Tag: Kevin McHale
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The show about nothing — The problem with Glee’s second season
A few of the series I regularly cover here at TVS are on hiatus this week. In lieu of writing reviews of new episodes, I thought this would be a good time to take stock of where we’ve been this season and where we’re headed in the final string of episodes. In these posts I’ll…
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Glee, “Sexy”
At this point, I have resigned myself to the fact that Glee is only going to produce episodes like “Duets” on rare occasions and the rest of the time, the series is going to be horribly messy, swinging from one extreme to another. As a viewer and “critic,” watching Glee has become something of an…
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Glee, “Blame It on the Alcohol”
I’ve already gone back and forth on “Blame It on the Alcohol” a few times since it finished airing here almost four hours ago. While I was watching it, I kind of liked it. Then afterwards, I kind of hated it. Then I went back and forth a few more times before just decided to…
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Glee, “Comeback”
I entered my viewing of “Comeback” with loads of dread. Sue has been disastrously insufferable this year and the idea of her joining New Directions just a week after the near-greatness that was “Silly Love Songs” just made me sad. Watching this episode through that lens, I found “Comeback” to be surprising in its general…
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Glee, “Silly Love Songs”
I, like most people, was not too kind to the post-Super Bowl episode of Glee. “The Sue Sylvester Shuffle” was a disastrous attempt to introduce the series’ primary narratives and beats to a new audience. In classic Glee form, the series turns right around two days later and knocks out its second best episode of the season…
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Glee, “The Sue Sylvester Shuffle”
Although so much of the discourse has focused on how Glee and the Super Bowl seem like such an insane and difficult pairing, I tend to believe the opposite is actually true. The Super Bowl is most certainly the greatest spectacle in America. It’s all about the grandiose, the loud, the bright, etc. For better or…
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Glee, “Special Education”
Glee‘s competition episodes should be a big event. Of all the things the series does really well, it’s big, celebratory moments. Those moments don’t require any subtlety and instead the series can just revel in grand gestures, lots of smiles and soaring hooks. The wedding sequences last week we just wonderful, despite the angelic rendering of…
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Glee, “Furt”
Marrying the conclusion of Glee‘s “bullying trilogy” with an extremely fun celebration of a wedding is one of the weirder mash-ups the series has done over its run, but despite a number of issues — doesn’t every episode of Glee have a number of issues? — “Furt” pulls things together in such a way that…
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Glee, “The Substitute”
The last two episodes of Glee have been generally awful. I mean just dreadful, two of the worst in the series’ run. Perhaps it’s because of that — though not only because of that, as I’ll argue — that I found “The Substitute” to be an insanely fun episode of the series, despite it’s very,…
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Glee, “Never Been Kissed”
On the surface, one could make an argument that Glee has always been interested in the bullying that happens in high schools — or at least its fictional Ohio high school — and so with the horrible outbreak of bullying-related suicides, particularly by homosexuals, the series seemed like the prime candidate to spread a “message”…
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Glee, “The Rocky Horror Glee Show”
I’ll be the first to admit that I have not seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the cult phenomenon that supposedly inspired last night’s Glee. And I’d like to say that unfamiliarity helped me enjoy “The Rocky Horror Glee Show” instead of experiencing it as a fan of the film and being wholly disappointed. However,…
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Glee, “Grilled Cheesus”
With a sensitive subject that deserves subtly, “Grilled Cheesus” could have been much, much worse. Glee and religion seems like such an awful pairing considering the series’ desire to tell stories without an ounce of subtly or nuance, but this episode is surprisingly solid, with a clear direction and message without getting too bogged down…
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Glee, “Britney/Brittany”
It’s easy to going into Glee‘s second episode dedicated fully to a specific pop artist with a critical eye. Focusing on another pop star in Britney Spears doesn’t exactly ring true with Ryan Murphy’s claim for a more personal Glee that focuses on the characters. And once the word came down that most of the…
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Season Premiere — Glee, “Audition”
Like many critics and faux-critics, I had a number of issues with the back-nine of Glee‘s first season. And the events of the summer — additional cast members, more theme episodes and Ryan Murphy’s hyperbole about dialing it back — there wasn’t a lot to suggest things were going to improve. If there is any…
CB, PhD 