So during Glee’s first season (fall season? how are we referring to this?), I don’t think I hid my enthusiasm about the show and its long term prospects at all.  Loved the music, loved the enthusiasm, and felt that a lot of the writing was very smart (not to mention pithy).  Sure they got stuck in that odd baby rut for a while, but in general the show was smart and I was very much looking forward to its return and its future.  However, 3 episodes into its second run, I’m not sure who’s more confused about the shows direction, me or showrunner Shawn Ryan.

The first episode back, the show made the same type of move that so many shows make coming off a “season finale” and basically un-did everything it accomplished prior to that finale.  Most times this is because a show creates some ridiculous cliffhanger that is great for the drama but really does not create a long-term sustainable situation.  That wasn’t necessarily the case here.  Why couldn’t Will date the OCD guidance counselor?  Why couldn’t Rachel date Finn (well other than the fact that it wouldn’t have allowed us to add Jonathan Groff)? [Side Note:  Jonathan Groff has been painfully underused so far.  Give the man a solo!]  Why did we have to return to a situation where the New Directions were once again fighting for their life as a club?  Glee gave us three major story archs in the first round of episodes, and we reset all three in the first episode back!  Momentum stopped.

Episode Two is the showstopper, the one they’ve been selling us on during the hiatus, the big Madonna episode.  The songs were fun.  But, really, the whole episode felt rather inorganic.  When forced to build an episode around a specific musician rather than build the songs out of the storyline, the writers are really hamstrung.  The music may have been fun (and immensely profitable based on the episode’s iTunes rankings), but the show really suffered for it. 

That brings us to tonight’s episode, which had a nice theme about home.  The episode had a lot of great examples of how good the show can be.  One thing the writers have managed to do is create really authentic moments between its characters.  Whether it was between Kurt and his father, Finn and Kurt’s father, Finn and his mother, or Mercedes and Quinn, the episode offered some really good stuff.  BUT I’m not sure how we got there?  The moments were all authentic, but the storyline was really inorganic.  The stories were all jammed in without any actual growth.  The point of Kurt getting his father and Finn’s mother together was so that he could get closer to Finn, right?  But the story didn’t even begin to address that at all.  I’m not even sure where the Will story arch came from.  At what point has he become lonely?  When he was making out with the OCD counselor, trying to have sex with her, or when he was making out with Idina Menzel’s character?  Hey, I’ll take any opportunity I can get to hear Cheno sing a couple songs (especially Home from The Wiz because it’s amazing), but again the storyline felt jammed into the episode.  The only story which really made much sense, and its no wonder that it was definitely the strongest, was the Mercedes one. (UPDATE: Just wanted to note that at the very least Time.com’s James Poniewozik disagreed with me on which stories worked and which didn’t and makes me feel as if I might have been a little too harsh.)

Alas, I’ve still got high hopes for Glee, but I hope the show gets back to being more organically serialized and less forced by the music.  

(For the record, I expect to listen to Home at least a dozen times tomorrow.)

(UPDATE: I forgot to give credit to Shawn Ryan for the daring move that was the “One Less Bell to Answer”/”A House is Not a Home” medley between Will and Cheno.  The two songs, which have to be relatively unknown to most of the show’s audience, lasted close to 5 minutes and was a beautifully moving scene.  This is why I watch the show.)

Does anyone not agree with this take?