were less interested in preforming songs just so they could put them on itunes the next day.
To hijack my own thread, momentarily: Lindelof & Cuse swear up & down that they knew exactly how Lost was going to play out, about 3 seasons before the end. So they wrote their bible halfway through the series (which I guess means they had to hastily ret-con some stuff).
Exactly. It was mid-season 3 when they found out how long they’d have to tell the story and established what would be revealed when.
I’m still trying to figure out where I heard that the show would contain NOTHING supernatural or unexplained by science as we know it. Holding onto that concept really ruined the enjoyment of much of the show for me, because I was too busy looking for the man behind the curtain, when it turned out that there WASN’T one.
Oh yeah, and Lost played out that way too…
I never watched it but Kathy Griffin going to be on it so I might.
A show can’t jump the shark if it wasn’t good in the first place. So, no, Glee has not jumped the shark.
It really depends on what one means by “jump the shark”. Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:
If we go with this definition then that shark was pre-jumped, because such things have been a part of Glee from the beginning.
If we’re using the term to mean the point of no return for a show, the moment where it can only go downhill from there, I think it’s too early to be sure. There have been some good episodes this season, along with some very bad ones, and the season isn’t over yet. There have also been other shows that had a weak season but recovered.
I think a big advantage the first season had over this one is that most of the multi-episode storylines tied back into the Quinn’s pregnancy arc: the whole Quinn/Finn/Puck/Rachel/Kurt love pentagon, conflict between the Cheerios and glee club, Terri’s fake pregnancy and the breakdown of Will’s marriage, and Rachel’s quest to find her birth mother. There hasn’t been a similar “backbone” to the show this season. The biggest story arc seems to be Kurt’s situation, but this has resulted in Kurt being removed from the main action of the series and has nothing to do with the increasingly complicated romantic drama among the students, Will’s creepy obsession with Emma, etc. But it’s possible that some of these plot threads could still come together (the Rachel’s birth mother and Quinn’s pregnancy storylines didn’t connect until the season finale last year) or that next season will have a stronger core.
If Glee does prove to be in an irreversible downward slide then I’d say the truly awful Britney Spears episode was the shark-jumper. Aside from the forced theme and pointless celebrity cameo, why on earth does a show that’s already a musical need to have a stupid and implausible excuse (hallucinogenic dental anesthesia) for musical numbers? It’s like having an episode of Law & Order where all the detectives and lawyers go to the dentist and hallucinate that they’re solving/prosecuting crimes.
Television Without Pity did a feature on this: A Guide to the Show’s Dropped Storylines. What happened to Finn’s best friend the quadriplegic? Why is everybody shocked that Puck is dating plus-sized Lauren, when he dated plus-sized Mercedes in Season 1? Sue made a video with Olivia Newton-John and it became an internet sensation – and disappeared!
To call most of these “dropped storylines” is a stretch. “Dropped one-off plot contrivances” is more accurate.
And I don’t think they’ve dropped that Will is in love with Emma. In fact, I think they make it creepily obvious he is.
I don’t think there’s any mystery to this one. Puck made it clear that he was only after Mercedes because she was a popular cheerleader at the time, and their relationship lasted just one episode. He seems to be genuinely attracted to Lauren. And it’s not merely her size that makes her seem like an unlikely match for Puck – she’s not very pleasant and she has always been portrayed as being at the very bottom of the school’s social hierarchy, below even the glee club kids.
That might be a reason I might actually watch again. For some reason, I find snark about celebrities hilariously funny. I hope they allow her to use some material.
I still say that jumping the shark is mostly about how a show changed for the worse, not that it just isn’t as good as it used to be. There has to be a specific change that is causing it to be worse.
And she’s playing a Sarah Palin expy. It’s almost as if Ryan Murphy thought “Gee, how can I get even more gay men to tune in”.