We seemed to watch a lot of “Draw My Life” videos this past year, so we felt it was appropriate to recap our 2014 with a white board and some dry erase markers. In under 3 minutes, we quickly doodle this year’s top movies, tv shows, books & comics. We also draw our favorite Con experiences, the pop culture headlines that stuck with us, and the best hair of the year (belonging to Blythe from IDW’s Littlest Pet Shop Comics)! Lots of wishes for a fabulous 2015, everyone!
The greatest pitfall television series featuring high school cast members has is that the cast is already older when the series begins and they age out rapidly. Smallville stopped setting stories in the high school because the cast looked ridiculous on the sets. Confronting the inevitable graduation challenges the producers to find tortured ways to keep the cast intact after the caps and gowns are put away. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer suffered from this challenge so it is refreshing to see Glee take graduation head on in the third season of the Fox series.
Glee the Complete Third Season came out on DVD last week and seeing it without the weeks-long breaks between cycles, allows you to see how they handled the coming graduation and choices the teens are being asked to make. While the series has never really focused on the kids’ academics, there was almost zero interest in ACTs or college visits, so it was always in the ether but never the focal point of the stories. Instead, it was all about getting to Nationals in New York and succeeding. The season opened with the need for fresh members thanks to a rival Glee Club set up by Shelby Corcoran (Idina Menzel) while Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) ran for Congress on an anti-arts platform.
Clearly, the producers had no real idea of where to take the characters as motivations and the status quo changed, twisting them beyond recognizabilty. The most ill-served may have been Quinn (Dianna Agron) who started off trying to steal back her baby, given to Shelby for adoption, then embracing the final year of high school until her driving accident (don’t text and drive) and recovery. Somewhere along the line, this sympathetic character, who in season two recognized she was a small town girl stuck in Ohio, gained 50 IQ points and got into Yale and was Ivy League bound. Huh? The best teen villain has become a hero. All the edges to characters are gone, from Puck (Mark Salling) to the divas Mercedes (Amber Riley), robbing the students of interesting character variety. Santana (Naya Rivera) was also softened although her coming out as a lesbian and rising as a performer were among the season’s highlights.
Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), the romantic couple at the center of the storm, decided to get married and their arc dealt with that reality and the choices each need make for themselves and each other. This rang far more true than the disastrous marriage between Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) and Cooter Menkins (Eric Bruskotter), which formed a mini-arc in the final third of the season.
While each of the 22 episodes is entertaining and often heartfelt, as a season-long arc for the faculty and students it’s a mess and by now Ryan Murphy should have a very clear idea of who they are and where these characters are going. Instead, he seems to have lost any sense of edge in Sylvester, giving her instead a rival in Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes). Even the show’s most intriguing character, Burt Hummel (Mike O’Malley), somehow found himself running for Congress and winning, stealing him from Kurt (Chris Colfer), just as his son’s dreams of going to NYADA are crushed.
Musically, the show remains strong, aided by the welcome addition of Darren Criss’ Blaine to the New Directions. Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet) is also back after a brief contract issue. Some of the winners of the reality series, The Glee Project, wind up added to the cast but are little more than hangers-on with little learned about them and rarely given a showcase. The quest for a championship takes a backseat to the fall musical, West Side Story, which featured some terrific reimaginings of the classic numbers.
In the finale, eight of the cast graduate and turnover in the New Directions will fuel the fourth season as it begins in a few weeks. Most of the graduates will continue to appear so the ensemble swells which is not always a good idea.
The four disc set looks amazing and of course sounds terrific but we’ve come to expect that from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. A neat feature to the set is that the menus will help you keep track as you work your way through the season, remembering where you are.
As usual, the extras are heavy on the music, the show’s hallmark. We get more from the Glee Music Jukebox, although you get clips and not the full songs that were edited to air. Some of the non-musical bits include “Glee Under the Stars” (7:45), a kickoff event at Santa Monica High School. “Glee Give a Note” (7:46) shows stars Jayma Mays and Jones present Culver City Middle School a check for $10,000 for arts education.
You can enjoy some extended and deleted scenes throughout the discs. The highlight here is a Sue Sylvester flashback that should have found its way on air. “Glee Swap: Behind the Scenes of ‘Props'” (5:41) is a nice look at the fun body-swapping episode. “Meet the Newbies” (13:20) spends more time with the new cast members than the series seemed to. “Saying Goodbye” (15:19) is a good look at the emotional toll the finale took on one and all. Lynch’s acerbic Sylvester is found on “Ask Sue: World Domination Blog” (6:07) and “Return of Sue’s Quips” (2:58).
One can hope that the freshened cast will ignite some greater dramatic consistency to match its musical excellence. For now, we have this set which is maddeningly enjoyable while being frustratingly inconsistent.
Dianna Agron has been television’s perpetual high school cheerleader, attending classes with Veronica Mars or dissing Clarie on Heroes. Now a junior at William McKinley High, she has achieved national fame on Glee. Argon can be bitchy or catty or flirty but can be incredibly symapthetic when she lets her guard down as seen on the small screen. Her work in DreamWork’s I am Number Four, out on video next week, puts her on a path for a screen career. Here, she answers some questions courtesy of Walt Disney Home Entertainment.
Was it fun to leave the Glee gang behind for some big-screen action with your new movie, I Am Number Four?
It was a lot of fun to try something new, but I knew I was going back to Glee after we finished filming I Am Number Four. It was only a brief change for me, but it was great to step into a whole new world.
When did you discover that you clicked so well with your co-star, Alex Pettyfer?
When I was cast on I Am Number Four, I hadn’t met Alex. I had dinner with the movie’s director, D.J. Caruso, a couple of nights before our first table read with the big studio executives and that’s when D.J. said to me, “Perhaps you should meet Alex before the table read?” I thought that was a really good idea.
Alex has described you as an actress with an old-school movie star quality. How does that make you feel?
That’s very nice of him. It’s pretty hard to accept that compliment because I grew up watching and loving old-school actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Katharine Hepburn. They were always effortless to watch, but I’m growing and trying to challenge myself to get to that place. If I do get to where they are it would be amazing. That’s my goal.
Your character in the new movie is very romantic. Are you similar in real life?
I think so. I really love the character of Sarah because there are a lot of similarities to how I was at school. Sarah loves photography, and so do I. I really started to get into it at school. I have about 10 cameras now and they all have different purposes.
What else do you like to get up to in your spare time?
I love cooking. In fact, my favorite thing to do on a weekend is to have friends over and cook dinner. We’ll sit around, talk and play board games. I love doing things like that, although I also love to be outside and travel. I have such wanderlust. I try to go somewhere new for every vacation and there are so many places that I have yet to visit.
Are you into Twitter and the internet?
Computers are not a huge part of my life. I write, so I use a computer daily for that – but I’m not a big web surfer. I surf the internet every now and then, but it’s not like a two-hour a day, three-hour a day obsession of mine. (more…)
[[[
Glee]]] is frothy, delightful television that is as prone to being over-the-top as it is to be emotionally powerful. That it can successfully veer from one extreme to the other is one of the more impressive aspects of the Fox series, created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. The show burst into the public consciousness with the clever airing of the pilot in the waning days of the 2008-2009 season and got people excited with something fresh and seemingly original (at least for prime time; no doubt Fox saw its potential after Disney’s success with [[[High School Musical]]].
When the show arrived last fall, it proved it was able to blend soap opera, music, and dance with an oddball assortment of characters with several vying for breakout status before Jane Lynch’s Sue Sylvester captured pop culture’s heart. The plight of the misfits that find themselves forming a glee club at Ohio’s William McKinley High School is the overarching theme as the team grows from a sextet to a full squad and prepares for sectionals and then regionals. As a result, we see them working on numerous pieces and with the show’s ratings climb, they stuffed in even more musical numbers which has neatly resulted in several soundtrack CDs already available.
When the show took an extended hiatus, Fox Home Entertainment released Glee, Volume One: Road to Sectionals to tide fans over. Now, in time for the premiere of season two this evening, Glee; The Complete First Season is out in both standard DVD and Blu-ray sets.
The show revels in its absurdity and doesn’t once try to make us think any of these characters are real or that the high school is really a place for learning. After all, we never see the kids in any academic class nor is homework ever a factor. Apparently, few of them need jobs or when they do can take them without breaking a sweat. We know there’s a faculty because we see them in the lounge where some of the more embarrassing adult shenanigans get discussed.
Where the series fell down was properly making us care for the dilemma Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) faced with his ditzy, desperate, deceptive wife Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig). Her fake pregnancy sub-plot was totally wasting time for other stories and her expulsion from the marriage seemed pre-ordained and yet, she remains attached to the show like a barnacle that won’t go away.
Since science has cured all disease, and we’re living in a world with jet packs and super-candy (which never causes tooth decay, don’cha know), a symposium was called to finally figure out why teenagers are so influenced by the art and media with which they surround themselves. Led by Maria Nikolajeva, the conference was held in England just a few weeks ago. Nikolajeva, a Cambridge University professor of literature, brought together “people from different disciplines to share what we know about this turbulent period we call adolescence.” Why, you ask? We’re guessing that Nikolajeva (we love typing that name) has a teenage daughter who recently started wearing black, talking back to her, and becoming infatuated with pale boys who drive their own ’96 Honda Accords. We’re just guessing, though.
Thanks in part to an in-depth article on MSNBC, there’s plenty to glean from this recent conference. Some facts we learned? According to Karen Coats, a professor of English at Illinois State Univeristy, “the teenage brain processes information differently than a more mature brain.” We’re blown away. Really? Coats (again, an English professor…) goes on to add that the teenage prefrontal cortex goes through a growth spurt before puberty, followed by a period of organizing and pruning of the neural pathways. We asked Doctor Gregory House of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital about this fact, and he was quick to add “Duh! It turns out right before and even during puberty, kids’ noggins get bigger. And as boys grow hair in weird places, and girls grow sweater puppies…their bodies are flushed with hormones and other science-type stuff that makes them act out in odd and strange new ways.”
The mixed reviews and poor ratings have led Fox to formally cancel Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.
The second season show, starring and co-produced by Eliza Dushku, is currently on a planned hiatus, keeping it from the harsh glare of the November Sweeps ratings period.
The announced plan has the final episodes broadcast on these dates: two episodes each will air December 4, 11 and 18, from 8 pm to 10 p.m. The last three episodes will air on January 8, 15 and 22 at 9 p.m.
Whedon has been given sufficient notice so the final episodes will wrap up the existing storylines. Summer Glau was recently added to the cast and will play a pivotal role with her knowledge of someone’s past life.
A second season DVD set is expected but no date has been announced.
This marks the second failed series Whedon has produced for Fox, after Firefly. He has yet to issue a formal statement but no doubt it will be heartfelt and entertaining. Meantime, Whedon is also prepping to direct at least one episode of the network’s hit series Glee.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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