Television Tuesday :: insert witty Glee pun here.

I have 5 main subheadings for this post:

1. I’m not done with Glee, but I’m… getting there.
2. If Mercedes (Amber Riley) is pregnant, I am gonna cut a bitch.
3. Can the entire program just be Mike’s (Harry Shum Jr.) dancing, Tina’s (Jenna Ushkowitz) clothes, Emma’s (Jayma Mays) adorableness, and Brittany (Heather Morris) saying funny things please?
4. Marti Noxon my baby where are you?
5. I just looked up the definition of “retcon” on Urban Dictionary, and I’m pretty sure that’s what they do to everyone every single episode.

I figured since there was no new Glee this week, I could discuss my feelings about the show and the season thus far without accidentally forgetting a new happening.  So I’ll address each subheading.

1. Many of the reasons I mentioned for why Glee doesn’t suck earlier this year have kind of become stagnant.
   • Sue (Jane Lynch)?  Well, yes, there are funny one-liners.  Lynch delivers them well.  But really, woman.  You had a great emotional turn around the end of last season.  But the writers needed you around to be a raging bitch all the time, so they, well, retconned you.  And it’s getting old.  It really, really is.  The more jokes Sue tells, the more it feels like nagging.
   • I still appreciate what Chris Colfer did for people re: gayness and all.  And I still adore Darren Criss (mostly because he was singing Harry Potter).  But I’m just… kind of over Kurt and Blaine as characters.  And by “kind of” I mean really.  Kurt has been having the exact same emotional crisis over and over since season one, and I understand it, I do, but does he have to have some variation of it every single episode?  And Blaine just isn’t that interesting.  I understand that he could act Tony in their production of West Side Story better than Kurt could, I don’t doubt that, and I don’t think Kurt’s voice is right for Tony either, but Blaine… kind of isn’t rangy enough for it.  They had him sort of faking/fudging a few of the high notes.  And maybe that’s just me being neurotic, but I wasn’t really buying it.

   Also, a lot of the things that annoyed me always haven’t changed.

   • Rachel (Lea Michele) is still on my Fictional Women to Punch list.  I mean.  She’s a very good singer, I love all the vintage dresses she’s been wearing this season, she’s super cute.  But she’s frustrating.
   • Mercedes is also frustrating.  If I have to see her whinge about being second to Rachel one more time, I may scream.  It’s not that she’s not talented.  She is.  She and Rachel are both talented.  But they’re not like objects.  Mercedes would have been a subpar Maria in West Side Story for the same reason that Rachel would be, to use one of Mercedes’ favorite metaphors, a subpar Effie White in Dreamgirls.  Could the Glee Club come up with new songs to sing that could showcase what Mercedes does better than with a riffing trill at the last ten measures?  Yes.  But that’s not a reason to swear vengeance against Rachel (much).
   • Quinn (Dianna Agron) is also frustrating.  The whole diversion into the land of having dyed hair and smoking at the season’s beginning?  Pretty much pointless.  Quinn is one of those people that I feel bad for, but at the same time want to smack: yes, a lot of crap has happened to her.  She got pregnant, she gave up the baby, her boyfriend dumped her.  But at the same time… well, girl, get over it.  Giving up the baby was a smart decision, and she apparently forgot about it for an entire season, but now suddenly it bothers her again?  Her boyfriend would have dumped her no matter what: it’s high school.  People break up.  There are very few high school relationships that last.  WikiAnswers says it’s a 2% chance.
   • The writers are trying so hard to make it a show that embraces diversity and differences that it’s inadvertently a little bothersome.  I mean, we get it.  It’s wacky!  There are black kids!  There are geeky kids!  There are Hispanic kids!  There are stupid kids!  There are Asian kids!  For some reason, this one bothers me the most: it’s like when they were doing the bit in season one where everyone had their stereotypes drawn out of a hat and Tina and Mike were called “Asian” and “Other Asian,” they decide that that would be the only defining factor of their existences.  Not an episode seems to go by without an Asian joke or reference; last week’s episode was called “Asian F,” for crying out loud.  Apparently A minuses are Asian Fs; I had never heard that before.  But hey.
   • And speaking of embracing differences… you know a weird pattern I’ve noticed?  There can be an interracial hookup at the end of one season (Tina and Artie, Mercedes and Sam) but by the beginning of the next season, that nonwhite girl will be hooked up with a nonwhite guy.  I actually think Tina and Mike are adorable, so I’m not complaining from that standpoint, but really?  Once was weird but I could shrug it off; twice now with Mercedes dating an also-black football player?  Because they actually had to take Sam off the show?  (He was sort of boring, yeah, but sometimes he was a nerd and that was theoretically neat.)  Didn’t Mercedes express disinterest at Kurt’s offer to set her up with an also-black football player before?  And if said player loves her so much, he’d be willing to be in West Side Story and dance without bitching.
   • Why is it that all the main relationships go through the same pattern over and over?  I mean, Finn (Cory Monteith) and Rachel.  They’re secretly crushing on each other.  Then they’re dating.  Then they’re broken up.  Then they’re crushing again, and one or both of them has another love interest.  Then they’re dating again.  Then they’re broken up again.  Then they’re dating again.  I’m just counting the episodes till there’s tumult again.  Finn and Quinn, same story.  Will (Matthew Morrison) and Emma.  They’re secretly crushing on each other.  Then one or both of them has another love interest.  Then there’s a dramatic breakup.  Then they’re dating.  Then there are differences and they break up.  Then they’re interested in each other again.  I’m really hoping they stay together this time.  I mean, I kind of want to punch Will sometimes (he’s well-intentioned, but not always correct) but my punching desires are usually regarding things other than Emma.  Usually.  He seems to want to do right by Emma, and he makes her happy, I think, so that’s good enough for me.
   • If all of the Glee Project kids have as random of cameos as Lindsay did?  What, what, what even.
   • LET THE OTHER GIRLS HAVE SOLOS OCCASIONALLY.  They let Santana (Naya Rivera) and Brittany sing more, and that’s cool.  They let Mercedes sing more, which… see above.  I’m actually just talking about Tina, because… Tina.  Baby.  I love her, I always have, there are no reasons for it other than my need to latch onto the backgroundiest background characters with the best clothes and a morbid bent. I thought when they started dressing her in more colors this season that that would mean they’d let her sing more.  She’s less Goth and more Mod; I mean, I miss Goth Tina.  I do.  Especially last season neo-Victorian Goth Tina.  But Mod Tina is still cute, too.  And she does have a nice voice.  And I’m pretty sure she hasn’t sung a single line alone since the stupid Willy Wonka song in the funeral episode last season.
2. This was something my dad brought up last week.  I didn’t think of it, but during the giant Dreamgirls dream sequence, he exclaimed, “Oh my god, Mercedes is pregnant, isn’t she.”  I… had to admit that it was a valid possibility.  She’s tired, she’s cranky, she feels sick.  But really, kids: we do not need another teenage pregnancy line on this show.  They beat that one into the ground.  The only way it would be at all different would be if it was like an I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant kind of thing, and that would be really annoying too, so.  I actually suggested that she might have cancer or something instead; that would also be frustrating, but at least it would be different.  (And can I just talk about the Dreamgirls sequence for a minute?  Because that made me want to stab someone.  [This season of Glee is bringing out my theoretical violent impulses, apparently.]  At first I was like, “okay, dream sequence, wacky fun.”  But then my analysis hat kicked in: yes, Kurt should have been one of the other Dreamgirls.  Yes, Santana can sing it – though given the fact that she’d just rejoined Glee after being kicked out, she didn’t really have an emotional right.  Quinn did pretty much the same thing, and had just as little emotional right, and I thought Mercedes and Quinn were bonded for… no wait, just kidding, they completely forgot about that once season one ended and Quinn birthed her baby.  Tina could have been singing it.  She would have been a more emotionally appropriate Anika Noni Rose character, being the one who always gets neglected and backgrounded, but psh, we can’t let Tina have solos.  That would be crazy.  And why on Earth did they keep calling Mercedes Effie, but everyone else got referred to by their real life names?  And… okay, done.)
3. This is straightforward.  Mike, Tina, Emma, and Brittany are the only characters I care about at all anymore.  “Asian F” was a frustrating episode for many reasons, but it was all worth it for Mike dancing.  (And Riff is a part that you can kind of talk-sing, so good choice, them.)  Tina, see above. Emma… is just too precious.  I don’t think they always have the right thing to do with her, but I think she’s darling.  And I just want to hug her always.  Brittany’s one-liners aren’t old yet.  They’re just so random and ridiculous; they’re not mean-spirited or bitchy or repetitive.  They’re just things that come out of her mouth that make no sense and yet make absolutely perfect sense.  And despite being pretty bookstupid, she’s very peoplesmart, and I honestly think she’s got a better head on her shoulders about people things than just about any of the other characters do.
4. Marti Noxon was reported to be joining the writing and producing staff of Glee this season, and after this interview with her especially, I was giddy.  I mean… one of my Whedon mafia writer women who completely looks at it logically?  But she doesn’t even have a page on the Glee wiki yet.  She has not helped yet.
5. Observe.
   retcon:
   1. (original meaning) Adding information to the back story of a fictional character or world, without invalidating that which had gone before.
   2. (more common usage) Adding or altering information regarding the back story of a fictional character or world, regardless of whether the change contradicts what was said before.  (urbandictionary.com)
   Retconning is something I generally frown at.  The example they give of Dawn on Buffy is actually a great one, and actually one that I’ve found myself adjusting to.  I mean, I still hate early Dawn.  But she became slightly less punchable by the end.  And she made for good plot things.  But on Glee it’s silly.  They keep trying to add to everyone’s lives and backstories and personalities and it’s like just leave it alone, people.  Season one was warm fuzzies because it was more genuine.  It wasn’t trying to please millions of teenagers.  (I read someone in Entertainment Weekly saying that it felt like last season’s Glee had been written on Twitter or something.  TRUE FACTS, kids.)  And it needs to go back to that.  The retconning needs to stop.

Sigh.  Sigh.  Sigh.  (And if Mercedes really is pregnant, which I want to doubt but cannot fully, I may actually have to stop watching altogether.)

–your fangirl heroine.

Theatre Thursday :: that cast of Company that was filmed recently was pretty rad.

You know the one.  Or maybe you don’t, because you’re very likely not as nutty as me, but it was the one with Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby and Christina Hendricks as April and Patti LuPone as Joanne and Stephen Colbert as Harry and Martha Plimpton as Sarah and Anika Noni Rose as Marta and Jon Cryer as David and Aaron Lazar as Paul and Jill Paice as Susan and Jennifer Laura Thompson as Jenny and Katie Finneran as Amy and Chryssie Whitehead as Kathy and Jim Walton as Larry?

Okay.  I fully admit to hearing Neil Patrick Harris and Christina Hendricks and vowing to do whatever I had to to see the broadcast performance in theaters during its brief run last weekend, because his facial expressions make life and she is my favorite human being on the planet.  Then during the Tonys, there was that preview number, and I said “oh hey!  All sorts of other epic people!”  I especially geeked for Aaron Lazar, once of The Light in the Piazza, because I adore his heavenly voice to pieces.

Company isn’t my favorite musical, necessarily.  It’s very of its time, and that’s… not always a good thing.  It can also get a teensy bit heavy-handed in the wrong hands, a bit too angst-ridden and frustrating.  (Not that the angst isn’t great.  Raul Esparza’s should-have-been-Tony-winning Bobby in the 2007 revival was glorious.)  And I definitely have to be in a certain headspace for Sondheim.

But I was very not disappointed.  Neil Patrick Harris’ Bobby was less >:O and more :3 and that was refreshing.  Not better or worse, just different.  Chryssie Whitehead can dance, damn girl.  I mean, this is not surprising, as she is late of A Chorus Line (we missed her just barely when we saw the revival) but it was still well-highlighted.  Considering she was the girlfriend that got the Dance Break!  Anika Noni Rose, of Dreamgirls and The Princess and the Frog and other legit-er things, was good.  I didn’t get much a sense of character out of her (she was the ~wacky~ one?) but she belted well.

Of the married women, my favorite was Katie Finneran’s Amy.  She’s a two time Tony winner (for Noises Off and last year’s Promises Promises revival) but my favorite role of hers is as Nanny Maureen in You’ve Got Mail, just one of the reasons that I’m pretty sure after 2000 there were no lovable romantic comedies made.  “Getting Married Today” is probably one of the hardest theatre songs to really sing, and she did it really, really well.  (Counterpointed by Aaron Lazar’s glorious “todaaaay is for AAAAAAAAAMYYYYYYY”-ing.)

Patti LuPone was amusing.  I sort of loathe the character of Joanne, and as always spent the entirety of “The Ladies Who Lunch” alternately remembering back in that not-that-great movie Camp when a young Anna Kendrick sang that song and wondering how in the hell Bobby and Joanne became close friends.  But Patti did a good job.  (Though we were in a movie theater, some people still felt compelled to applaud for La LuPone, which was funny.)

Stephen Colbert can actually sort of pull it off.  Despite having a vaguely google-eyed look on his face the entire time.

But most importantly, my girl Christina.  Well, babygirl isn’t necessarily the strongest singer, though she was cute and clearly doing a “voice” (a cutesy voice really) and could hold her own, but she was dancing sharp and being adorable.  April is probably my favorite character of the women anyway, just because she has a lot of funny moments.  I love my girl Christina playing ditzy, I love her playing sexy, I love her playing serious-ish, I just love her.  And was gratified by having yet one more reason to love her added to my list.  (I’d been hoping this staging would be the one a la 2007 where the actors played instruments, if just because I love her accordion skills.  Even if accordions are the most useless instrument ever, outside of European House Hunters.)

In short: I’m satisfied.  It wasn’t the Best Ever, but it was very good.

–your fangirl heroine.