October 27, 2010

Rocky Horrible Gleepisode


In the past, I've been of the opinion that even a bad episode of Glee is still pretty entertaining, but after last night, I know that a truly bad episode of Glee is not entertaining and really, really unpleasant to watch. 

Either the writers want to make a show that is about being campy and ridiculous and musical and fun with absolutely no regard for plotting and storytelling, or they want to make a show about something that happens to be campy and musical, but they can't have it both ways.  It was obvious to me that the powers that be (and write) decided they wanted to pay homage to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and which musical numbers they'd perform and who would perform them and then just shoe-horned a "story" in around these pieces.  Even worse than the completely nonsensical "plot" was the decision to revolve the episode around Mr. Schuester being creepy. 

Look, I get it, Matthew Morrison looks good with his shirt off.  I can support their efforts to work his nudity into the show if they do it in such a way that doesn't make me feel gross.  And the more time that passes on this show, the more likely it is that every single thing they do with the Schue character will seem gross because they've turned his character into the creepiest, most annoyingly self-involved, humorless moron I've ever had the misfortune to meet on television.  It's hard to believe there was a time I hoped he and Emma would get together.  Now I hope that the show fires Morrison (through no fault of his own) and replaces him permanently with John Stamos. 

Envelope pushing, I know.  Yet, I hope I never see two adults singing about orgasms to each other while "teenagers" watch and snicker ever again.  They reworked lyrics and toned down costumes and did only musical numbers (almost no dialogue from the movie) in the service of making Rocky conform to network television's standards and practices yet somehow managed to make it a million times more inappropriate for human consumption than just showing an un-edited version of the movie could have ever been. 

What didn't completely suck?  Becky.  And two new installments of "How Sue Sees It" which were not as memorable as past installments have been but I had missed hearing Jane Lynch say "Thanks, Ron."  The costumes were pretty terrific and, as usual, the final group number was a lot of fun.  I appreciated the inclusion of a story about boys dealing with body image issues though, again, it felt a bit forced. 

Puck gets out of juvie two weeks from now, lets hope he brings a better script and a whole lot less screen time for Schue with him when he returns! 

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