I caved during the summer and watched all of Glee, not because someone pestered me into doing so, but because it's probably a show I should keep up with. Brief review: Glee has lots of likable elements--the characters, fun numbers--but is lacking in so many areas that it's hard to think of Glee as a premiere comedy. Certain characters or situations are propped up, in what appears a big arc, and then are abruptly pulls back, cutting them short before reaching full potential. And then there's the message of the show and the "drama." Often, I find myself laughing more at the ridiculousness of the serious scenes than the funny ones. So my solution is to interpret every scene as pure comedy, and Glee turns out looking great.
It's hard not to watch Glee without smiling or snickering, so I liked the episode on a superficial level, which is all that's required to watch the show. "Audition" shows signs of a large-scale change, with the introduction of two new characters, but everything resets to where it was. The school hates the glee club and club has the same members, minus the black guy who transferred. The minor changes in status--Finn off the football team, Quinn as head cheerleader, Santana on the bottom of a cheerleading heap (and with implants), Asian and Other Asian together, leaving Artie in the wind--are only blips in the grand scheme of things.
But Rachel and Will surprisingly played dangerously in a moral grey area, which was quite good, at least in Will's case. He and Sue team up to bring down Coach Beist, the new female football coach who is sapping their resources, and do a few mean things before Will realizes he's ostracizing Beiste, just as the school ostracizes the glee club.
In Rachel's case, she's about as unrealistic as Sue is at certain points, and a bit like Nancy from Weeds. She's lost all perspective of things and frankly, is a bad person, maybe even a sociopath. She sends Sunshine to a crack house instead of the audition and later justifies her actions by claiming she was doing it for the members on the lower end of the club who would suffer from Sunshine taking their roles. We know it's because she's scared she'd be overshadowed, and it makes her final song either grating, in that she continues down the path, or funny, in that is hilarious how misguided she is.
When the episode is over, you can go over the episode and say how stupid the plot was (which it was) or how dumb and unrealistic Rachel is, but at the end of the day, Glee remains a immensely pleasurable show, full of laughs and fun moments.
Score: 8.9/10
