The past summer has been anything but lackadaisical for Glee; in the past couple of months, the franchise premiered a spin-off reality series (which spawned at least four new characters for the show), put on an international concert tour and inexplicably released a 3-D movie. In addition, the cast members seemed ubiquitous in all forms of media, popping up in everything from YouTube videos to Fashion Week advertisements to hosting the Emmys.
Despite their whirlwind of productivity over the summer, expectations were still low for the season premiere this past Tuesday after a let-down of a finale that mirrored, in many ways, the shortcomings of the show's sophomore season. And in many ways, Glee did not disappoint. While riddled with one-line chucklers and small moments of heart-warming, the show's season three premiere was wholly and undeniably mediocre.
The episode was average, at best. There was nothing horrifically train-wreck (like, let's say, the Rocky Picture Horror Show episode) but nothing exactly amazing either (season one's "Sectionals" come to mind.) There was nothing to distinguish this episode from any of the others: the Glee club is the butt monkey of McKinley High, Sue ridicules Will's hair, Emma cleans her fruit, Rachel overacts as she sings a Broadway ballad, multiple characters get doused in cafeteria food.
In fact, any character or plot development across the past two seasons has been ignored. Sue Sylvester is once again rampaging across Ohio with a vendetta against Will Schuester with a storyline that is so overwhelmingly implausible that it will be dropped next week, despite everything that happened in last season's penultimate episode. Rachel and Finn are circling each other. The Cheerios, and Santana in particular, are public enemy number one. Emma and Will are suddenly dating with no explanation at all, despite everything that passed between them last season, and if the show goes on without flashback to how they got together it will be the greatest cop-out in story-telling history since the "and it was all a dream" trope was invented. With the smallest of exceptions, this episode could have been the series pilot episode all over again.
And the thing is -- it would have been so much better if it was. By this point, all of the show's familiar fallbacks (Sue's racist comments, Rachel's soaring vibrato, Britney's clueless one-liners) that once may have saved the episode are now dragging it under. Time for something new, please.
Unfortunately, the same can be said for the episode's musical numbers. The first song of the season, The Go-Go's "We Got the Beat" was painfully underwhelming, as was Rachel and Kurt's duet in which Lea Michele sings yet another Barbra Streisand number. None of the others were terrible either -- in fact, the revamped Hairspray classic, "You Can't Stop the Beat" ended the episode on an appropriately-manic, fairly high note -- but nothing was new. Darren Criss continued to bop in all of his bow-tied glory, and the Rachel/Kurt dopplegangers gave a performance comparable to Vocal Adrenaline's, and it all would have been amazing if it had been the first time we were seeing these kinds of performances but this is season three, Glee, please come up with something new.
There are, however, sparks of ingenuity buried in this pile of overdone mush. Dianna Agron plays the jaded, tortured, bad-ass "Skank" like a pro, in a way that is admirable, frustrating and oh-so-pitiable all at the same time. Sugar Motta aka the alleged Rachel 2.0, was a hilariously well-played red herring. One of the show's high points remains the one-on-one scenes between emotionally charged characters, this week being Rachel and Kurt's tearful pinky swear. Seeds for the season's journey have been planted -- namely, what's going to happen to the seniors after they graduate from Glee club? -- and it promises to be a dramatic and ballad-infused ride.
There are many hints that Glee will pull itself up from the hackneyed hole that was Tuesday's season premiere. But at the moment, it remains wallowing somewhere at mid-point. But whether awe-inspiring or groan-inducing, Glee has never deviated from its entertaining path yet, and so we will continue to tune in every week, L-shaped foam fingers clutched tightly to our chests.
