I hear often: "Glee started out good/great, but got worse". When did Glee jump the shark? (SPOILERS)

Cafe Society
1

I’m watching through Glee currently. I’m in season three right now, back when I have heard and read that it was still fairly good. After season three, though, I’ve heard/read that there is a very sharp decline in quality.

I also know of a lot of spoilers already, so don’t worry about spoiling things for me, I don’t mind it. I’ve even seen the last episode of Glee already and I’ve seen many moments and bits of episodes between where I am now (Season three, episode three) and the end. I know of most major storylines and spoilers, so…again…feel free to spoil. Since I put a spoiler warning in the title, you can either use spoiler boxes if you want or just post them unspoiled.
When do YOU think Glee jumped the shark? When the first group graduated at the end of season three? When both the actor and character of Finn died? Or maybe you think it was a more subtle reason like “When they started dedicate episodes to just one singer all the time, like Justin Bieber or Madonna” or “When the show started featuring the original kids less and less and it became mostly all new kids”? Or maybe you think it was a slower, over time, jumping of the shark…one that started around the time when many characters went to New York and some went to other places and the show started going from place to place trying to cover all of these story lines for two or three more years?

Let’s say a person who has never watched Glee before asks you “Okay, I’m going to start watching it, is there any point where I should just stop?” how would you answer?
I’ll probably watch it all, but yeah—if there is any place—it’s definitely at the end of season three. Graduation for many original characters, they finally win the big one (nationals), and ending when it was still a very popular and well liked show, for the most part (and especially after the emmy wins right before season three, of best show, Jane Lynch for female character, and Chris Colfer for male character). That was the time to end it, if any. I’d be temped to tell a new Glee watcher “Watch to the end of season three…and then that’s it. Just stop there.”.

Going to ignore my own advice, though. I plan to watch it all.

2

Season 2 for me was a drastic drop in quality, but I didn’t think it got terrible until Season 3 and then after (I watched the entire series because I’m a glutton for punishment).

3

I checked out when Bunny was altering Marley’s costumes to make them smaller so Marley would think she was gaining weight and she became anorexic and damn near died. That was one of the stupidest storylines I’ve ever seen on TV. Presumably all her other clothes would fit - wouldn’t she think something was up when only her Glee costumes didn’t? I gave up my “willing suspension of disbelief” right there. That level of stupidity just went beyond stupid.

But I think it Jumped The Shark when the original kids graduated and they made New York and Ohio storylines with the same characters 2.0 versions.

4

I think Seasons one and two were pretty good - they covered the arc of not winning regionals in season 1 (I was surprised the show had the balls to do that) and the redemption arc of winning regionals in season 2.

Season 3 was not as good but still alright. If you liked the first two, watch the third. If you were meh on the first two, the third can be skipped.

After season three it all turned to shit. Don’t bother with season 4.

5

This is basically my feeling. Season three was weak but it at least felt like a weak season of the same show, while seasons 4-6 felt like weak seasons of an inferior Glee knock-off.

I’d tell someone who’d never seen the show to watch the first season, and if they like it continue to the second. If they liked that then I’d recommend the third with reservations. The third season finale leaves a number of things unresolved, so if that bothers you then skip to the series finale.

At some point in IIRC the fourth season I started to wonder if the show had really become so much worse or if it was me – maybe I’d just gotten tired of Glee’s usual shtick. There was a first season episode I’d never seen before (“Vitamin D”) and hadn’t bothered to catch online as I’d heard it wasn’t that good, but I decided to watch it as a comparison. And while it was far from the best-ever episode of Glee and a number of the show’s worst flaws were in evidence (things happened for no reason, the basic plot strained credibility) AND there were only two musical numbers, man oh man was it better than the later seasons. You could probably come up with something better than the later seasons by playing MadLibs.

6

Glee had a great pilot and was so optimistic. To me it started going downhill right away, when it started getting after serious issues - gay students, bullying, pregnancy, etc. I would have liked it if stayed cheerful and light-hearted, but it got really dark. I’d say it jumped the shark on its second episode; I would have taken it in a different direction.

7

Exactly. I have nothing to add, really. You hit it on the head here.

8

All of those issues – plus a teacher getting fired for molesting a student – were actually present in the pilot episode.

9

I don’t watch the show (just a few of the songs on YouTube), but these guyssuggest it’s the thirteenth episode of Season 2, and particularly the final song “Sing.”

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can do justice for their explanation why, but I think the main point is that it was the beginning of the songs becoming ridiculous in-universe, and thus when the show started being more about making singles than making a good show.

But, really, if you don’t mind spoilers, watch the review. Don’t let the theme song fool you–it has some pretty good musical numbers in it. (As a proper review of Glee by someone who can sing and knows a lot of other people who can sing ought to.)

10

You seem to pop up in threads about Glee a lot for someone who never watched the show. This particular thread (Glee - gay propaganda gone mad) sticks in my mind; you went on at some length about the “immoral message” of Glee and how outraged you were by specific events and characters. It’s interesting to learn that this was coming from someone who’d only ever seen a few of the songs on YouTube.

11

Ugh. You’re pulling up a post from 6 years ago which has little to do with this thread as an attempt to attack my integrity.

I’m sorry I offended you back then. But, if you aren’t holding a grudge, it’s not at all complicated. Read what I wrote: “I don’t watch the show, just a few videos on YouTube.” Not “I’ve never watched the show.” I don’t–as in, I currently do not watch it. I haven’t watched the actual show for years, and only vaguely remember it.

I saw a thread that discussed the topic of a video I had watched and enjoyed. I did not feel I needed to get into my entire history of the show just to post said video. I’m sorry that was not specific enough for you.

To be honest, I remember so little of the show’s plot lines that I don’t even know if I still agree with past-me about that. I didn’t remember any of it until I reread that thread.
I do vaguely remember that Kurt seemed stalkery, but that could be because I was less far along on my acceptance of homosexuality back then. Or that I expected Kurt to be more perfect than he was.

If that opinion offended you so much that you are bringing it up now, six years later, I again apologize. But it has no bearing on when the show jumped the shark, nor whether someone should watch that video.

12

Right. It depends on what the meaning of is is.

You clearly meant that you were not currently, at the instant you were typing the post, watching the show.

13

I laughed when I read this, because it is almost word-for-word what I was thinking – even the Clinton reference!

Getting back to the OP, while it’s hard as a viewer to know exactly how behind-the-scenes changes affected the show, something major did happen between the second and third seasons. For the first two years all episodes were written by the show’s creators, Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan. For the third season they brought in several new writers and from that point on Glee was written by a larger team, although Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennan did continue to write for the show. The Wikipedia list of episodes has the writer credited for each episode, although I believe television writing tends to be more of a group effort than the credits suggest.

It’s probably not fair to put the blame for the show’s decline entirely on the new writers; there were bad episodes before they were brought on, and some truly terrible episodes in later seasons were written by the original three. There was also a 2013 interview with Murphy in Out that suggested the new writers had their work cut out for them:

I’m sure it’s not easy to juggle multiple storylines, develop characters, etc., when your boss keeps popping in to give you instructions like “Figure out a way we can do a tribute to orange.”

I think another bad behind-the-scenes move was the decision to use a reality show, The Glee Project, to cast prominent roles. (Irish kid, Dreadlocks, Unique, and Finn 2.0 were all played by Glee Project winners or runners-up, with a couple of other Glee Project alums appearing in minor roles.) I watched the first season of The Glee Project and enjoyed learning what goes into creating Glee’s musical numbers, and the winners were legitimately talented singers. But once they were actually on the show it became clear that most of them weren’t very impressive as actors and worse still that the writers didn’t really know what to do with them.

During the first two seasons I think Glee did a good job of taking promising minor characters and giving them more prominent roles, but after that it felt like a bunch of new characters were just being shoehorned in regardless of how interesting they were. I consider Unique an exception to this – she wasn’t my favorite character, but worked better on the show than most of the other new kids and I can actually remember her name – but the actor playing her was a Glee Project runner-up whose prize was appearances in three episodes (late in season three). It was only because this character worked well that she was brought back as a recurring character in the fourth and fifth seasons.

14

It’'s simple: Glee started out ad a darkly subversive show that skewered those treacly family shows with their constant ‘very special’ episodes and formulaic plot lines. By the end of its third season it had morphed into the very thing it was mocking.

15

I’ve jumped the shark? :eek::smack:

16

That’s because that’s exactly what it was - it was a combination of a weak version of itself (the Lima scenes - Melissa Benoist was sold as the next Lea Michele) and a spinoff series (the NYADA scenes - if you ask me, they should have made NYADA a separate series). I think the main problem was, they tried to play to the existing fanbase, which was buying pretty much anything available on iTunes with the word “Glee” on it (I still wonder how many people own “Mercy” and “Rehab” from season 1 despite the fact that nobody who has appeared on the show is doing the singing), while dealing with the fact that half of the characters had graduated.

Okay, there’s one reason you might want to watch the later episodes; if you’re a fan of So You Think You Can Dance?, all of the competition scenes includes any number of that show’s “all-stars” in the competing choirs.

17

The show was really good for the first half season, filmed before anything was aired. After that some of them (mainly on the behind the camera side, not so much the cast) got a big head and from there on tended to fluctuate between “meh, it’s kinda mediocre but maybe it’ll get better” to “holy shit why am I watching this crap”.

Once half the cast moves on to college but not really because they’re mostly still there for “reasons” it’s like forget it, you should stop watching. I forced myself to watch a year past that, hated it and decided to stop, then the lead actor died so I stayed around to see how they handled that. When they finally did, the emotions on display seemed real, and moving, but some of the snark and bullshit from the writers ruined it with shit like “what does it matter how he died”. Well, it mattered to me, fartknocker.

18

I remember there being rumors of a college spinoff, then rumors of some weird drama about it, then an announcement that the fourth season would be split between Lima and New York. This was IMHO a fatal mistake. Had they decided to either fish or cut bait then at least in theory they might have managed a few more decent seasons, but I think it should have been obvious to those in charge that trying to do both at once was never going to work.

What I remember seeming really strange at the time was that while a good chunk of season three was spent building up NYADA and what a big deal it would be for Kurt and Rachel to go there, once they arrived in season four the writers apparently lost interest. I’m sure logistically it was difficult to pull off Glee: The College Years as a sort of subshow with a fraction of Glee’s running time and resources, but they seemed to have maybe two or three episodes’ worth of material for the NYADA setting. Once they’d burned through that it seemed like the show was doing everything possible to avoid NYADA – everyone works at a singing diner! they’ve also formed a singing group! Rachel’s landed a role on Broadway! no one’s even at NYADA anymore because of reasons!

In broader terms I’d say a major flaw of the later seasons was this tendency to make a really big deal about something and then completely fail to follow through.

19

When it became about the songs they were singing (and selling on iTunes) rather than the actual story.

So a few episodes into Season Two.

20

The final straw was season two when the went to New York without a set list. I put up with a lot of stupidity but for some reason that completely broke my suspension of disbelief. I’d hear the wife watch it in the other room and could tell I wasn’t missing much.