Quinn’s Chair: Glee 3.22

Some people liked Glee’s Season 3 closer, or at least were able to see the silver lining.

I was at turns bored and gasping in shock at the season finale, Goodbye. And though the shocking bits were very shocking indeed, they were of the “What the fuck?” variety and not the “lightbulb of enlightenment” that stays with you once the credits roll.

I found the story that was told last night truly dismal. Some of McKinley’s graduating seniors were handed their dreams (Rachel gets into NYADA, Mike Chang gets into some stellar program in Chicago, Mercedes gets a recording contract and is off to LA) while others were simply handed their hats (Kurt did not get into NYADA, and with no back-up school, it looks like he’ll be wearing a Lima Bean apron and serving Blaine coffee in no time; Finn didn’t get into the Actor’s Studio (that plot point was all kinds of idiocy to start with); and Santana decided she was too sexy for college and maybe she should just hang around in Lima with Brittany, who didn’t manage to graduate and is excited to be able to relive her Senior Year. But hey, at least Santana was also handed a massive check and urged by her mother to give her dreams a shot in NYC (which dreams those were, we weren’t told).).

No one was surprised when Finn didn’t get into what was apparently the only school he’d applied to, but it was genuinely shocking to discover Kurt was also rejected. I gasped. But it wasn’t like when Karofsky kissed Kurt in the locker room, and it wasn’t like finding out that Quinn hadn’t always been the golden child, and it wasn’t even like finding out Terri was faking her pregnancy: these things were actually relevant to the stories being told.

It was more like when we saw Quinn’s car get struck by a speeding pickup: it came out of nowhere, but that’s also exactly where it was headed. Finding out Kurt didn’t get accepted to NYADA was a moment of surprise, but it was hardly a revelation: does anyone doubt that Kurt will find his way to NYC? The horror of Kurt’s rejection letter should be the same horror that we feel for Finn: this was his chance to escape Lima, and it slipped away. But no one believes for a moment that Kurt will be stuck in Lima (or enlist in the military, though it’s fun to think about THAT Season Four, following Kurt and Finn through basic training, laugh track in effect – he was dressed in military chic when they were waiting for Puck’s test results). We can’t — it’s ridiculous. Kurt is more likely to end up waiting tables in Manhattan, bitter and heartbroken but at least having reached for the brass ring, than taking over Hummel Tire & Lube: Kurt takes risks — that was reaffirmed in Choke, right? With The Boy Next Door? Kurt doesn’t play it safe. He doesn’t always play it smart, but he doesn’t play it safe.

So Kurt will at some point — either offscreen during the hiatus or during the first few episodes of Season 4 — make the decision to go to New York. Maybe he gets an 11th hour offer from NYADA. Maybe Sarah Jessica Parker, in her turn as guest star, is a NYC fashion exec who discovers Kurt working some mundane job in Lima and takes him to the Big City under her couture-covered wing. Whatever: Kurt will be there because what else can he do? And what else can the showrunners do with him?

(If the answer to that is let him steam milk and make mochas for a year while he waits for Blaine to graduate so they can ride off into the sunset together, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.)

Just as there was no real drama (only contrived moments in which to interject pop songs) in whether or not Rachel would get into NYADA, there is no real drama in Kurt’s failure to do so. This is all just more of Quinn’s wheelchair: a device that serves to move things along but which is ultimately meaningless to the characters or the story. Quinn was dancing without so much as a limp by Nationals — I’m pretty sure Kurt will be up and running by Halloween.

Wouldn’t it have been nice to see Burt’s reaction to the NYADA letter? Or Carol’s reaction to Finn’s renewed interest in joining the Army? Wouldn’t it have been nice to see Kurt’s reaction, for that matter, to his disintegrating dreams? I would have watched the hell out of that “what next” conversation between Kurt and Blaine if we’d seen one. But we didn’t, and those moments weren’t given any weight as the episode drew to a close because they don’t matter. They are emotional and narrative dead-ends. And being fed a bucket of red herrings in the finale bothers me because so many other, worthier things were displaced because of them.

The only time I was close to tears during an episode that promised to be hanky-worthy was in the final scene, and it was a total accident. I was watching the show on a grainy, blurry, intermittent livestream, and after Finn and Rachel had their discussion about “surrendering” to fate or whatever, when they joined the rest of New Directions on the train platform, I thought for a moment that Mercedes and Quinn were showering Rachel with rice, as a sort of celebration of her commitment to herself and her dreams. My heart leapt into my throat and I thought, “That’s beautiful.”

But no, Glee wasn’t embracing gorgeous metaphor: it was just really poor quality video.

The Sue/Quinn moment would have been really touching if Sue hadn’t given that exact same speech to Quinn at the end of On My Way, when she gave Quinn back her Cheerios uniform.

Ultimately, this whole season has felt like the long, indrawn breath before you dive into the deep end, but I feel like Glee forgot to fill the pool.

Transition

When I say I am nearly done with Glee, I don’t mean it in an “I hate RIB+6″ kind of way.

I imagine that Glee’s problems of late are no greater nor much different than the problems it’s had all along. At first, it had novelty on its side, and then the wonderful cast, but ultimately the writing and style of the show has remained about the same: take something, hold it up and mock it even as you celebrate it, then move on to the next shiny object that catches your eye. And that works sometimes and doesn’t work at other times, but it’s sort of tried and true for Glee.

So it’s not irritation with the formula of Glee that has driven me off or anything like that. I’m not feeling “driven” at all, oddly, more like I’m falling slowly away, further and further from the gravitational pull of Glee and the truly staggering mass of its fandom. I’m not leaving in a huff; I’m probably not even leaving, because I do still feel a sentimental need to see how things play out. I just don’t care so very much anymore.

(And then, there’s Chris Colfer. I feel a fidelity to him that won’t go away simply because Glee is not the mesmerizing thing it once was. I owe CC, and the only way to repay that debt is by watching him perform, paying money for the books and movies he makes — and I’ll do so happily and always.)

Certainly, the end of Karofsky as a character– and the end of even foolish anticipation of Karofsky — sped up my disenchantment. But he was, from the beginning, nearly half of the reason I watched the show. Keep in mind, I did not watch Glee before last April, towards the end of Season 2. I watched all of Season 1 and the first 18 episodes or so of Season 2 in the period of about a week, and for me, my interest was immediately drawn to the Kurt/Dave storyline. That relationship wasn’t something that showed up after a year of watching the show and the other characters’ development: for me, Karofsky went from being a slushee-and-Sharpie-wielding bit player to that shattered boy kissing Kurt in the locker room in a matter of hours. His tearful apology before Junior Prom came just a week or two later. I didn’t have time to hate him, so I didn’t. Aside from the character of Karofsky pushing a lot of my own buttons from high school, I found his tangled storyline with Kurt by far the most interesting aspect of Glee.

And now that’s over. The “fingers crossed” hope that he might make an appearance here, or have a mention there, is also over. Max Adler stated definitively via Twitter that he would not be back again this Season, not even for a lingering last look in the finale. Wah wah wah: I have a lot of feelings about that, but even those have started to fade. I accept that Glee thinks the story of David Karofsky is over, complete. As much as I disagree and am dumbfounded by that idea, it is what it is: reality.

So, yes, definitively losing the part of Glee that most held my interest certainly factors into my waning obsession. I certainly have never mustered any enthusiasm for Blaine or Klaine, or any of the other pairings. Hummel household scenes are fantastic, but they are few and far between these days.

The “fanatic” part of being a fan was always going to end, regardless. Kurt and Dave could be holding hands and apartment hunting in the Lower East Side and I’d still be fading out (though there would be more of a smile on my face as I went, maybe).

That’s simply how it is with obsession. It isn’t a forever thing. Intense, perseverative, blinding: absolutely. But it goes, and is eventually replaced by something new. Before Glee, there was Severus Snape. Before that, a string of men I knew in my real life, or Kenneth Branagh, or a debate coach; when I was nine, it was the Holocaust. When I was six, it was Michael Caine.

But there’s always the interval between, a time when there is nothing. Obsessions are not like college boyfriends, where I had the next one queued up and ready to go the moment I lost interest in the old one. And I don’t get to chose them, either.

It’s more like walking at night when it’s very dark and you’re not sure where it is you’re supposed to turn and then you pass right through one of those spider webs that are strung between two trees. You are suddenly and absolutely in the world of that web, and the feeling of it clinging to you is the most essential fact in the world so long as you are in it.

Now, those of you who have not experienced obsession might think the spiderweb analogy is a bit shocking. Too creepy, too awful. But even if what you’re obsessing over is perfectly lovely (like the beautiful, lakewater eyes of an actor, or a show full of song and dance), it isn’t pleasure that dominates your life. Believe me, as much as it seemed like I was having fun — and I was, sometimes I surely was — there is so much PUSH behind the fun, so much pressure and fixation and helplessness; you can’t not pay attention. You can’t put anything in front of it. You can’t make logical decisions, prioritize in a way that makes sense or brings any balance to your life. You alienate those close to you. You neglect things and people that matter, that are right there but get pushed aside because: OBSESSION. And that is not fun or pleasurable, having that little control over yourself.

And when it goes, there is a sense of relief because finally I have my mind back. And there is a certain amount of awkwardness, because I know everyone has watched this Glee thing happen to me and many of you have played along and been gracious about it. I hope I’ve been able to bring some level of charm and intelligence to the conversation here and elsewhere. I’ve certainly met a lot of wonderful new people who live in my computer.

But it’s also terribly, terribly lonely and sad to find myself without something all-consuming. It’s a little disorienting. I keep feeling like something awful has happened: it’s as though I had a nightmare last night and I just can’t remember what it was, or as if the phone is about to ring and I’m going to get such bad news. It’s just the void where Glee used to be.

And the anxiety of not knowing what will take its place.

So if you’ve only ever come here for Glee, you might get bored with me and wander off. I’ll understand. But I hope some of you will stay around for whatever is to come. I’ll try to make it good reading, if nothing else.

Megalodon: Glee 3.19

Do you think people will look back on Glee and ask themselves if Glee jumped the shark back at Big Brother (wherein Blaine’s “OMG-finally!” character development amounted to a laughable Christina Aguilera cover and the birth of the term “Andercest” to describe the love that dare not speak its last name), or if it was really Blaine’s hair gel storyline in Prom-A-Saurus that sealed Glee’s fate?

I cried at the end of Prom-A-Saurus tonight. I did. And this was no small achievement, considering that my usual Glee-watching crew all found themselves otherwise occupied and I spent 70 minutes on an elliptical machine at the YMCA. I watched the episode on a grainy, 6-inch screen and listened through the one working speaker of my headphones to some of the most inconceivable bullshit imaginable. The fanservice for Faberry shippers alone was enough to make me queasy.  What about Figgins telling Brittany that she was failing all of her classes but that the achievement of being Senior Class President would somehow make her an enticing prospect for a university?

I consider that shark well and truly jumped. And not just any shark: that extinct giant, that dinosaur of sharks, Carcharodon Megalodon. It’s thematic. I’m going with that whole prehistoric prom thing.

Say, for instance, Brittany runs for Prom King, gets only a handful of votes (Quinn helpfully points out, maybe it’s because she’s a girl) and all we get by way of reaction or explanation is Santana’s lackluster declaration that she doesn’t want to be Queen if Brittany isn’t King. You’d think after what happened to Kurt last year, there might be SOME discussion mention allusion to making the Prom Court as gender-neutral and unbiased as possible. Somehow, even though Kurt is once again brought onstage as last year’s “sassy male Prom Queen” to crown the new royalty, there is simply a void where any intelligible treatment of the topic ought to be.

And hey, speaking of Kurt, I found myself wanting to scream in frustration as he discussed not wanting to go to Prom after what happened last year (remember when Kurt was voted Prom Queen and Dave Karofsky was King and Kurt urged Dave to come out and Dave was terrified and ran out of the auditorium in panic and self-loathing and his boyfriend had to go out into the hallway and reassure him no one seemed to notice or give a damn?). And Kurt reminds Rachel and Blaine that last year was hu-mil-iating and Blaine adds that also, this whole hair gel ban makes him really sad, and I am at the gym clocking 45RPM with my heart rate skyrocketing because remember David Karofsky you guys? Wonder how Dave’s doing right about now?

Every episode that goes by with no sign of David Karofsky makes me feel more ashamed of the expectations I had for this show. For five weeks running, there have been windows through which at least a mention of Karofsky might have crept, but the writers have offered nothing but their rigid middle finger.

And I know, I know that some people will read this and think, “Broken record. Desperately Seeking David, nothing new here.”

But there is a difference between being a fan and being a viewer.

As a fan, I was bummed that Kurtofsky never happened, that there was no Kurt/Dave dance at Prom to balance the scales after last year. As a fan, I was moved to see Kurt take Dave’s hand in the hospital and say that he was going to help him.

As a viewer, I am indignant that Glee willfully ignores having dragged this character into an honest-to-goodness closet where he tried to end his life. They showed a very manipulative pan of the beams of the ceiling and then Karofsky fastening something around his neck — remember that? They couldn’t show him actually hanging, but they showed us the belt and then they inserted that image into our heads in the most sinister way possible (go back and watch it if you have the stomach, it’s a calculated and sickening decision on the part of Glee’s director/editor that episode).  They showed Karofsky stepping onto a chair with the intent of hanging himself. They showed his father trying to revive an unconscious son. Remember?

(To be honest, I almost put a “trigger warning” for suicide in the tags for this recap, because somehow it is so much more upsetting, so much more horrifying now – having been shoved aside for months — than it was when it was actually onscreen. Back then, I still had hope that there was purpose in subjecting the audience to that pain porn. I should have known by the fact of Blaine’s vocals over the suicide montage that it was more superficial and repugnant than I’d guessed…)

I remember. Not just because Karofsky means something to me personally, but because I am an avid viewer of the show and Glee took the audience by the throat for this scene, with this character, and has since shrugged it off entirely. I’m utterly turned off. What was for me exciting and fun and a shared joy is now largely a source of irritation and despair.

Tonight, when Finn and Rachel stepped into the circle of their fellow students to have that first dance between Prom King and Prom Queen — and I don’t have caps of tonight, so if someone does, help me out because I think Rachel and Finn were shot from above just like this…

– I cried. I didn’t cry for Rachel’s moment with Finn: they had an almost-wedding; they’re still planning to get married, how much am I supposed to care if they get to dance together as Prom King/Queen? Really, Glee? I cried because I despise what has become of this show. I cried because I am coming out from the haze of obsession, losing something that meant so much to me. I cried because I am not ready to give up on Glee but Glee seems gone, nonetheless.

I keep saying that I will watch it (I don’t love Chris Colfer any less because the writers have made me a little less keen on Kurt), but I just won’t care anymore. I’ll watch it and try to be disinterested and I’ll pretend that there never was a Dave.

Which is pretty much what Glee seems to be doing.