#GleeGoodbye

Last night we said goodbye to the television show Glee, after six seasons, countless (okay it’s probably countable, I just don’t feel like looking it up) solos and covers the little awkward tv show about show choir has come to an end. It has been six years of sloppy character development, one season of mocking PSAs and the rest of the series being a giant PSA for everything from bullying and LGBT rights to suicide prevention and stopping discrimination against special needs.

No this blog is not solely about the finale, or the singing, or what happens to the characters. It’s about the show as a whole. It started out quirky which attracted most of it’s audience, alienated it’s audience with season two, and got weird with season three and four.

I watched the first three seasons before deciding ‘there’s better ways to spend my Tuesday nights’ and moving onto NCIS and Arrow as my entertainment. I started the series the summer after it’s first season with a ‘i honestly don’t care’ attitude and continued watching with that same attitude. Then season two came, it started off with the feeling that ‘yeah we’re big shots and we can’t be cancelled by FOX for atleast another two seasons’ but then I saw Grilled Cheesus (which is still my favorite episode) where the topic of religion and atheism was tackled in a shockingly mature way. Kurt the atheist was going through a hard time and didn’t approve of his friends who all happened to be believe in God. Kurt doesn’t convert to Christianity/worshiping the God of Abraham, but thanks his friends for giving him the support needed during his time of crisis and apologizes for the way he treated his friends. Kurt’s friends in return apologize for trying to force him to convert to a belief system and judging him for being an atheist.

The rest of season two can be summed up as “the Rachel show,” with everything focusing on Rachel and Kurt getting a love interest and Santana and Britney’s throw away gag about having sex with each other becoming a full blown relationship. And alot of Tina and Mercedes getting the short end of the stick of anything concerning plot.

Concerning the topics that the series tackled, I really don’t know if it did or did not do anything for the LGBT community. The show premiered when gay rights had become something already in the media, it’s first season took place during the end of the show Ugly Betty that had a gay kiss shared between two teenage boys under eighteen that I feel helped the world get ready for everything that would happen between Kurt and Blain. But did it really do anything for the LGBT community? I don’t know, one character from season six (Spencer) comments that gays became the norm because of Modern Family, not so much the actions of the Glee club. If it did get the world to be accepting of gays then great! If not, then I’m sure it helped someone out there concerning LGBT rights.

Did the show really need to tackle a topic like bullying the way it did in season two? At the time I would have said no since all the glee kids were picked on at some point during season one and treated as a form of comedy. Now being older, maybe those plots concerning bullying were necessary. It is a running theme in the series through all of the seasons, I think the more important thing to care about is how the characters dealt with.

At first the main conflict of bullying (Kurt being an openly gay student) had no choice but to flee his school in fear of his life and wanting safety for his friends. When he returns to McKinnly highschool he chooses to face his bullies, after discovering one of them is in love with him. The issue dies down, but the topic of bullying resurfaces frequently going beyond characters being picked on because they’re gay.Unique is pressured and bullied for being a transgender, Santana goes through her own pain because she’s a lesbian, Kurflousky having a horrible time after being outed in public by his peers and mother, Marley being picked on for having a plus sized mother and being poor, Ryder having a learning disability, Roderick because of his weight, Shannon/Sheldon Beist for not being lady like (she then suffers from spousal abuse), then also suffering from being discriminated against after changing her gender to a male by Vocal Adrenalin. All of these characters presented something for weekly viewers (most of them in their teens) a lesson about being bullied. Face the problem, have courage, don’t take a violent approach, but face the problem.

Inbetween the fourth and fifth season the death of Cory Monteith occurred. It was an event that brought me back to the series. It’s safe to say all fans were affected by his death, his character Finn was killed off with him. All of the aftershocks of this death affected the plot of the show for the remaining seasons. Even if it was tragic, it may have been something fans needed. If the fans needed Glee to handle being bullied, becoming comfortable with their sexuality then the topic of losing a loved one was needed.

The actor and character were different, but it was still tragic. The series ended on a positive note though. All characters got a “happily ever after” in a hopeful future, a future that the world of Glee had always hoped for.

Advertisement

Thoughts on Frozen Fever (oh and I guess Cinderella)

It’s like a rated G version of Ever After; it’s not bad, it’s not amazing, but it’s not bad. The same plot of every other Cinderella story is present in this adaptation. There really isn’t much to say about the movie in general. Feminists will more than likely not be happy with the film for the (logical) reasoning that Cinderella is running off with a man she barely knows; the only redeeming thing about that is that she’s willing to reject the marriage to keep the country safe from her stepmother.

Christians will love the film; it’s clean, no flashy sexy dresses, no adult humor whatsoever (that I could find anyways), strong messages of showing kindness to any and all people along with a message snuck in at the last minute I feel is important. It was clumsily shoved into the plot, but a key scene towards the end of the movie after Cinderella tries on the glass slipper and agrees to marry the prince is that as she’s exiting her house she looks straight into her stepmother’s eyes and says something that many people find hard to say. “I forgive you.” It’s simple, but it’s a message many Christians have a hard time fulfilling and teaching. To drive it even further Cinderella doesn’t even enact revenge on her stepsisters and stepmother for what they did to her like in some variations of the fairy tale.

All in all Cinderella is a nice movie and a nice breather from the streak of dark movies Disney has been releasing the past couple of years. It has two and a half glass slippers out of five.

Okay let’s get to the real reason you all paid nearly ten dollars for this movie. Frozen Fever; the long awaited sequel to the 2013 hit film Frozen. It’s cute, you get Idena Menzel singing a duet with Kirsten Bell through most of it and Kirstoff being the desired boyfriend everyone secretly wants (even the straight men). I honestly don’t want to spoil any of that, everyone should enjoy it for themselves.

Thoughts on Steven Universe Season Finale

Today was the season finale to Steven Universe, and it was very good; it lived up to the hype built up the past few episodes had been making about the gem known as Peridot coming to earth to unleash all kinds of modern gem-kind hell.

Spoilers from this point on, if you don’t want to be spoiled then do not read.

Following in the graceful footsteps of the series finale to Avatar The Legend of Korra Steven Universe provides us with an LGBT couple introduced in the second half of the season finale episode Jail break. Previously the leader of the Crystal Gems Garnet had been defeated at the hands of Jasper with bother her gems being separated. Many fans (myself included) had their theories proven true that Garnet is indeed a fusion gem of Ruby and Sapphire (that part I kind of just threw in because I’m a huge pokemon fan. Something tells me Rebecca Sugar is too.) However we’re shown that Ruby and Sapphire had different personalities with Ruby being a feisty warrior and Sapphire being elegant, lady like, and similar to a princess. Prior to this the fans had just been exposed to four fusions (Opal, Sugilite, Alexandrite, and Stevonnie), all of them temporary fusions because of lack of compatibility (Opal, Alexandrite, and Stevonnie) or had to be defeated (Sugilite).

I had suspected what kind of fusion Garnet was for a while; in Coach Steven was that she was just two gems who “lost themselves” together as Garnet thinking it was better to have a gem like her. Part of my inner self thought ‘what if fusions is like being married?’ after Pear commented that Stevonnie was “inappropriate” for Steven and Connie and the large grin on Garnet’s face

I think it’s gread that Steven Universe is joining in by having LGBT characters, but does it really count since the whole gem population is female? Debatable; this topic along with gem fusions is for another entry.

The episodes themselves really show how far Steven has not only come since the beginning of the series, but also how far Steven himself has come since the episodes Mirror Gem and Ocean Gem and losing his healing powers shortly afterwards. The long lived fear that Steven’s humanity was making him less effective as a gem proved to be the reason why Steven was even able to execute his rescue mission of the Crystal Gems in the first place.

We also see how far the citizens of Beach City have come too; they know that their city is a target for disaster, but are always trusting that the Crystal Gems ‘always save the day, and even if they can’t they’ll always find a way, believing in Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl and Steven’. However in this episode they realize, their heroes may not be able to protect them and abandon beach city and show concern for each other when Greg and Steven have a car accident. Not sure if Connie’s parents are still unaware of the kind of universe they live in, but I’m pretty sure they evacuated.

The gems really are placed to the test; all of their technology and the fusion of Opal (that should give you an idea of how grave the situation is) prove to be useless against Peridot and Jasper’s machines. They strike back with grace against their opponents making easy work of Peridot and Garnet being able to defeat Jasper with the power of love.

We also get the return of Lapis Lazuli from the midseason finale; Lapis is taken prisoner and isn’t happy with the gem homeworld and what they’ve become. In an effort to make up for the wrong she’s (minisculely) responsible for she agrees to fuse with Jasper into Malachite and trap themselves at the bottom of the ocean. It’s a pretty tragic end to her character since all she wanted to do was go home and her home having become a horrible place.

In the end The Return and Jail Break were a great way to finish up season one of Steven Universe. I think for season two they’ll return to the format of writing that the start of season one had of having a Monster of the Week format along with hints of what could happen; Peridot is somewhere on earth, but has no power to fight the gems without her technology (I think she’ll become comic relief), the Crystal Gems have access to modern gem technology now that Pearl can probably reverse engineer to be of use to them, there’s still the threat of Yellow Diamond, the mystery of Lion, and the possibility of Rose living on through Steven to gather plot driven episodes from.

I give it five cookie cat icecream bars out of five,