Can ‘Glee’ Fix Its Own Bad Reputation?

Becky Bain | May 5, 2010 8:35 am

Last night’s Glee episode “Bad Reputation” hit the 70s, 80s and 90s, featuring only-ironically-enjoyed songs like MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” incredibly dated karaoke mainstays like “Physical” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and “Run Joey Run,” an over-the-top, cheeseball song we’re pretty sure only creator Ryan Murphy had heard of before making Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Mark Salling perform it. At least we got a still-hot Olivia Newton John dueting with our favorite tracksuit model Sue Sylvester. Watch the blondes tearing up an updated, Auto-Tuned “Physical” below.

“Physical”

As entertaining as it is seeing these two together… does your average Glee viewer even get the reference? The original “Physical” video is from 1981—almost 30 years ago! We’re not saying that the Glee cast should be remaking clips only to come out in the last year, but to spend a good chunk of screen time remaking a music video that is more than likely double the age of most of your viewers is a bizarre move.

Then again, we’d prefer if Ryan Murphy and the writers would stop remaking classic music videos altogether and spend that extra time fine-tuning all the things wrong with Glee. And yes, there are quite a few things that this addictive show could work on to make it move from a guilty pleasure to just a pleasure.

The Atlantic posted a comprehensive write-up of the three main things Glee does wrong. And they are:

1 – Reality is completely ignored on the show. “The club’s gone through so many fancy costume changes and elaborate sets that the story just seemed like a tired retread of the choir-cheerleading rivalry Glee has come to rely on all too heavily. And as Mr. Schuester’s divorce and Quinn’s pregnancy have progressed, questions of money have largely been forgotten. The stakes in both plots have declined dramatically as a result.”

2 – Lea Michele sings too darn much. “By relying so heavily on Lynch, and Lea Michele’s Rachel and Cory Monteith’s Finn, and underdeveloping large swaths of its big and talented cast, the show is at risk of making its leads boring and overexposed.”

3 – There are too many plotholes and unanswered questions to count. “Is Quinn, kicked out by her parents for getting pregnant, still living with her ex-boyfriend? Who was making harassing phone calls to Kurt, a gay glee-clubber’s, father? What happened to Finn’s worries about a college scholarship? And Rachel’s desire to have sex, so memorably articulated in early episodes? Also, are her dads just never home? How old are these kids anyway?”

Head on over to The Atlantic to read the rest of their gripes. Are you Gleeks just as frustrated with the show you love (or the show you love to hate) and hope it wises up? Or is Glee just straight-up fun to watch no matter how many “problems” it might have?