I think I’m about ready to stop watching Glee. 

I’ve watched as these characters have grown, changed, grown, changed, turned around, went back to who they were originally, change, be thrust to the front, change, get cast to the background, change… you see a pattern here? Every single time you start to enjoy a character on the show, the writers pick a hot-button issue (this season and last, homosexuality and bullying… the first season, teen pregnancy which, hey, it wasn’t so bad for Quinn, right? She still got into Yale…) and pound it into our heads. 

Plus, I think the show’s writers and directors secretly have it in for the Quinn character. I’ve never seen someone go through as much crap as that character has been forced to do. If the show was about her, it’d have the makings of an Anne McCaffrey novel (take our heroine, put her in a bad situation, make worse, rinse, wash, repeat, enjoy!). However, the show is primarily about Lea Michelle’s character Rachel and that creepy looking guy Finn’s relationship, with background noise (Kurt, Blaine, Santana and Brittney, etc). 

It gets stale after awhile. Very, very stale.

I last year that the show seemed to be running out of ideas, since they killed one of the more intriguing relationships on the show (Mercedes/Sam) for “Chocolate Babies” (I sh*t you now, that’s what he said). Then they bring in another gay kid to try to ruin Kurt/Blaine (which, as I’ve said before, is just boring… though not because of Blaine. He’s far more interesting of a character than Kurt is now, and we don’t even know if Blaine has parents or was hatched via a Cabbage Patch Kid doll), then bring back Karofsky (which, to be fair, was a good bit of writing…). 

…you know, that makes, like, half the cast gay now, doesn’t it?…

The first third of the season was solid (except for Chocolate Babies), but when they entered their mid-season break (and when the hell did everyone start doing this? I miss watching a show for an entire season…), it seemed like the writers all got together and said “we got nothing… what about you?”. There’s nothing driving the plot now (except for everyone’s “Hey, let’s get married!” kick), since you know that they’re going to win nationals (they have to, it’s in Lea Michelle’s contract), there is nothing compelling. I’m already looking forward to next season, when the nauseating romance of Rachel and Finn is gone, half the cast is gone and all you’ve got is Artie (probably the best actor on the show), Tina, the Irish kid (perhaps… work visas are weird), Sugar, Blaine (who already has been moved to being the front man, for all purposes of the show) Will (possibly… I’ve heard unsubstantiated rumors that he wants to go back to Broadway and, personally, I don’t blame him) and Emma. Sure, they’re going to have “guest appearances” by the graduating class (ratings bump!) but, really, the only thing that will save the show next season is if they don’t win Nationals this year, and they don’t even make Regionals next season.

Wait, put down your pitchforks and let me explain!

There is almost nobody coming back next season, except for the previously mentioned individuals. And of them, Blaine is the only obvious leader of the group. It’s like a college football team who lose a bunch of seniors after winning the national championship: they probably won’t win it all next year, but in a year or two they’re going to be threatening once more. Suffice to say, it would practically kill the show if they won Nationals this season, and won it again next with “lesser” talent. If they win it this year, they wouldn’t be able to make it “fair” for the other characters who are now seniors to go out on a lesser note (and trust me, they want this to be “fair”). The best thing to do would be for them to finish second this year (build up that rivalry with Vocal Adrenaline, damn it… the “rivalry” with Daulton doesn’t make sense, since they’re friends with most of them), and next year lose to VA at Regionals. Then the fifth season of the show can be about the new kids, against all the odds, make it to Nationals (beating VA along the way… this is about building up rivalries, remember?) and lose there. Hey, it’s been done similarly before, but what else do you have? The problem with keeping a traditional school year (no 90210 for these guys) is that the characters move on. If they’d have done this for college, well, I know some fellow liberal arts majors who are still in college after 10 years. Nobody would have blinked.

…I spend way too much time thinking about things.