I was a vocal fan of Glee when it first started, but the show started to drift in season 2 and large swathes of the third season were unwatchable for me, so I came to this fourth season premiere with low expectations of a masterful turnaround. I was right to keep my hopes low, but "The New Rachel" was certainly much better than it had any right to be, given the upheaval the show faces trying to replace old characters and maintain a parallel story set in New York. Glee definitely has a chance to repair some damage this year, although it's hard to see how they'll avoid falling back into a rut once the juice from these fresh characters and situations have been squeezed a few times.
Over in the Big Apple, the real Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) was struggling at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts because of tyrannical teacher Cassandra July (Kate Hudson), who stalks around in leggy fishnets making sour quips and belittling Rachel's talents. She's lying to best-friend Kurt (Chris Colfer) about her horrible experience, but there's relief from the torment with hunky classmate Jacob (Josh Sussman) and the grudging approval of singing teacher Carmen Tibideaux (Whoopi Goldbery), who admitted Rachel's startling rendition of Barbara Streisand's "New York State Of Mind" was "nice".
The whole episode had a bullying theme to it, actually. Rachel was obviously a target of that over on the East Coast and away from home, but the remaining members of the glee club had also let their egos get the better of them, and spent large parts of the premiere being rude to non-gleeks. In particular, Marley's mother is the obese lunch lady of the school, and consequently the target of various "fat jokes" behind her back. Marley and her mom (Trisha Rae Stahl) are also from a poor background and have conspired to keep their relationship a secret from everyone, which made it particularly tough whenever Marley was privy to the mean comments.
A promising enough premiere, for a show that's showing its age and has been struggling with the demands of its own format for a good few years. I don't know if these changes are enough to make me a committed fan again, but I'll be happy if I can just get through episodes without feeling irritable about the repetition and backpedalling nonsense that ruined it last year. I just want them to tell good stories using upbeat pop songs, while telling us something about the teenage experience in a light-hearted and amusing way. I'm sure there will be cloying, insulting, and ridiculous moments to come (perhaps as early as next week!), but if they can just keep some kind of baseline quality I can let the misfires breeze past.
Glee still has the power to be inspiring, emotive, hilarious, charming, and clever, but too often it drowns in its own self-importance, or starts swimming in circles when the narrative dries up and the writers have to recycle or lean on the songs too heavily. I just hope this refresh of the show gives us a decent run before problems resurface.
written by Ryan Murphy / directed by Brad Falchuk / 13 September 2012 / Fox
