With yet another celebrity coming out to diss Glee, does that mean the show has jumped the shark?
—KNizz, via the inbox
I wouldn't use the phrase "coming out" if I were you, given that the disser was comedian turned antigay wingnut Victoria Jackson.
That said, yes, Glee just may be jumping the shark. And before you accuse me of serving Hatorade you didn't order, hear me out:
First, yes, a lot of stars have been dissing Glee, much to the righteous indignation of both creator guy Ryan Murphy and his massive ego. The list of the unimpressed now includes Jackson, Slash, the Kings of Leon, Dave Grohl, Miley Cyrus and—for a second, anyway—Babs.
Maybe they have reason.
The all-singing, all-dancing and—increasingly—all-preachy show has been showing signs of complacency, if not laziness. Take it away, real live TV historian who would know:
"You have to have a certain degree of reality for any show to work," begins Wesley Hyatt, author of many TV research books including the upcoming Television's Top 100. But instead, Hyatt says, some of the character storylines are getting sloppy, with people changing their motivations or emotions with seemingly no rhyme or reason other to serve a specific episode. Take Sue Sylvester, Hyatt says.
"She seems to be acting a bit willy nilly, speaking against bullying one day and then doing quite a bit of bullying herself." Of course you could chalk this up to a hypocrite of a character, but the inconsistencies don't end there.
"I can't really figure out what they are doing with Kurt's storyline," Hyatt points out. "They've indicated he has friendships and plenty of acceptance, and then he leaves to go a prep school. It just seems contrived, a story line for the sake of story line. That came out of nowhere.
"That's what happens a lot to soap operas when they start going downhill," Hyatt notes. "Writers creating decisions that violate the history of the characters."
Other indications that Glee has possibly outstayed its welcome after only two seasons? Ratings, perhaps. The March 15 episode won the ratings race for its night and time slot. But it also had about a million fewer viewers compared with the week before. And industry peers have not been kind either; Glee lost in every category for the most recent SAG Awards.
"If the [producers] don't watch it, they're going to start losing their fans quickly," Hyatt predicts. "A lot of younger viewers see a lot of themselves in that show. And if the writers are going to just come up with storylines that are nonsense, it's going to wear away their base."
And if all that isn't enough evidence of shark jumping for you, remember: Katie Holmes has said she loves the show.