Category: Glee
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Fall check-in: Fox
Hey all. It’s been too long. I’ve been really busy this fall and writing elsewhere (hopefully you’re following me over at This Was Television and TV.com). But frequent contributor Wesley Ambrecht decided to exchange some emails about the state of the broadcast networks with sweeps upon us. Up first is Fox. Wesley: Believe it or…
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Review: Glee, “On My Way”
Watching and writing about television is a pretty painless experience in the grand scheme of things. But disregarding the world’s real problems for a moment, watching and writing about Glee can be fairly traumatic, you guys. Every time I think the series has lost its way for good, it pulls me back in with a…
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Review: Glee, “Heart”
By now, you know that my schedule/workload/life changes keep me from writing as much as I would like here at TV Surveillance. Of all series I miss writing about, Glee someone still tops the list (well, since Community is still trapped out there in the ether). I don’t even understand how that’s really true, but…
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Showrunner Series: Ryan Murphy = Matthew Weiner (Except, you know, awful)
I received the book Prime Time, Prime Movers for Christmas and have been plowing through it over the last week or so. As these things go, reading a book about the big individual creative forces in television history has me thinking about contemporary writer/producers. Therefore, today, I debut a new occasional feature where I will discuss…
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Review: Glee, “I Kissed A Girl”
Despite all its issues, Glee has had a lot of success with exploring the challenges of being gay. I have some issues with how and why Kurt jumped to Dalton last year, but the only good part of season two was his season-long journey to coming out and self-acceptance. The series took Kurt’s challenges and…
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Review: Glee, “Mash Off”
Glee has never been a consistent series. Even in the now-halcyon days of the first 13 episodes, the series stumbled on a fairly consistent basis, it just happened to get the raw, emotionally wrenching moments right more often. One of the biggest problems with season two was its wild inconsistency, not across episodes, but within…
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Review: Glee, “The First Time”
When I read sometime last month that Glee would be doing an episode centered on Rachel and Kurt losing their respective virginities, I shuddered. A few times. Even though this season of Glee has been relatively solid (let’s just pretend last week’s episode never, ever happened OK?), I am always worried when the series decides…
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Review: Glee, “Asian F”
In my review of the Glee season three premiere a few weeks ago, I spent some time talking about how formulaic the series’ has tended to be. For some reason, instead of trying new things with the characters, the production staff loves to have them repeat similar or near-exact stories that worked (and worked better)…
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Review: Glee, “I Am Unicorn”
If Will Schuester runs for public office against Sue Sylvester I will burn down Fox Television Studios, never watch television again and quit Twitter. Glee has had some terrible ideas in its first two-plus years on the air, but the political campaign portion of season three is already at the top of the list. Having…
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Season Premiere review — Glee, “The Purple Piano Project”
Glee is a formulaic series. For all its insanity, uneven character work and ridiculous logic, we pretty much know exactly what to expect from the series on a weekly basis. Ryan Murphy and company have pin-pointed a few things that they think the audience enjoys and they just keep hammering away with them. This isn’t…