Tag Archives: Theme Episode

January 9, 2011 · 10:31 am

Why Justin Bieber on Glee is not the Gleepocalypse

Why Justin Bieber is not the Gleepocalypse

January 9th, 2011

In light of recent reports that Glee would be doing an episode based around the musical oeuvre of Justin Bieber, there was plenty of snark.

And trust me, I wanted to be right there with them.

However, I think we need to take a step back for a moment. This isn’t a show which needs to be appealing to the current trends – or, if you prefer, fads – in order to stay on the air, which means that this wouldn’t really desperate. Sure, it would be shameless, but in the context of how Glee has built previous theme” episodes I’d actually say that Bieber would be a step up – narratively. While it may not offer the deep catalogue of Madonna, or the cultural significance of a Britney Spears, the fact of the matter is that the Justin Bieber story actually goes back to the series’ very roots and says something about young people striving for greatness.

And sure, Ausiello’s initial report at the new TVLine has since been debunked by Ryan Murphy, but the initial reaction to the news says something about how we respond to Glee‘s use of particular artists, and how the definition of “Theme Episode” is constantly shifting. Yes, Bieber’s music is not the most challenging aural experience, and his life story just so happens to be heading to the big screen days before the episode featuring at least one of his songs is scheduled to air, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less effective as a storytelling device.

At the end of the day, isn’t that what matters?

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Glee

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

September 28, 2010 · 10:45 pm

Glee – “Britney/Brittany”

“Britney/Brittany”

September 28th, 2010

A week after opening with an unquestionably meta opening, Ryan Murphy did not stray far from that example with “Britney/Brittany”: in the opening scenes, Will expresses how he wants New Directions to know when to show restraint, while Kurt and many other students express their desire to branch out into something more exciting, youthful. It picks up directly where last week’s opening left off, questioning the song choices the series makes, which I’d argue is an interesting question that this season does need to respond to.

Of course, how much you enjoy “Britney/Brittany” depends on both its framework (which has some issues in terms of balancing fantasy and reality) and how Britney Spears’ presence plays out throughout the course of the episode. As someone who admittedly enjoys Spears’ music on the level of cheesy pop fare, I thought choosing Britney was not in and of itself a mistake; however, the show was let down considerably by the way in which her music and its legacy were received by those both within and outside of New Directions.

While musically satisfying, at least for me personally, “Britney/Brittany” suffered from an inelegance which is likely to cause any future themed episodes to raise even more red flags than this hour.

Continue reading →

19 Comments

Filed under Glee

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 27, 2010 · 12:54 am

Mad Men – “Hands and Knees”

“Hands and Knees”

September 26th, 2010

“Everybody has bad dreams once in a while.”

In a Twitter discussion, Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall had a discussion about the role of theme in Mad Men: to boil it down for you, Seitz suggested he was on the fence about “Hands and Knees” due to it being a “theme episode,” while Alan argued that every episode is a theme episode (while acknowledging that this may be simply because he, as a critic, looks for themes to inform his review).

The distinction I offered is that there is a difference between “theme episodes” (which I would argue “Hands and Knees” is) and “episodes with themes” (which is the majority of Mad Men’s run). The series is too thematically rich to go without themes in any particular episode, but “Hands and Knees” stands apart in terms of actively tying nearly every single story into that theme: instead of one bad dream, it’s a collection of bad dreams that happen simultaneously (insert Inception joke).

What makes it, and all good “theme episodes,” work so well is that the episode itself acknowledges that the consistency of this theme is ridiculous: everything that could go wrong does go wrong in the episode, as if every worst case scenario and everything they want to keep secret rises to the surface. The episode asks us to join Roger in laughter when we realize just how screwed these people all are, while emphasizing that everyone has a good reason to go on pretending as if none of it has actually happened.

It’s a very straightforward thematic episode, though, and writing out the same thing as everyone else seems like a waste of my time – as a result, I’m going to outline my thematic read of the episode very briefly before discussing some of the more ancillary elements of the story which may not clearly connect with the central theme.

Continue reading →

20 Comments

Filed under Mad Men

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,