Monday, February 7, 2011

Glee-"The Sue Sylvester Shuffle"

The Glee Cast performs Thriller
Credit: FOX

I have a very busy week this week so most of my reviews will be brief. My short review of last night's very special post Super Bowl episode of Glee is after the jump.

I went into this episode with very low expectations. I expected what Glee tended to give: crappy writing, incoherent and contrived plotlines, and decent musical numbers.  This episode surprised me quite a bit. The writing wasn't the best and the plotlines deviated into ridiculousness at points but I ended up enjoying the episode. When Glee doesn't have 18 plots per episode (to the point of incoherence) it can be quite good.

The football plotline (which you have to have in a Super Bowl episode apparently) ended up being very enjoyable. I could tell the writers were trying to pose the show as a lighthearted dramedy and that's what this plotline was. Although the comedy didn't quite land (girls on the football team, really?) the drama worked. Even though the jock vs glee club plotline was old the show made me care about it. I was invested in whether the football players would become tolerant of the glee club or whether the football team would win (*). That's what the show has failed to do over the season but this time it worked.

(*) Can anyone tell me when this team got good? It's hard to believe that a sudden change of coach would make the team be good enough to win a championship.

This was also the first time in awhile that I didn't want to slushee Mr. Schuester. He was annoying but not as much as usual. Coach Beiste, for the first time in her run on the show, was a well written, well meaning character. She played the voice of reason and it made sense this time. Also, this was an occurrence of the Finn I like. He was very well written (which is very rare) and it made for a very good payoff at the end of the game.

The Sue plotline was mainly there to show the ridiculousness of her character and how funny the character can be. Jane Lynch is a very funny actress and made, what would seem ridiculous coming from anyone else's mouth, funny. Sue is an egotistical jerk, we know that. The show is having fun with this and it made for some not awful comedy (which is better then most episodes of Glee).

Some other thoughts:
  • You knew that Britney, Santana, and Quinn would choose the glee club, the song and dance wasn't necessary.
  • We only got a little bit of Dalton Academy but what we got was good. The song they performed was good and I'm glad we got to see them at all (they weren't in the first draft).
  • Does Blaine know everything about everything? It sure seems that way.
  • The Thriller performance wasn't half bad. Once you get past the ridiculousness of this ever happening it makes for a fun song.
  • The Puck and Rachel duet was fine but nothing special.
  • If WMHS had a marching band, wouldn't they do the halftime show?
Overall, I did enjoy the episode. It wasn't perfect but it was good for an episode of Glee.

What did everyone else think?

1 comment:

  1. Kurt and Blaine NEED to get together. Seriously.

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