Glee Season 4 Re-watch - Final Thoughts
So, Season 4, what can I make of you? For my season-end recap, I’m going to go from big picture down to little detail, working through some of the things I loved, and some of the things I didn’t.
Watching in real time, the pacing of the season was incredibly difficult. We’d have a few episodes, then nothing for a month and a half, then a few more, and then three weeks off. It continued that way all season long, so just when you thought you were getting into a groove, it would disappear again. It made some of the multi-episode plot arcs seem disjointed, and far more drawn out than they were.
Watching all of them on a much more condensed schedule helped quite a bit - the longer stories were a bit easier to follow and felt more cohesive. But, then, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Because what tiny fraction of the general viewing audience, or even the devoted fandom audience, actually watches like this? Probably 98% of the viewership watches it more-or-less when it airs, and that’s it. So if they are going to continue having these big chunks of hiatus in the middle of the season (thanks a lot, baseball playoffs), I guess I wish the writers could or would treat those breaks with a little more purpose. Is that realistic in the business and creative model of network TV? I have no idea. But it’s a nice wish.
I have to say that I liked Season 4 as a whole, though having “All or Nothing” as the final taste in my mouth does not make it easy to say that. There was a lot of good stuff that kept me watching, even if a fair amount of it was undeserved optimism on my part that then got stomped to pieces. Alas. But yes, there was enough that kept me coming back, there was enough that had me re-watching bits and pieces the next day.
* * *
Overall themes and characters I liked in Season 4:
Blaaaaaiiine
Look, if you’re not a Blaine fan, then you probably didn’t dig Season 4. But I am, so I did. We got a whole hell of a lot of Blaine, and I loved getting to know him better. Obviously a big chunk of that was painful for him (and us) - the loneliness both preceding and following the break-up, trying to figure out who he was (at McKinley and in general) without Kurt. But I loved watching him do it, even if he sometimes made choices I disagreed with (*cough* proposal *cough*).
Klaine
I know, this is a weird thing to say, but bear with me. Look, I was just as sad as any other fangirl when the break-up happened. It was brutal, and it meant I spent the entire rest of the season whining, “I miiiiissss them.” But that’s sort of the genius of it. Yes, the break-up was painful, but not only was it a realistic thing to happen when you’ve got high school sweethearts trying to do long-distance, it was also a compelling tool for storytelling.
In season 3, Klaine was pretty much hunky-dory heart eyes the whole year. However, that meant that there was (virtually) no conflict in their relationship, so there was almost no story to tell. They spent a LOT of that season making heart-eyes at each other... in the background. We adored them, still, but there wasn’t a lot of movement there.
With them broken up for nearly all of season 4, that’s where the dramatic tension was. Which means that’s where the more interesting story was. If there was a single plot arc that carried through the entire season, from “The New Rachel” through “All or Nothing,” it was Klaine. THEY were the central story of the season.
And for that, I am strangely glad.
New York
I loved the new sets, the location shots, the totally new world and how the characters interacted with it. Rachel found herself a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond and stumbled a bit along the way. Kurt found places that appreciated and celebrated who he is, instead of taking it as an excuse to shove him into lockers and throw him into dumpsters. Santana reveled in the gritty, absurd freedom of the big city.
Sam
Whether with Brittany or Blaine or anyone else (with the exception of the very odd moment in "Lights Out" with Ryder), Sam was a genuine and upstanding guy all season long.
(New) New Directions group numbers
There were some fantastic performances from the large group this season, and though some of them were nearly derailed by awkward transitions, they were a great way to end many of the episodes.
The biggest problems I had with Season 4:
Nowhere near enough Kurt
I feel like so much happened for him this year: New York, Vogue, the break-up, NYADA, his dad’s illness, Adam, and when/how/if he would mend his relationship with Blaine. It was a monumental period of time, but comparatively little of it actually happened on screen. The last third of the season was particularly offensive on that front, especially as it relates to his romantic life. Is he dating Adam or not? Does he want to get back together with Blaine or not? How does he feel about any of it?
And as desperately as I want to know about his dating life, there are a million other interesting things they could have spent more time on, too. His nearly-forgotten internship at Vogue, settling into a totally new school environment, learning what it means to be an out gay man in a city like New York instead of a cow-town like Lima. And you’ve got an actor as talented as Chris Colfer to pull it all off. But they didn't, and that seems to me like a crying shame.
To paraphrase a comment from my dear friend flamingmuse, it’s not just that we were asked to read between the lines with Kurt this season. It’s that there were so few lines to read AT ALL.
We Kurt-meta-lovers were really grasping at straws, and it’s hard to say how much of it was actually there and just really subtle, or whether we were trying to assign meaning when there was none.
Instead of a few minutes of quality time inside Kurt Hummel’s head, we got:
The New Kids
It’s not that you can’t introduce new cast members. But when you introduce four or five of them at once, and spend huge chunks of early-season episodes insisting that we care about them, well then you’re doing it wrong. I mean, god, look at Season 1! The only people they asked us to care about in the Pilot were Rachel/Finn, and Will/Emma. We got functionally nothing from Kurt until "Preggers" (episode 4), Tina and Artie in "Wheels" (episode 9), and so on. Santana and Brittany were basically in the background until Season 2. And even then, they let the characters grow on us instead of shoving them down our throats.
By contrast, Glee pretty much tried to tell me that Jake and Marley were our new power couple from about the third episode of the season. Yeah, no. Not to mention half of the new characters were introduced as blatant replacements for ones who had left: Marley is the brunette who can really sing, Jake is the second coming of Puckerman, Ryder is a drumming football player who doesn’t do all that well in school, Kitty is a psychotic blonde cheerleader. WE GET IT.
I eventually did come to appreciate some of the new kids (in small-to-moderate doses), but I spent an enormous chunk of the season feeling resentful that they were taking screen time away from characters I had spent the last three years falling in love with.
Original songs
Any time I’m frustrated about Season 4 of Glee, the conversation ends up something like this: “...but instead we got three fucking ‘original songs’ from Marley.” God, that annoys the crap out of me. I did not care about her songwriting ambitions, and I really didn’t care enough about them to have THREE SONGS worth of time devoted to them. And they weren’t even good.
(Yes, they’re kind of my Season 4 scapegoat, but there you have it.)
Catfishing
As I’ve said in my recaps, it’s not that I hate the existence of the catfish story, nor did I hate the fact that it was ultimately Unique catfishing Ryder. What I hate is how much time they devoted to the story, and how stupidly drawn out the reveal was.
* * *
On to individual episodes. I thought long and hard about my top and bottom 5 episodes of the season. It’s not that these are exactly my most and least favorite episodes, but rather the ones that I think were the highest (and lowest) quality of the year - the most successful (or not) as a cohesive episode of Glee.
With this major caveat: even the best episodes had a scene or two that I’d fast-forward on DVR, and even the worst had at least one thing I’d happily re-watch.
My top 5 (okay, 6) best episodes of Season 4 (in chronological order):
1. The New Rachel
2. The Break Up
3. Dynamic Duets
4. Girls (and Boys) on Film
5. Guilty Pleasures
6. Wonder-ful
My bottom 5 episodes of Season 4 (in chronological order):
1. Britney 2.0
2. The Role You Were Born to Play
3. Sweet Dreams
4. Lights Out
5. All or Nothing
* * *
And, because it’s Glee, my top 10 favorite songs and/or performances from this season (a near-impossible task, ask me again tomorrow and I’ll change my mind):
1. It’s Time
2. Teenage Dream
3. My Dark Side
4. Some Nights
5. Being Alive
6. This is the New Year
7. (Not) Getting Married Today
8. Come What May
9. Footloose
10. You Are the Sunshine of My Life
* * *
Alright, friends. Thank you for sticking with me and leaving your awesome comments through this re-watch, you have made it ever so much fun.
Please, sound off and tell me what you think about Season 4! Does your list of favorite/least-favorite episodes overlap with mine? What about songs? I'd be more than happy to debate them with you in the comments. :-)
And fear not, I'm going nowhere. I have every intention of recapping Season 5 when it starts NEXT WEEK ZOMG.
Watching in real time, the pacing of the season was incredibly difficult. We’d have a few episodes, then nothing for a month and a half, then a few more, and then three weeks off. It continued that way all season long, so just when you thought you were getting into a groove, it would disappear again. It made some of the multi-episode plot arcs seem disjointed, and far more drawn out than they were.
Watching all of them on a much more condensed schedule helped quite a bit - the longer stories were a bit easier to follow and felt more cohesive. But, then, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Because what tiny fraction of the general viewing audience, or even the devoted fandom audience, actually watches like this? Probably 98% of the viewership watches it more-or-less when it airs, and that’s it. So if they are going to continue having these big chunks of hiatus in the middle of the season (thanks a lot, baseball playoffs), I guess I wish the writers could or would treat those breaks with a little more purpose. Is that realistic in the business and creative model of network TV? I have no idea. But it’s a nice wish.
I have to say that I liked Season 4 as a whole, though having “All or Nothing” as the final taste in my mouth does not make it easy to say that. There was a lot of good stuff that kept me watching, even if a fair amount of it was undeserved optimism on my part that then got stomped to pieces. Alas. But yes, there was enough that kept me coming back, there was enough that had me re-watching bits and pieces the next day.
* * *
Overall themes and characters I liked in Season 4:
Blaaaaaiiine
Look, if you’re not a Blaine fan, then you probably didn’t dig Season 4. But I am, so I did. We got a whole hell of a lot of Blaine, and I loved getting to know him better. Obviously a big chunk of that was painful for him (and us) - the loneliness both preceding and following the break-up, trying to figure out who he was (at McKinley and in general) without Kurt. But I loved watching him do it, even if he sometimes made choices I disagreed with (*cough* proposal *cough*).
Klaine
I know, this is a weird thing to say, but bear with me. Look, I was just as sad as any other fangirl when the break-up happened. It was brutal, and it meant I spent the entire rest of the season whining, “I miiiiissss them.” But that’s sort of the genius of it. Yes, the break-up was painful, but not only was it a realistic thing to happen when you’ve got high school sweethearts trying to do long-distance, it was also a compelling tool for storytelling.
In season 3, Klaine was pretty much hunky-dory heart eyes the whole year. However, that meant that there was (virtually) no conflict in their relationship, so there was almost no story to tell. They spent a LOT of that season making heart-eyes at each other... in the background. We adored them, still, but there wasn’t a lot of movement there.
With them broken up for nearly all of season 4, that’s where the dramatic tension was. Which means that’s where the more interesting story was. If there was a single plot arc that carried through the entire season, from “The New Rachel” through “All or Nothing,” it was Klaine. THEY were the central story of the season.
And for that, I am strangely glad.
New York
I loved the new sets, the location shots, the totally new world and how the characters interacted with it. Rachel found herself a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond and stumbled a bit along the way. Kurt found places that appreciated and celebrated who he is, instead of taking it as an excuse to shove him into lockers and throw him into dumpsters. Santana reveled in the gritty, absurd freedom of the big city.
Sam
Whether with Brittany or Blaine or anyone else (with the exception of the very odd moment in "Lights Out" with Ryder), Sam was a genuine and upstanding guy all season long.
(New) New Directions group numbers
There were some fantastic performances from the large group this season, and though some of them were nearly derailed by awkward transitions, they were a great way to end many of the episodes.
The biggest problems I had with Season 4:
Nowhere near enough Kurt
I feel like so much happened for him this year: New York, Vogue, the break-up, NYADA, his dad’s illness, Adam, and when/how/if he would mend his relationship with Blaine. It was a monumental period of time, but comparatively little of it actually happened on screen. The last third of the season was particularly offensive on that front, especially as it relates to his romantic life. Is he dating Adam or not? Does he want to get back together with Blaine or not? How does he feel about any of it?
And as desperately as I want to know about his dating life, there are a million other interesting things they could have spent more time on, too. His nearly-forgotten internship at Vogue, settling into a totally new school environment, learning what it means to be an out gay man in a city like New York instead of a cow-town like Lima. And you’ve got an actor as talented as Chris Colfer to pull it all off. But they didn't, and that seems to me like a crying shame.
To paraphrase a comment from my dear friend flamingmuse, it’s not just that we were asked to read between the lines with Kurt this season. It’s that there were so few lines to read AT ALL.
We Kurt-meta-lovers were really grasping at straws, and it’s hard to say how much of it was actually there and just really subtle, or whether we were trying to assign meaning when there was none.
Instead of a few minutes of quality time inside Kurt Hummel’s head, we got:
The New Kids
It’s not that you can’t introduce new cast members. But when you introduce four or five of them at once, and spend huge chunks of early-season episodes insisting that we care about them, well then you’re doing it wrong. I mean, god, look at Season 1! The only people they asked us to care about in the Pilot were Rachel/Finn, and Will/Emma. We got functionally nothing from Kurt until "Preggers" (episode 4), Tina and Artie in "Wheels" (episode 9), and so on. Santana and Brittany were basically in the background until Season 2. And even then, they let the characters grow on us instead of shoving them down our throats.
By contrast, Glee pretty much tried to tell me that Jake and Marley were our new power couple from about the third episode of the season. Yeah, no. Not to mention half of the new characters were introduced as blatant replacements for ones who had left: Marley is the brunette who can really sing, Jake is the second coming of Puckerman, Ryder is a drumming football player who doesn’t do all that well in school, Kitty is a psychotic blonde cheerleader. WE GET IT.
I eventually did come to appreciate some of the new kids (in small-to-moderate doses), but I spent an enormous chunk of the season feeling resentful that they were taking screen time away from characters I had spent the last three years falling in love with.
Original songs
Any time I’m frustrated about Season 4 of Glee, the conversation ends up something like this: “...but instead we got three fucking ‘original songs’ from Marley.” God, that annoys the crap out of me. I did not care about her songwriting ambitions, and I really didn’t care enough about them to have THREE SONGS worth of time devoted to them. And they weren’t even good.
(Yes, they’re kind of my Season 4 scapegoat, but there you have it.)
Catfishing
As I’ve said in my recaps, it’s not that I hate the existence of the catfish story, nor did I hate the fact that it was ultimately Unique catfishing Ryder. What I hate is how much time they devoted to the story, and how stupidly drawn out the reveal was.
* * *
On to individual episodes. I thought long and hard about my top and bottom 5 episodes of the season. It’s not that these are exactly my most and least favorite episodes, but rather the ones that I think were the highest (and lowest) quality of the year - the most successful (or not) as a cohesive episode of Glee.
With this major caveat: even the best episodes had a scene or two that I’d fast-forward on DVR, and even the worst had at least one thing I’d happily re-watch.
My top 5 (okay, 6) best episodes of Season 4 (in chronological order):
1. The New Rachel
2. The Break Up
3. Dynamic Duets
4. Girls (and Boys) on Film
5. Guilty Pleasures
6. Wonder-ful
My bottom 5 episodes of Season 4 (in chronological order):
1. Britney 2.0
2. The Role You Were Born to Play
3. Sweet Dreams
4. Lights Out
5. All or Nothing
* * *
And, because it’s Glee, my top 10 favorite songs and/or performances from this season (a near-impossible task, ask me again tomorrow and I’ll change my mind):
1. It’s Time
2. Teenage Dream
3. My Dark Side
4. Some Nights
5. Being Alive
6. This is the New Year
7. (Not) Getting Married Today
8. Come What May
9. Footloose
10. You Are the Sunshine of My Life
* * *
Alright, friends. Thank you for sticking with me and leaving your awesome comments through this re-watch, you have made it ever so much fun.
Please, sound off and tell me what you think about Season 4! Does your list of favorite/least-favorite episodes overlap with mine? What about songs? I'd be more than happy to debate them with you in the comments. :-)
And fear not, I'm going nowhere. I have every intention of recapping Season 5 when it starts NEXT WEEK ZOMG.