Glee Rant - NYADA and Fashion 2
Glee Rant - NYADA and Fashion 2
By: anasispidergod
Fandom: Glee Meta
Warnings: Spoilers up to 4x17, implied Homophobia, implied Straight Privilege, Misuse of Stereotypes in Media Representations, Language because apparently I swear a bit when I’m ranting
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee
Ok, so update. What. The. F*ck. Ok this is almost more funny than anything else, because it seems like the creators of Glee have absolutely no idea what they’re doing with Kurt’s character. Or well no, it might be more accurate to say that I’m pretty sure they completely re-wrote their plan for Kurt a couple of episodes into the season.
Ok, let’s break this down. In my last Glee Rant I discussed how Kurt didn’t get into NYADA at the end of season 3; how this felt sad and weird to me, and how the creators and writers of Glee started pushing Kurt-as-Fashion-Designer with all subtlety of a herd of stampeding buffalo. With about the same amount of grace and very little warning. This holds for several episodes of season 4. The timeline is as follows: Kurt moves to New York at the end of episode 1 and plans to apply to vogue.com in episode 2. He gets the internship in episode 3. In episode 4, Kurt identifies himself as a vogue.com intern and refuses to sing in public at a NYADA bar on the grounds that he hasn’t warmed up. He links this potential embarrassment to his identity as vogue.com intern, symbolically putting his identity as intern at odds with his identity as a singer. In episode 8, Kurt and Rachel have Kurt’s boss and a slue of fashion/model elite over for Thanksgiving and Kurt prints his NYADA application on vogue.com paper. And that, other than a passing mention by Tina in 4x14, is the last time vogue.com is mentioned. He has not spoken of it since. He has not been seen there since.
Instead, he puts his application in during episode 8, and by the end of episode 9, has stalked Madame Tibideaux (hey, it worked for Rachel), auditioned, and been accepted. So basically, what was an entire season’s worth of plot last season takes up one episode this season. That’s just ridiculous. Break for an interlude Christmas, and suddenly it’s what I imagined this season might be like for Kurt when they were applying for universities last season: all NYADA, artsy, acknowledged, expanding-his-social-circle-and-emotional-breadth Kurt.
And I’m just wondering, “what was the point?”
The creators offered a few hints, saying that Kurt was “almost glad [he] didn’t make it his first time,” (Kurt, 4x02) and that he felt like he had “a, a newfound resilience and focus” (Kurt, 4x02). So maybe this delay was meant to teach Kurt to work harder for his goals, or that you have to be able to handle a little bit of rejection... But wait. Isn’t that what Kurt experiences all the time? How much more resilience does he need? Also, keep pushing and you’ll push past “resilience” and into “broken”. And “broken” is not a lesson. But that’s not all! the creators cry, because we also find out why he wasn’t accepted in the first place. Apparently, he is “devoid of complexity and depth” (Tibideaux, 4x09).
Wait.
What?!
Kurt. Kurt has trouble with the emotional singing? Really? Really?
Now, I know that Glee is known for its inconsistencies, but that’s just ridiculous. When you take a character that is so emotive, who acts his songs and really gets at the heart of you, and say he’s not being emotional enough? Especially when one of his lessons in season 2 was to tone down the emotional devastation a little and be more professional, and then he promptly went on to ignore it and won the heart of a boy as he sang his grief to a dead bird? I mean really.
It just seems like a half-assed excuse to me.
And then to never mention vogue.com again? (Except for a brief mention by Tina who said that he’s at vogue.com, now he’s at NYADA.) It's been 9 episodes since its last real mention!
No, ok, seriously. Did they just completely change their minds about Kurt and his storyline? Were they planning to have Kurt-as-Fashion-designer and then got enough of a negative response that they decided to do an overhaul and threw in some bad excuse to explain why it hadn’t happened that way in the first place? Was Kurt’s future a “choose your own adventure”, where the creators set him up for two possible careers and then waited to see which the fans would lobby for? Am I the only one who thinks this?
Especially since Kurt hasn’t really learnt anything or changed his behaviour in any way. (Partly, you know, because there wasn’t actually any thing to learn.)
Well either way it’s just bad story telling.
Honestly, I would have found it much more interesting had Kurt and Rachel’s story lines been switched. And not even for Kurt’s sake. Rachel actually does need to gain some resilience see, and she actually does need to learn to accept some rejection. It would have been very interesting to see Rachel have to work for something that she does not half-way expect. Wouldn’t it have been interesting to have Rachel grapple the fear that she may fail, that failure was a very real possibility? The character growth could have been amazing. Watching the strength that Rachel gained from that could have been awe inspiring. Instead we got a rehashing of the same old storyline: Rachel gets in and has interpersonal and relationship problems, and Kurt does not get in, feels bad, tries again, and gets in anyways. Yay. Very boring.
By: anasispidergod
Fandom: Glee Meta
Warnings: Spoilers up to 4x17, implied Homophobia, implied Straight Privilege, Misuse of Stereotypes in Media Representations, Language because apparently I swear a bit when I’m ranting
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee
Ok, so update. What. The. F*ck. Ok this is almost more funny than anything else, because it seems like the creators of Glee have absolutely no idea what they’re doing with Kurt’s character. Or well no, it might be more accurate to say that I’m pretty sure they completely re-wrote their plan for Kurt a couple of episodes into the season.
Ok, let’s break this down. In my last Glee Rant I discussed how Kurt didn’t get into NYADA at the end of season 3; how this felt sad and weird to me, and how the creators and writers of Glee started pushing Kurt-as-Fashion-Designer with all subtlety of a herd of stampeding buffalo. With about the same amount of grace and very little warning. This holds for several episodes of season 4. The timeline is as follows: Kurt moves to New York at the end of episode 1 and plans to apply to vogue.com in episode 2. He gets the internship in episode 3. In episode 4, Kurt identifies himself as a vogue.com intern and refuses to sing in public at a NYADA bar on the grounds that he hasn’t warmed up. He links this potential embarrassment to his identity as vogue.com intern, symbolically putting his identity as intern at odds with his identity as a singer. In episode 8, Kurt and Rachel have Kurt’s boss and a slue of fashion/model elite over for Thanksgiving and Kurt prints his NYADA application on vogue.com paper. And that, other than a passing mention by Tina in 4x14, is the last time vogue.com is mentioned. He has not spoken of it since. He has not been seen there since.
Instead, he puts his application in during episode 8, and by the end of episode 9, has stalked Madame Tibideaux (hey, it worked for Rachel), auditioned, and been accepted. So basically, what was an entire season’s worth of plot last season takes up one episode this season. That’s just ridiculous. Break for an interlude Christmas, and suddenly it’s what I imagined this season might be like for Kurt when they were applying for universities last season: all NYADA, artsy, acknowledged, expanding-his-social-circle-and-emotional-breadth Kurt.
And I’m just wondering, “what was the point?”
The creators offered a few hints, saying that Kurt was “almost glad [he] didn’t make it his first time,” (Kurt, 4x02) and that he felt like he had “a, a newfound resilience and focus” (Kurt, 4x02). So maybe this delay was meant to teach Kurt to work harder for his goals, or that you have to be able to handle a little bit of rejection... But wait. Isn’t that what Kurt experiences all the time? How much more resilience does he need? Also, keep pushing and you’ll push past “resilience” and into “broken”. And “broken” is not a lesson. But that’s not all! the creators cry, because we also find out why he wasn’t accepted in the first place. Apparently, he is “devoid of complexity and depth” (Tibideaux, 4x09).
Wait.
What?!
Kurt. Kurt has trouble with the emotional singing? Really? Really?
Now, I know that Glee is known for its inconsistencies, but that’s just ridiculous. When you take a character that is so emotive, who acts his songs and really gets at the heart of you, and say he’s not being emotional enough? Especially when one of his lessons in season 2 was to tone down the emotional devastation a little and be more professional, and then he promptly went on to ignore it and won the heart of a boy as he sang his grief to a dead bird? I mean really.
It just seems like a half-assed excuse to me.
And then to never mention vogue.com again? (Except for a brief mention by Tina who said that he’s at vogue.com, now he’s at NYADA.) It's been 9 episodes since its last real mention!
No, ok, seriously. Did they just completely change their minds about Kurt and his storyline? Were they planning to have Kurt-as-Fashion-designer and then got enough of a negative response that they decided to do an overhaul and threw in some bad excuse to explain why it hadn’t happened that way in the first place? Was Kurt’s future a “choose your own adventure”, where the creators set him up for two possible careers and then waited to see which the fans would lobby for? Am I the only one who thinks this?
Especially since Kurt hasn’t really learnt anything or changed his behaviour in any way. (Partly, you know, because there wasn’t actually any thing to learn.)
Well either way it’s just bad story telling.
Honestly, I would have found it much more interesting had Kurt and Rachel’s story lines been switched. And not even for Kurt’s sake. Rachel actually does need to gain some resilience see, and she actually does need to learn to accept some rejection. It would have been very interesting to see Rachel have to work for something that she does not half-way expect. Wouldn’t it have been interesting to have Rachel grapple the fear that she may fail, that failure was a very real possibility? The character growth could have been amazing. Watching the strength that Rachel gained from that could have been awe inspiring. Instead we got a rehashing of the same old storyline: Rachel gets in and has interpersonal and relationship problems, and Kurt does not get in, feels bad, tries again, and gets in anyways. Yay. Very boring.