Disclaimer: The author of this article is aware that picking on EW is like picking on a blind kid in a coma and has made it abundantly clear that he has no love for Glee though he is thrilled that it has helped introduce new people to the majesty of Jane Lynch. If you want to pile on, he doesn’t give a damn about Friday Night Nights, Supernatural, or True Blood either.
Congratulations to everyone out there who has embraced Glee and its hybrid of High School Musical mania, American Idol performances, and zeitgeist capturing comedy. I’m glad you have a show you can smile and sing along with and buy a million iTunes download albums of kids doing covers of songs that have already been available on iTunes since before Glee ever happened. I complain about the show and people say to me “you really need to give it a chance, it’s really good”. That has happened, I’ve bashed a show based on a cursory glance and given it another chance and fallen for it.
I gave Glee a chance. Glee is fuck.
I can see why kids dig it. I can see why some mature adults might dig it. What I can’t see is how people don’t want to run in the opposite direction of it after any extended period of time. Jane Lynch is quite good. So are some of the kids. But it gets old so fast and though it’s nice to have musicals be relevant again, not if relevant means this and shit like Mamma Mia! are rampant. It’s cute. It’s slight.
What it isn’t, is worthy of being the recipient of so much goddamn attention.
If Entertainment Weekly were a living thing with lips, we’d never see them because they’d be nineteen inches up Glee’s urethra. It seems every issue of the magazine, when it isn’t riding the precocious and blatantly ignorant ass of the Twilight machine, is in a tent fucking Glee gently in the fanny. All Glee, all the time.
This is the same magazine that in their recent issue devoted to the 100 Greatest Characters of the last 20 Years had the gall to include Jane Lynch’s Glee character at #18 in addition to abominations like Madea, Edward Cullen, Molly Shannon’s piss poor SNL character, Ziyi Zhang’s wire-fu broad, The Gorillaz, Napoleon Dynamite, fucking Hancock, an Ugly Betty character, and Will Ferrell’s daughter from the viral videos he made. Even though very few people put much stock in their opinion, that’s absolute horror when it comes to choices of characters. I love Jane Lynch, but it’s a little too early to start talking about Glee characters being the best in twenty years.
A quick peek at the brand new Entertainment Weekly from this week, the one with True Blood (ugh) on the cover. Here’s a rundown of this week’s overkill:
Page 6 – Glee poll, Glee letter answered,
Page 26 – Glee editorial.
Page 28 – Casting suggestions for Glee.
Page 32 – News about Glee’s Jane Lynch’s wedding.
Page 36 – Glee sidebar.
Page 87 – A quote from Glee.
Page 104 – Blurb for upcoming Glee book.
They devote more space to Glee than the career of Dennis Hopper in this issue.
I get an amazing prize for EW, something like $20 for two years’ worth of issues. I’m being ripped off. There are forests of trees getting their ass kicked so EW can write about Glee. Enough already, EW. And you people pimping this show and complaining when grumpy old neanderthals like myself rip it, you lay off too. You’ve got your silly show up in everyone’s shit. What more do you want? Get this shit away from me.
I like musicals. One of the most pivotal movies in my lifetime was Grease [though this sing-a-long thing creeping through the nation scares the sleep outta me], and there were few online voices louder than ours when Moulin Rouge hit screens way back when. I don’t think musicals are beneath me nor do I find myself too manly for them. I saw Starlight Express on Broadway for Crom’s sake. I’ve got nowhere to point fingers.
But overkill is a motherfucker, and when EW is championing your shit maybe it’s time to realize that though there may not be Fonzie on a motorcycle revving up, your show has come around the other side and is already on the downward spiral.
EW and Glee, sitting in a tree. F-U-C-K-I-N-G with me.