Confessions of a “Glee” Hater

Editor's Note: The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinion of AfterElton.com or its staff.

“Oh my god, have you watched Glee yet?” I found myself being asked on a regular basis by friends/co-workers/random acquaintances during the show’s highly-rated first-season run.

Having never tuned in, I’d always respond that I hadn’t, and that I wasn’t really interested in watching – an admission that would inevitably be followed by a flabbergasted response. “Really? Oh, but you just have to give it a chance! It’s amazing/brilliant/awesome/superb!!”

Annoying? Yeah, a little.

Nevertheless, all the hype surrounding the series – even prior to its cushy post-American Idol debut in May 2009 – suggested that I should be watching, and that because I’d failed to tune in I might as well be living in some dusty catacomb reserved for the hopelessly out-of-touch.

This perception was only aggravated by the insistence of those around me that I was missing out on a truly amazing/brilliant/awesome/superb hour of groundbreaking television, often underpinned by the borderline-offensive subtext that the show would of course hold automatic appeal for me because I’m a gay man.

I mean after all, it’s a musical! With gay characters in major roles!

Anyone who really knows me would hardly be shocked by my aversion to a TV series that has grown so inordinately huge in such a short amount of time, particularly given how wary I am normally of any television show/musical act/film/celebrity/miscellaneous entertainment offering that’s come to enjoy as much public adoration and commercial success as Glee has.

I realize that may sound pretentious, but it’s not as if I’m basing that attitude on absolutely nothing; the majority of the time, I find that anything popular in the realm of entertainment frankly isn’t very good, and I know there are a lot of other very smart people out there who would agree with that assertion.

You want examples? Hell, just check out the top of the Billboard charts on any given week, or a list of the highest-grossing films at the box-office every year. The latest Transformers sequel or Katy Perry album may have raked in the millions, but as works of art? They might have just as well been produced at a marketing seminar.

I’m not at all attempting to demean those who enjoy this kind of mainstream entertainment – there’s certainly a place for it, and I enjoy some of it too – but as for my personal preferences, I’d much rather spend my time and money on something that has something relatively new and interesting to say.

That being said, I’m also self-aware enough to realize that the wholesale rejection of anything popular is a rather limiting and close-minded proposition (charming when you’re a teen, rather less so when you’re an adult) that ultimately reeks of elitism.

As such, around the middle point of Glee’s first season I decided to ignore the pre-existing notions I had about the show – which is about as mainstream as you can get in the realm of broadcast television – and give the kids at McKinley High a shot.

But try as I might to be objective, it just didn’t take. Though I found the writing witty at times, and though the overarching message of the show – to tolerate and accept those who are different – is certainly something a former teenage pariah such as myself can appreciate, I also found the delivery of that message to be almost insufferably cloying and obvious – the satiric edges I’d appreciated in the early going dulled by a sharp right turn into banal melodrama by the third act.

It was a change in tone that left me feeling cheated, and I ultimately came away with the distinct impression that I’d just watched two completely different shows – one relatively smart and enjoyable, the other excessively sentimental and pandering.

As unimpressed as I was from the get-go, I was nevertheless assured that I just had to give Glee another chance. Even outside of the friends, co-workers and acquaintances who had recommended it to me, the series was also both lovingly exalted by the mainstream gay media (who in my opinion have covered the series to the point of excess and – with exceptions, of course – remained far too unquestioning in their wholehearted embrace of it) and almost universally praised by critics.

On top of everything else, the show’s “watercooler” factor – that unquantifiable on-the-street buzz that transforms a mere TV program into a bona fide cultural touchstone – was deafening.

Glee wasn’t just a television show, its admirers seemed to be saying; it was a socially-relevant landmark in the history of broadcast television, particularly in the way that it offered increased visibility for gay and lesbian characters – of high school-age, no less – on the small screen.

Look, it’s not that I don’t agree (at least in part) with any of the hyperbolic assertions that have been put forth regarding the series. The fact that one of its main characters, Kurt Hummel (played by Chris Colfer, the current poster boy for gay acceptance), is not only an openly-gay high school student but an openly-gay high school student played by an openly-gay actor barely out of his teenage years, is truly laudable.

I’m not sure that’s ever happened before, at least not on a show that’s been as embraced by the mainstream as Glee has.

Taking all of that into due consideration, I decided to give Glee yet another try. It still didn’t take.

In fact, I actually found myself physically recoiling from the screen at times, and groaning a lot, and rolling my eyes at regular intervals. The characters were shallow archetypes, mostly, aside from some admittedly solid acting and a few inspired touches here and there.

And the storylines? Pedantic schmaltz sorely lacking in any sense of subtlety or genuine humanity.

Rather than tackling serious issues like homophobia, teen sex, bullying, religion, etc. with the complexity they deserve, in every episode of Glee (or at least the ones that I’ve seen) viewers are instead treated to a host of feel-good dance numbers, a couple of programmatic “touching” character moments, and then a climax that effectively cheapens whatever message they’re trying to convey by ladling on an orgy of over-simplistic speechifying and a feel-good final song and dance routine.

I effectively reached the end of my rope with the show during the episode entitled “Home”, in which Mercedes overcomes criticism concerning her obesity by singing – you guessed it – Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.”

Groan! Really? That’s the best and most original idea they could come up with? That’s groundbreaking television?