If I had started this blog a couple of years earlier, I probably would have fallen into the habit of writing regular weekly pieces about Glee. Not because I love the show the way I loved Lost, and not because it invites the same sort of feverish conversation and rumination that Lost did, but because nary an episode went by that didn’t leave me with things to say, whether positive, negative or both. Tonally, it must be the most schizophrenic show on television. It ping-pongs between absurdist comedy and sensitive, keenly-observed realism so wildly that the genre it should really be assigned to is not Comedy or Drama, but Fantasy. As a result, the show is majorly uneven, but always interesting.
Still, when the February 21st episode ended with religious, celibate head cheerleader-turned-pregnant teen-turned-scheming underminer of adoptive mother-turned reformed religious good girl Quinn Fabray texting while driving and getting plowed into by a pick-up truck, it felt unusually heavy, and even cruel.
It was a cliffhanger ending. Car crash. Cut to black. Two month hiatus.
The show returned this week, and while all the commercials and publicity focused on the guest appearance by Matt Bomer as Blaine’s brother, it’s fair to assume that fans were first and foremost waiting to learn Quinn’s fate. It didn’t take long. In the opening scene, Quinn is shown coming down a hallway at school in a wheelchair, but looking otherwise as lovely as ever, all smiles and gratitude, accepting that her fate could have been much worse. “I could have easily become one of those creepy memorial pages in the yearbook, but by the grace of God I’m here,” she says to Rachel and Finn. “Believe it or not, this is the happiest day of my life.” Then she and Artie, the glee club’s resident paraplegic, proceed to duet on Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.” After the song, Quinn tells her classmates that she suffered a severely compressed spine, which has left her feet and legs immobile (but her “plumbing” intact). She says she’s already regaining some feeling, and that with a lot of physical therapy and prayers, she should be able to walk again.
Now I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, but is it just me or was this a cop-out of staggering proportions? Given the severity of the car crash depicted in the previous episode, I figured Quinn was a goner. Seriously, she got NAILED by that truck. Check out the clip and tell me if I’m wrong. (The image has been reversed, so the texting is backwards, but what matters is the accident.)
Did you see that??? That was not a fender-bender. The girl got fucking NAILED! I didn’t think any outcome other than Quinn’s death would be believable, but figured if the producers didn’t want to go to that extreme, they’d still have to show her in severely rough shape. She would be in a coma, or at least face prolonged hospitalization that would possibly delay her graduation and attendance at Yale.
Nope.
It’s clear from other events in the new episode that barely any time has passed since the accident. It was not set months or even weeks later. It seemed to be taking place mere days later. And this is what Quinn looks like in the episode:
Other than being in a wheelchair – which is no minor thing, I grant you – she looks completely fine. There’s not a bruise, scratch or cut on her. Are you kidding me? Did you not see that fucking car crash??? NAILED!! This is closer to what she should have looked like:
Glee has always tackled issues facing teens, and though it gets a bit preachy sometimes, it has explored subjects that most shows never attempt to address so honestly and directly. When Quinn got into that accident, I thought the show was going to unnecessary extremes. Yes, texting while driving is a legitimate issue, but does Glee have to address every hazard out there? But okay, they went there. Now they were committed. Yet the follow-up episode just felt utterly unrealistic to me. Glee‘s comedy is often zany, and the musical numbers are impossibly elaborate for a public high school in Lima, Ohio, where the show takes place. (Hell, they’d be impossibly elaborate for some Off Broadway theaters, but we go with it.) In its more straightforward, dramatic story arcs, however, Glee has always stayed realistic. Not this time. Aside from the fact that Quinn is blemish-free, her positive attitude is also unconvincing. The episode does go on to suggest that she hasn’t fully accepted her fate yet and that perhaps her paralysis will be more permanent than she’s letting on, but even if she really does believe she’ll be walking again soon, her cheerfulness and complete lack of bitterness or sorrow strikes me as disingenuous. The writers created this situation, but the episode played like they hadn’t considered where to take the story at all and were treating it as an afterthought. If you’re going to put your character in a situation like this, you’ve gotta have the courage of your convictions. If the writers didn’t want to go all the way and kill Quinn off, they should at least have depicted the aftermath of the accident with some realism. Maybe they didn’t think they could swing back around to the wacky comedy after such a dark stroke of storytelling, but if that were the case, they shouldn’t have written the storyline in the first place. I would have been sad to see Quinn meet such a tragic end, but at least it would have been narratively bold – and more importantly, a fitting resolution to the plot twist they introduced.
Obviously Quinn’s storyline isn’t played out yet. There are six or seven more episodes this season, and we’ll see what unfolds for her. But whatever happens will be built on a premise that stretches credibility even by Glee‘s loose standards. So the morals of the story are:
- Don’t text and drive
- Don’t write dramatic plot turns into your TV shows without being prepared to follow through on them in believable ways
Oh, and one other note on this episode, unrelated to everything above. It was revealed in advance that Blaine and his brother, with whom he has a strained relationship, would perform my recent earworm, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” I wasn’t sure how they would make that work, since it’s very much a breakup song. Answer: they didn’t make it work. Cause it’s a breakup song. (Big week for Gotye, though. He’s the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.)
I started watching the show in a vacuum, but slowly began to discover that other friends were caught up as well. Some were longtime readers of Martin’s books, others were initiated by the series as I was, and then ran for the books and began plowing through them. I’m attempting a more disciplined approach. Having been so wrapped up in the show and stunned by some of its plot developments, I decided not to read ahead, but rather to continue letting the show be my first exposure to the developing story. But I wanted to dive deeper into Martin’s world, so I started reading the first book last month, figuring it would be a good way to quench my thirst when the marketing campaign for season two was forging ahead and my excitement would be hitting fever pitch. I’m about 150 pages from the end, and have found the books to be a great way of helping me gain a better foothold of the dense world Martin created. While there are of course differences between the book and the show, I’ve been surprised and impressed at how closely the series has held to the written word. Season one of the show covers the first book, also called Game of Thrones (or to be precise, A Game of Thrones – 807 pages). From what I understand, season two will follow suit, covering the second book, A Clash of Kings (969 pages). I will try to stick with my process as well, waiting until early 2013 to read that book. The show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have suggested that the third book, A Storm of Swords (1,128 pages), might prove too much to handle in a single season of ten episodes, requiring them to adapt it over the course of two seasons. My reading the books at such a measured pace is already testing my fortitude. I don’t know how I’ll handle having to divide reading A Storm of Swords over a two year span…or just waiting two years until the full adaptation has aired to even begin the book. And then there will still be more to go. What’s a devoted fan to do?
For the uninitiated, I should probably give a brief description, though this is not a series that lends itself to succinct summarization. It’s fantasy, but realistic, gritty fantasy. Magic exists, but on the periphery, at least in the first season and book. It starts to show itself more toward the end, and given the final image of season one, I imagine we’ll be seeing more of it moving forward. The setting is a land known as Westeros, comprised of Seven Kingdoms but united under one ruler. As the series begins, that ruler is Robert Baratheon, who led a rebellion against the previous king, Aerys Targaryen. There is a rich backstory that gets parsed out as the series progresses, but to keep things simple: Robert’s second-in-command dies mysteriously, and so the king seeks out his old friend and dear comrade Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark….yeah, okay, this isn’t gonna work. Way too much explanation required to set the scene adequately. But don’t be intimidated by that. It’s fun to keep all the pieces straight, and there are plenty of resources online – some on HBO.com – to help you familiarize yourself with the many characters and the history of Westeros. Just trust me when I say, the show kicks ass. Kings, knights, lords, warrior princesses, bastards, wolves, zombies (sort of), lust, incest, power plays, betrayal, secrets, lies, battles, assassination attempts, honor, brotherhood. The plotting is richly detailed and imaginative, full of intrigue and excitement. And there’s a fantastic ensemble of actors embodying characters you love to love and others that you love to hate. Sean Bean as Ned Stark, honorable to a fault. Iain Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont, a disgraced knight living in exile and protecting the daughter of the murdered Targaryen king. Jack Gleeson as Prince Joffrey Baratheon, heir to the Iron Throne, and an unimaginable little asshole. Charles Dance as Tywin Lannister, the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms. Kit Harrington as Jon Snow, Ned’s bastard son seeking a life of honor as a brother of the Night’s Watch, which protects the realm from their base along a massive, towering wall of ice. Conleth Hill as Lord Varys, a member of the king’s council who has spies everywhere and trades in secrets. And so many more, though probably none as enjoyable to watch as Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister, Tywin’s dwarf son, brother of the queen, ever reliant on his intelligence and good humor to keep him alive in a tall man’s world. Dinklage has already won an Emmy and Golden Globe for the role. You don’t need more than the first two episodes to see why.
I Am DB 