Glee 3.15 'Big Brother' - An Episode Review and How It Got To This Point

This is an entry in which I try to not be biased about Darren Criss and his character Blaine. I wanted to address a couple things before I actually got into Tuesday night’s episode, so bear with me okay?

Glee returned yesterday and is back for 7 more episodes until the season finale. I have been waiting for this for a while, not out of excitement, but rather well... I honestly don't really know. This season of Glee has been extremely inconsistent and bad, I mean last season wasn't great but compared to this season it was downright wonderful. I think the two big things that are making glee so awful are that 1) they are taking themselves too seriously and 2) Darren Criss.

Originally Glee was just a fun, campy high school comedy (with hints of drama) filled with a bunch of bright misfits where they knew that they were campy and didn't try to be something else. Now it seems like every episode is just an after school special PSA, where the writers keep trying to shove things down our throats. It lost that spark that it once had, which can be blamed on the fact that it was an instant hit. The show got really popular and was guaranteed up until Season 3, which means Ryan Murphy and Co could do what they wanted without worrying whether or not it actually worked because they were guaranteed 2 more years.

Now, I'm not saying that all of Glee's messages have been bad; in fact, Season 2's episode 'Blame It on the Alcohol' was freaking hilarious and very well done, top 5 for the season. What made it great though was that it didn't take itself seriously, it was an episode of Glee that pretended to be an after school special, where as pretty much all of the others have been an after school special pretending to be Glee. What they are missing is the heart of the show; they are no longer making it Glee first but rather are making it whatever agenda they want to shove down our throats and then placing Glee characters on it. At this point it seems like Ryan Murphy got the idea of the American Horror Story season changes from Glee, it is that inconsistent with the writing. I would have described Glee in Season 1 as not really a dark comedy, but a deep shade of gray comedy. It had a twisted sense of humor that really shined through with the actors, and kept the show feeling fresh, as that genre isn’t normally seen on prime time television. It had hope and optimism, but was layered with bits and pieces of cynicism and doubt, it was really the perfect combination. Now we just get blatant cultural advertising and a healthy dose of ‘Who does Ryan Murphy hate this year?’.

The other reason is Darren Criss, now this isn't an assault at him as a person or an actor because I don't know him personally and can't say anything about that, but rather what he symbolized to the show runners; and that is money. Darren was an instant hit with most fans and he drummed up a lot of ratings and sales of singles. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a show, after all it means that it is doing well and can live longer. The problem that comes from it is that they rely on this to get ratings and sales which causes everything else that you used to love to fall by the wayside. "Oh, are you a character that has been around since the Pilot and still haven't gotten your own full storyline yet? Well we have this new guy who we know we can make money off of, and we don't know if you will make as much so instead of testing out how you would do, we're just going to give him everything." It's just ridiculous that the shape runners would put everything on this one person who hasn't even been around for that long because he brought a fan base with him. However, this season has not shown the kind of power that Darren had in season 2, yesterday's episode was all about his character Blaine and the ratings were the lowest of the season. This is strange because when we left Glee before the hiatus we were left with a couple cliffhangers which should have insured a higher amount of viewers, but no; they even had a celebrity guest star (White Collar's Matt Bomer) and that didn't help the ratings. So what could it have been? This isn't Glee's first post hiatus episode; they have done it before and know how to do it, so why are the ratings down? My theory is that they are still relying on Darren Criss too much, they have always had him on the border of having his own episode but never actually one dedicated solely to him, and people preferred it that way, they liked seeing him but not that much, he makes a good supporting character. It just goes to show that too much of something isn't always a good thing. If they kept him recurring and used him sparingly, they would have profited more off of him rather than promote him over others that deserved it and shoving him down our throats.

I only single out Darren Criss/Blaine because we have gotten new characters, but not one of them has been treated like him. If it was a bunch of new people doing this that would be a different story, but it is just him. Look at Sam, even when he got an episode that sort of centered around him, it also involved all of the other characters, this could also be due to the fact that Blaine only really speaks with Kurt and isn’t really a part of the group. There is obvious favoritism going on behind the scenes and it is affecting the story which isn’t fair to the people who have been watching since the beginning. They are using his character however they want to fit a story in order to try and give him more songs so that they can make more money off of his singles and it is just ridiculous. It’s ridiculous because it is so transparent and crude, and honestly if they hope to bring ratings back up they need to fix this.

It's just such a shame when characters like Tina, Mercedes, and Puck are all getting some basement D plots when they have been here since the beginning and other characters who have just shown up are getting more screen time and plot than them. Those three are all fan favorites but they still get sidelined harder than Bonnie Bennett of The Vampire Diaries. And then there is Sam who was in all but two episodes of Season 2 and he is still not a regular but a glorified extra who gets a story only when he is randomly going after a girl he dated for a month and calling it true love. It's just poor execution of a large cast. They need to watch LOST or Grey's Anatomy and see how a real show deals with a large cast. Characters may not be at the forefront in every episode but each character still gets their time to shine.

So I guess I should stop this and actually get into Tuesday’s episode…

The highlight of Tuesday night’s episode was really the Sue storyline, it felt like they might be taking Sue in a direction they should have done from the start of the season rather than at the end of it. Now I may eat my words later when the likely chance of them going back on her character development happens, but until it does I'm going to say that I am happy with it. Sue is basically getting ousted from the Cheerios and the only way she can regain her spot is if she helps the Glee club in order to bring in money for the school, so she takes over Booty Camp and starts to sort of terrorize the kids. On top of this she goes to the doctors to find out the sex of her child (it’s a girl), when the Doctor tells her that he baby will have down’s syndrome. I honestly haven't really cared for Sue since the Season 1 finale because she has always been a one track character trying to take down Glee club, but they try to give her more depth in a random episode here or there, which doesn't really work when she resets at the beginning of every episode.

The Blaine and Cooper storyline just felt lackluster and sad (not in a good way), I mean the flashbacks were so childish (no pun intended) with how Blaine was explaining why he is upset at Coop. He was upset STILL that when he was like 5 his brother took his toys, and as the oldest brother in a family of 4 other brothers I can say with certainty and experience that this does not cause any sort of turmoil, kids get over that, it's not that big of a deal. Now if they were to have just stuck with what I thought was originally going to be the reason why the rivalry was there (Coop always upstaging Blaine) it would have made a better story. They could have made it that Coop was an over dramatic version of a Big Brother and Blaine was the Jan in the family always getting outshined, but instead made Blaine seem more pathetic by making him upset by crap that happened 12 years ago that didn't mean a damn thing. If anything I honestly came away from this episode thinking Blaine is an even bigger privileged white male with basic ass problems that no one cares about.

The other big storyline of the night was where Quinn is at after her accident. She survived of course and is now wheelchair bound; she doesn't want anyone to waste time feeling sorry for her because she believes that this is all just temporary. I thought they handled it well for the most part but at the same time it seems like they have taken Quinn about 4 steps back. Quinn has been through a lot in 2 seasons and was put on a very odd track this season which she had finally come out of with a smarter perspective in life and a lot less jaded, but them with this episode she is back to that jaded little girl in High School who believes that nothing in High School is permanent and that she will get out of this unscathed, that she can literally walk away from what happened and be okay. Now I say that they handled the story well because of Artie being the voice of reason and being able to see past her smile, he wants to prepare her for the chance that he might not be able to walk again. I have never really seen Artie and Quinn as a couple, and even with the pics leaking of her in a wheelchair with him I still couldn't see it, but after this episode I kind of can, maybe not as TRUE WUV, but I really like that Artie calls her out on her BS and is actually just trying to help her out, maybe not a relationship but I will be really pissed if they just abandon this friendship if/when she ever gets out of the wheelchair. To be honest though, I'm kind of expecting that to happen since the writers seemingly forgot that Quinn moved in with Mercedes in Season 1 and thy Mercedes was in the delivery room with her at Quinn's request, they had a good friendship going and that all pretty much disappeared in Season 2.

Then there was Senior Ditch Day which seems like it was just thrown in there as an afterthought. Basically the Glee kids were trying to figure out what to do with Senior Ditch Day but Rachel was having sad feelings that Quinn was in a wheelchair and no one else should be happy because of this, but Quinn says she could care less and then they all decide to go to Six Flags except Artie (who isn’t a Senior) who takes Quinn to a handicap skate park. This all happens in roughly 5 minutes, where 4 of those are devoted to Quinn and Artie at the skate park. The SDD thing could have been a story in itself and would have been more Glee-esque than the Big Brother or Quinn says not to text and drive 12 times storyline. They could have made that the A plot, Quinn the B plot and the Sue and Big Brother storyline the C plots. Really the only two plot lines switching are the Big Brother and Senior Ditch Day ones, but centering it all around SDD would have made it feel more like an old school Glee episode instead of centering it around a character that only interacts with like two others. This is just another example as to how Glee has lost what it was, instead of focusing on all of these kids, we're getting an episode about a character who is honestly just a glorified guest star. Or hell, keep the Big Brother storyline as the A plot and make Senior Ditch Day a different episode all together, that way I could have just skipped this one about Blaine crying that his toys were stolen when he was like 5 years old.

All around, the episode really deserved less ratings than it got, all of the musical number expect maybe one of the Quinn songs were just laughable (Blaine’s ‘Fighter’ montage was probably the worst this from the season), the story was drawn out and focused on the wrong things, and Jesus Christ if they mentioned texting and driving one more time I was going to have to mute my television. The plus side of it all was the hope for a storyline that could make Sue likeable again, and Matt Bomer being hilarious as hell. I really don’t know why I keep watching this show, I think it’s because I loved the show for so long that the naïve part of me is just hoping so hard that it will somehow find its way back to its roots, but at this point I don’t know. I just don’t want to stop and then it get good again while I am away… so I just suffer, one this is for certain though, if something doesn’t change for the better, I will not be watching Season 4. Being away from it all summer should be enough to break me out of watching it. Fingers Crossed.