Wednesday, May 25, 2011

IT'S A HELL OF A TOWN: Like most episodes of this season, the finale of Glee was simultaneously overstuffed with narrative (yes, it's yet another round on the Rachel/Finn/Quinn/Jesse merry-go-round!) and utterly unexplained (Sam and Mercedes have been dating since Prom?), and utterly inconstently written (Quinn gets yet another character 180, and Brittany S. Pierce can suddenly deliver long monologues about acceptance and love?), but that's not what I wanted to talk about. What this episode reminds us is that even though the show is known for elaborate production numbers, it so rarely shoots on location or outside. Indeed, the only non-backlot or set material I can recall from this season are the mall used in "Born This Way" (which may well be a stock backlot) and some football-related footage (which was probably shot on a backlot).

In contrast, this week's episode featured copious location shooting, not just outdoors, but even at indoor locations (that was definitely the Gershwin theatre interior and I'm pretty sure that was actually Sardi's), which made the show look gorgeous. Of course, this is likely a deliberate choice to make New York seem like the fairyland of Oz to contrast with the drabness of Lima, but it made the episode look spectacular, even if the original songs weren't up to snuff.

18 comments:

  1. Marsha12:33 PM

    So we ended the previous episode with Quinn threatening to ruin nationals, she said two half-hearted lines about tellling on Kurt and Rachel, then she got a new 'do and.... what the heck was that all about? I don't watch the show for plot, and other than Kurt and his dad and Becky, I don't really watch it for character either, but I would appreciate it not being completely nonsensical.

    I am quite glad for the Nationals result, which I won't spoil here. And I loved "For Good." Otherwise, they ended the season a jumbled mess, just as they started it, and I'll keep watching anyway, because I'm a sucker for a good musical number.

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  2. Leslie1:43 PM

    I read an interview with Ryan Murphy that said that they were able to use NY because they were supposed to be in NY, when normally they are in LA which is supposed to be Ohio, so its not easy to do a lot of exterior shooting without it looking like LA.  

    Also, I thought there was a big missed opportunity for Finn to sing Jesse's Girl.  Was anyone else waiting for that one?

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  3. Caitie1:54 PM

    Finn did sing it last year (in the episode "Laryngitis"), so I don't think they'd repeat.

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  4. I loved For Good, and Kurt's outfits. Other than that I was totally underwhelmed, especially with Quinn. They keep redoing her, and I liked end of season 1 Quinn, so it is getting tiresome. 
    Yay for Sam and Mercedes though!

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  5. jessica2:34 PM

    Can we just once more go over what year in school they are each supposed to be in at this point? I know all shows about high school pull this crap, but is next year supposed to be everyone's senior year? Then what.... new cast?

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  6. Just to be clear, they made it to New York, nationals is tomorrow, and then Shu said: "alright you guys, let's *start* writing our original music so we can win this thing." yes?

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  7. Jenn.4:55 PM

    Heh.  That's right, Ps.  And in that timeframe, they also had time to dance all over New York---the boyfriend and I are trying to figure out how a pack of kids in NYC for the first time figured out how to see that much of the city in that amount of time---and also to sneak out for stuff like haircuts and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

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  8. And to somehow travel from Sardi's (44th and 7th) to to the Intercontinental Times Square (44th and 8th) via the far West Village.

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  9. J. Bowman6:50 PM

    I only watched the end, and that was an accident, but I did learn that they were all sophomores last season. The football team's star quarterback, the school's biggest badass, the head cheerleader and her replacement, apparently everyone in the school, were all sophomores. As the commercials said, just give those writer an Emmy already.

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  10. Pirate Cookie7:08 PM

    Rachel and Finn's duet annoyed me.  Maybe it was the take-slow-steps-toward-each-other-then-circle-around-and-walk-away-slowly-and-repeat choreography.  Made me a little motion sick.

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  11. Anonymous7:21 AM

    I will always remember the episode that had Santana channel Pacino: "Do you know what happens in Lima Heights Adjacent? Bad things!"

    I am always down for a round of mocking the concept of "street" on Glee.

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  12. It always drives me crazy that they spend all semester singing random "theme of the week" songs and then pull out the songs for regionals/nationals in the last two days - as if this kind of group wouldn't be rehearsing the same two damn songs for months before the competition.  But alas, I've tried to let that go and accept the Glee-verse. (In which, apparently, Bedford street is just a short stroll from Sardi's.) 

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  13. The choreography in both of their finals performances was so bad that I was relieved New Directions didn't place in the top ten. Other groups are doing real choreography, while their idea of dancing in a group is to move about as a mass, pumping their fists and walking towards the audience.

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  14. Marsha10:55 AM

    Ah yes, My Cup was fantastic. I really cannot take my eyes of Heather Morris when she's dancing. Incredible.

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  15. Anonymous5:34 PM

    Yeah, they will probably need an all new cast after next year. I think Finn, Rachel, Kurt, and Blaine are the only ones who have been outright stated to be juniors, but you should probably assume almost everybody is one.

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  16. Jennifer5:34 PM

    Hah, good point.

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  17. Jennifer5:39 PM

    We didn't have glee club in my school, but I was in the orchestra. We just played the same 6 songs over and over again for an entire semester. I realize that that would be incredibly damn dull to do on television (imagine how sick we'd be of "Don't Stop Believin" when we heard it every week), and that they have to do all new songs every week, and they can't reveal what song they are doing ahead of time.

    That said, it was just STUPID to fly off to New York with nothing prepared. And to say so. Blatantly. (And frankly, the "Original Song" songs were better and more fitting to the characters.) Can't they just say that they are all working on something offscreen for the last few weeks instead?

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  18. Well, if there's something Glee commits to, it's verisimilitude!

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