Glee Is The New Heroes.

Glee, Glee, Glee. Are we watching you disintegrate before our very eyes? After the creatively-cruddy Britney Spears episode, I began to be concerned. After the Rocky Horror Show, I started to actively worry. And now Susan Boyle has been confirmed to join the Glee-tards for their holiday episode, I’m convinced: Glee is the new Heroes.

Allow me to explain. If there are two things I love in this world, it’s comic books and musicals (imagine how excited I must be for the disaster-prone Spider-Man musical!). If there’s a superhero punching the hell out of a bad guy, or intricately-choreographed dance number, I’ll be there, front row. But though my love is intense, it’s not blind or uncritical. And I can’t help but see that the same malady that dragged Heroes down from a beloved new series to a laughable butt of a joke is about to infect Glee.

· Both shows had a crackerjack first season that instantly captured the imagination of viewers and became a breakout hit. Both shows were rewarded with healthy dollops of Emmy nominations and acclaim. And both shows hit the skids almost immediately upon their second season.

·Both shows became slaves to stunt casting that lead nowhere (Look, it’s Uhura! Look, it’s Britney!), both shows have sketchy paternity issues that become ridiculous by the end (Sylar is a Petrelli! Wait, no he’s not! Will’s wife is faking her pregnancy! Because why not!)

·Both shows have beloved bad guys that they don’t know what to with (Sylar is pure evil! No, he’s good! No, he’s bad! No, he’s murky! Sue Sylvester loves Madonna! But she hates teen sexiness! She’s a relentless gorgon who hates the Glee Club! Except when she doesn’t! Except when she does!).

·Both shows have meandering plot lines that sluggishly circle around themselves until they finally realized something needs to happen (Sylar is very slowly driving from Central America! There is a deadly virus! Let’s talk at boring length about it! New Directions are going to Nationals in New York! Because they said so, I guess!).

And there’s plenty more I could talk about. Here’s a nota bene to Ryan Murphy and the two other creators of Glee: I don’t care about the special guest stars, the special theme episodes or any other superfluous fluff. I just want to know more about the characters and their lives, their struggles, their successes. Keep a clear sense of who each character is and how they act; what killed Heroes in the end, in my mind, is that the characterization for each person became so muddled and twisted that we ultimately didn’t care what they did because it would undone or reversed in a few episodes. I still care about Glee, but it’s getting harder and harder with every new stunt and out-of-character action.

And while I’m making requests, let’s get more Sondheim up in this piece. I’d kill to hear Chris Colfer do “Not While I’m Around.”

source: movieline.com