The Three Year Itch
"Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day."
So said novelist and screenwriter, Richard Price.
I was thinking the other day that there does seem to be some significance attached to the span of three years in television of late. You probably know the drill already. ... A fresh, captivating show quickly becomes a cultural phenomenon. The cast consists of a mix of fresh faces and veteran performers, many of whom paid their dues on stage in memorable roles. The show turns out a terrific first season and a good, solid second season and then gives way to a subpar third season ... and beyond. The people attached to the project seem to lose their enthusiasm and want to move on to other things. And so on.
[Glee 4x15 Spoilers (click to open)]
And I am not even talking about Downton.
(Or at least not exclusively.)
Thursday's episode of Glee, "Girls (and Boys) on Film" (4x15), marked something of a milestone for Fox's flagship show and the first successful television musical comedy of this era. The third performance of the evening was a decent cover of the Isley Brothers' 1959 hit, "Shout!" which marked Glee's 500th musical performance. It is a pretty impressive feat when you think about it: the cast managed to learn lyrics and choreography to 500 songs over 81 episodes spanning 3 1/2 seasons and did it, for the most part (with some notable exceptions), competently. Competent does not mean stellar, of course -- the number of performances that reach that caliber are few and far between on the show (and yes, the vocals are squeezed and Auto-Tuned and overproduced) -- but still ... it averages out to a little over six songs per episode and each episode is shot (roughly) over 8-10 days. There are 22 episodes per season -- that is a lot of work. (I hope Dan Stevens is taking note somewhere out there.) Say what you want about Glee, but no one can accuse the actors of being lazy. It is probably why, despite the show's problems over the last couple of seasons, the SAG continues to recognize the work of the actors every year while the show has lost its appeal to the Academy and to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). The cast remains, in my opinion, the hardest working in television (it is a good thing most of them have the exuberance of youth to draw from).
Yet, unfortunately, hard work is not enough these days to carry the show. The episode in question is a prime example of what just does not work for Glee this season. This episode featured, as it must now, two separate universes in two separate locations loosely tied together, thematically, by "songs from the movies." (Though I suppose we might call the emotional theme of this episode, "spilling secrets.") The New York bunch, Rachel, Kurt and most recently, Santana, are holed up in their loft (yeah, right) with Kurt's new boyfriend from NYADA during a blizzard where they decide to pass the time watching Moulin Rouge (cue dream sequence with not-bad vocals from Darren Criss and Chris Colfer). Brody, Rachel's new whatever (it is a "modern" relationship with "no labels" ala SATC, you know) is suspiciously MIA. Santana does what she does best: snoops around and gets in everyone's face about it. She is convinced Kurt is still in love with Blaine, Brody is a drug dealer and something is seriously up with Rachel. ... Meanwhile, back at glee club headquarters in Lima, Finn tries to make amends for kissing Emma (what?!) by tracking her down after she stood Will up at the altar. The Marley, Jake, Ryder triangle continues to play out (yawn) with Marley fessing up to Jake about her own smooch with Ryder after a cheesy reenactment of the original fromage-heavy pottery scene from Ghost. (Musically, the cover of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" was just okay.) And it is, apparently, time once again for the annual boys vs. girls mash-up competition, where the boys take on songs from two Tom Cruise flicks: "Old Time Rock and Roll" from Risky Business (replete with button-down shirts, bare legs, sunglasses and all) and "Danger Zone" from Top Gun. The girls' mash-up is a more successful rendition of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and "Material Girl" (though I do not believe the latter was in an actual film, the original video was, as we all recall, itself an homage to the movie adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). To cap it all off, Will tracks Emma down, getting his John Cusack moment from Say Anything (Peter Gabriel is hard to cover and I actually thought Matthew Morrison did a credible job with "In Your Eyes") and Marley stupidly confides in Kitty while Finn finally spills the beans to Will.
Glee is never short on plot, but for all the flurry of activity, I was bored. I have been bored for most of the last two seasons, and especially this one. The show now features a show within a show (Ryan Murphy's concession to Lea Michele and Chris Colfer for having his idea of a spinoff for them ixnayed), which outside of Shakespeare, is never a winning recipe. This two-show structure and the obvious two-location dilemma has produced an awkward, disjointed look and feel to every episode and makes establishing any kind of emotional continuity, or even investment, very difficult. When you add in other factors -- the addition of new characters who are not very well written and even less carefully portrayed (the caricatures of Kitty and Marley, case in point), the obvious waning enthusiasm of the creators/writers (who are now busy on other, newer projects, like American Horror Story) and the declining quality of the musical numbers which seem less relevant and organic to the narrative of each episode than ever before -- it is not surprising that early Glee enthusiasts like myself can hardly bother with the show any longer.
Glee has always been a show that is hard to define, but where that used to be a strength, it now works against it. In its first two seasons, Glee found a way of tapping into its emotional center and now it no longer seems to be able to do that. Does it even have an emotional center anymore? There are two brief scenes from "Girls (and Boys) on Film" that approach anything like true, honest emotion. The most successful is a one-on-one with Rachel and Santana on the couch of their apartment when Santana confronts Rachel about the stick from the pregnancy test she found after rummaging through the trash. Rachel is angry at first but Santana, in a rare moment of concern that is not tinged with mockery, does not back off and Rachel finally breaks down in what amounts to a wordless confession after carrying her secret for what must have been weeks. The second scene, almost as affecting, involves Adam, Kurt's new boyfriend, confronting Kurt about his unresolved feelings for Blaine. Kurt, obviously struggling with his emotions, confesses that he wishes -- desperately -- he could move on and get over Blaine. (Heh, watching the scene almost felt like watching Matthew and Lavinia from Downton S2.) So 5-6 minutes out of approximately 45 are worth watching ... those numbers are not great.
Inevitably, thinking all this over invoked comparisons with other shows out there right now -- well, one in particular (though what does not make me think of Downton these days?). For two shows that could not be more different in theme, setting, tone, style, etc., there are remarkable similarities between their trajectories. (And some of you may be curious to learn that Glee is among the American shows of recent years that Julian Fellowes really admires.) Both turned out freshman seasons that were, in my opinion, unmatched by what was out there at the time (and the fact that they were able to do this on major networks -- in Glee's case, Fox, and in Downton's, ITV, is even more impressive). Both were set up, initially, with a natural three-season arc in mind. For Glee, it was organic to the story because many of the cast had to graduate after three years, so the question of what to do with them (and the Glee universe generally) was always one at the back of everyone's mind. For Downton, it was a boundary imposed by Fellowes when he first conceived of the idea, probably more as a projection of what he might expect from a period drama on a major network in Britain (and the "America" factor I do not believe was seriously in play in anyone's mind at the time). So the time frame was less integral to the story itself than was Glee's (other than the fact that Fellowes wanted three distinct series covering the "late Edwardian summer," The Great War and the early interwar period). ... Both shows were more successful than they could have imagined. Glee obviously has capitalized, commercially, on its success to a greater extent than Downton has (Downton at least did not spawn a reality show, thank God, and has foregone the terrible merchandising and product placement campaigns ... though it is inspiring runway trends, most notably in Ralph Lauren's Fall 2012 collection). But in both cases, the push for more from a commercial standpoint has run up against the show's development artistically (though both appear to have enough goodwill to carry them, ratings wise, for awhile longer). Downton has suffered from cast restlessness resulting in three key departures (one major), while Glee's primary problem, creatively speaking, is Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's proclivity to spread themselves too thin (I wonder what Ian Brennan really thinks about this ... heh, I guess there are more Stevens out there than we would like to think, though at least Murphy and Falchuk have not actually abandoned Glee). And in both cases, the solution de riguer appears to be introducing even more characters -- which the audience has little investment or interest in -- and subplots into an already crowded ensemble which is juggling too many storylines as is.
And then the comparison begs another question about the life span of television shows at large: Is it even reasonable to expect a show to continue (or continue with its soul intact, anyway) past three seasons, more or less? Mad Men has done it (along with a handful of others, like 30 Rock and, arguably, Breaking Bad); several years ago, The Sopranos and SATC managed it. But most recently, it seems that we are headed in the oposite direction. In fact, the better the show in its first season, the more likely it is not to last it seems. Most people will concede Modern Family -- a show I have always felt is overrated -- has fallen off a bit in its third season. Homeland's second season, like Downton and Glee, was not as well received as its first (but still good enough to beat everyone else most of the time). It will be interesting to see how it performs in its third.
In any event, it is a shame really ... because as much as we might wish otherwise, the inability of a popular series to go out on top is a chronic problem in the medium and I for one do not see it abating anytime soon.