The Cutprice Guignol

Alright, fans, friends, foes, and everyone else: we’ve done it. We’ve finally watched Glee until it gets bad.

Yes, I’m as shocked as you are that we actually made it this far, but the facts are the facts. I watched A Night of Neglect, then watched it again just to make sure, and I have to say it. This is it for me – this is the first episode of the show where I think the bad vastly outweighs the good. We’ve finally made it.

A Night of Neglect revolves around the Glee club trying to raise funds for the decathlon team by focusing on neglected members of the club performing songs that don’t get the love they deserve, and let me just say, right from the off, this is a bad premise. It’s essentially an attempt at lampshading the way the show has sidelined amazing performers like Jenna Ushkowitz and my beloved Amber Riley (who has her first full-length album coming out later this year, which I already sense appearing on my Spotify Wrapped).

It feels like such a slap in the face for the show to patronize them with this “yes, we know we haven’t been giving you the respect and screentime you deserve, but look, here’s a whole episode where we talk about it! And then back to square one with you in the background again! Perfect! Jenna, you’re not even going to get a whole number because you’re going to be booed off the stage in tears, does that work?”. It’s a handwave in the direction of their talent. From the off, I hated this episode, but the execution doesn’t do much to elevate it, either.

The return of Sunshine Corazon feels random and kind of counter to the point of giving some of the neglected Glee club members their dues – in fact, a lot of this episode seems distracted by other characters and plots, when it starts out with a claim to focus on some would-be central characters. Sue’s Legion of Doom plot is moderately fun, but it takes up way too much of the episode and functionally doesn’t have a huge impact on the plot, outside of a stoned cash donation, given that Emma and Carl’s relationship disintegrates without their input anyway. The Will-Schuester-they-Won’t-Schuester-they (does that scan?) plot for Emma and Will makes a welcome (read: rending my garments and screaming at the moon in agony) return, another mark against the episode for me. The drama here, as a whole, is sub-par, a major flop and a complete bum note.

The neglected songs chosen here are pretty dull (with the exception of Ain’t No Way, which, and I’m sure I don’t even need to say it at this point, Amber Riley utterly bodies), and I wish the show would have gone a little further out of it’s way to pick songs that were actively disliked; give me something like Run, Joey, Run, a cringefest with a sense of humour, instead of Holly honking her way through an Adele B-side.

Speaking of, it feels right to me that a Gwyneth Paltrow episode of the show is my tipping point, given how much I have truly hated her performance in this re-watch. Holly is such a boring trudge of a character to me, and, even though this is the last we’ll see of her in the show’s main storyline, she’s taken up way too much screentime for my liking. Her cover of Turning Tables is downright bad, a suitable low to send her out on, and her and Matthew Morrison continue to have an almost admirable dearth of chemistry.

There are some great moments in this episode, because I think Glee never lacks them completely – I love Santana standing up for Kurt and Blaine in her typical viper-tongued way, and the return of Jessalyn Gilsig is enormously fun, even if it is in a plot I think distracts from the main point of the episode. Brittany’s brief savant turn as an expert in cat diseases also made me giggle more than it should, and yes, I will have the Fondue for Two theme in my head for the rest of the week now that Brittany and cats have been put into my head in the same sentence.

But this is a bad episode, for the most part – and a boring one, too. Wasteful of great talent even as it tries to highlight it, it’s a low point for the season and the show as a whole, and, for me, it’s officially the turning point into Glee being (broadly) more bad than it is good.

So, yeah, that brings us to the end of this series. There are a few great moments I was hoping to get to – the Troubletones Adele mash-up, Rachel flubbing her audition, Darren Criss’ version of Cough Syrup, which I got strangely attached to at twenty-one and never really got over – but honestly, I think the show is mostly downhill from here. There have been some major wobbles in season two already (I’m still second-guessing myself about not calling an end to things at the Rocky Horror episode), but, with Night of Neglect, the show has officially (for me, by my very specific standards) tipped over into Being Bad.

Thank you to everyone who’s read, shared, and commented on these posts; I’ve had a great time going back over Glee, one of my favourite and least favourite shows of all time, and this has also been one of my most-read recap series, so I guess I’m not the only one. If you’d like to go back to the start and peruse this series from the pilot onwards, you can do that here. I hope you’ve had a good time joining me on this extremely silly journey, and I would love to hear where your cut-off for Glee getting bad actually hits – let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via IMDB)