One of my favourite TV reviewers Todd VanDerWerff at the AV club reviews both Glee and Community. We don't always agree (see his rather positive review of Asian F) but what we do share is a love of comparing Glee and Community. In fact he got me started on it, I say that like it's a class A drug, although it is fun. Here is a section of his review of the Community season 2 finale For a Few Paintballs More-
“I’m not going to argue that Leonard, say, is as well-developed a character as any of the main seven (or even as well developed as, say, theDean), but it’s also sort of clear that the writers COULD do a whole episode about Leonard and Vicki teaming up to solve mysteries with Quendra as their quirky secretary who speaks exclusively in rhyme. They’ve clearly got a lot of affection for everybody that exists in this universe, and the finale is the best expression of that so far. The main character here isn’t Jeff or Britta or Annie or even Greendale itself; it’s the student body and how it comes together to face an external threat. Community is a show that’s endlessly inventive, sure, but unlike other pop culture mash-up shows, it’s also open to all points-of-view and deeply humane. The jokes are great, sure, but the show—even at its clunkiest—really believes that every person that goes to Greendale, even if they seem to exclusively say “Pop pop!” is worthy of our time and attention. When I say the show has “heart,” I don’t mean that it shoehorns in a little speech from the characters about what they learned at the end of each episode; I mean that it really does seem to view all of these people as equals, as potential leads to their own stories.”
When I first read this I immediately thought how different that was to the way Glee treats it's characters. Most of the time it feels like the characters on Glee are used as methods to further illustrate the message of the show, rather than people in their own right. This is especially true for secondary and guest characters. People like Holly Holliday are only there to further Wills progression or teach the kids something that will make them more empowered. Did anyone else snort when I said Will's progression I know I did. That man has no progression. I do realise that this complaint (if it is one, more on that later) could perhaps be levelled at Community in terms of guest stars, John Goodman was there to develop the Dean's storyline (that and be hilarious). But Todd's right that it really isn't true in regards to the regulars and background characters at Greendale. Whereas this applies quite strongly in some respects to lots of the main members of New Directions. While Kurt and to a certain extent Finn have back stories that we know about and understand that further develop their characters others mainly don't. I was going to put Rachel in the list of people but then I thought that actually no her character doesn't have anything much outside the “I WANT TO BE A STAR” motivation. And even when they do try you can't help but think it isn't going to change anything. Example will our new knowledge of Mike's back story going add much to him? Doubtful. Many character arcs are mainly about the replaying the message about the importance of the arts and how they help you accept yourself. Obviously it's a great message but it's the only one Glee has. Sure it's got different varieties of it. Music helps you accept your sexuality, music helps you face the reality that you're a pregnant at 16, music helps you realise you are beautiful. It even helps your parent accept you want to be a Dancer. Wow is there anything music and musical theatre can't do...sort out Greece's financial crisis? Again I'm not disputing musics importance in people lives but it's not the be all and end all of the human experience.
But I'm getting distracted. Back to characters. I think it's true that if we had a episode of Community about Magnitude or Star Burns I'd totally buy it. But even having like a third of an episode about Mike (a character thats been in the main group since the beginning) I didn't feel like we a) learnt anything or b)it really worked and perhaps more importantly I don't totally believe that it'll ever be mentioned again. When development does happen, even to the main group, more often than not things are then dropped for weeks, sometimes seasons, sometimes forever. Seriously how many times have we had Emma admit she needs help and look like she's going to start down the road to recovery, fecking loads thats how many. How many times have we got further than this step, never. Even in Archer, a show that in many ways relies on the fact that at the the end of most episodes the setting goes back to zero, manages better continuity than Glee lots of the time. This seeming refusal to remember things like what the characters did, where motivated by and decided episode to episode shows a distinct lack of interest in treating them like actual humans. It might sound stupid but that perhaps is the main difference. Glee treats its characters like just that characters whereas Community treats then like people. People have thoughts, ideas going on that we the audience don't see but it bleeds into what we do see happening. With Glee it's all on the surface, sometimes it feels like some of the characters don't have a thought we don't find out about. When they're not on camera they cease to exist. We hardly ever see Star Burns but I completely can see him and his everyday life. What does Artie do when he's not sitting in the choir room, I'm less sure. According to Tina he making short films, also I vaguely remember that once he talked about video games. That's it, what does Finn do come to that. Talk to sandwiches? Does that fill his hours?
This sounds like a negative thing because surely the idea of a narrative show is that it should be based on well rounded developed characters. But in many ways main characters with too much depth and individuality goes against what Glee is trying to do or the role it is trying to play in it audiences lives. A role which is utterly different to what I imagine the writes of Community are trying to do. Glee to a certain extent is a show designed to help the audience live vicariously through its characters. So they are meant to be a base for the audience to add their own sense of self too. Obviously all art forms should aim to create characters the audience can connect to but there is a difference between connecting with and living through. The reason Glee has such ardent fans and people love it so strongly is because it pulls them in. They live through the characters and yes perhaps sometimes do come closer to accepting them selves. If it helps anyone do this then surely that's a great thing even if it means that sometimes the characters come across a little lacking in depth. The audience brings the depth. Community on the other hand doesn't have an overriding message and it's aims are less overt other than to have fun. Not that it's all fluff but its very self aware and smart (smart-arse might be a better phrasing). Perhaps that's it's message -“Look how smart I am!”. Could you get a more self conscious half an hour of television than Paradigms Of Human Memory- it might be difficult. Spoiler alert, though, I loved that episode because I love smart arsery and wanky self aware humour. But with this idea at your core if you didn't have characters with heart (to steal Todd's word choice) a show would fall flat and be meaningless. Glee doesn't need all its characters to have heart, the show and its the ideological basis is the heart.
To develop this idea of self awareness and the comparisons to the two shows I'm going to start with a line from Community that I think demonstrates this really well. In Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts, Fat Neil's girlfriend says (or near as damn it) as Shirley goes into labour
“To think we almost got through a whole class that wasn't about them”
This is of course the principle layer of acceptance the audience needs to make with any television show let in a large institution. With all shows centred around schools or similar you only ever get to know a small group of people and the rest become an amorphous blob. So everything that ever happens at the school happens through the eyes of the group. In reality of course life is like this. At school or university your complete frame of reference is you and your social group but of course you know that all the other students are living their own lives and having their own adventures. With Community we get glimpses of this, when we discover in the same episode that in a previous episode Abed had helped delivered a baby on campus. Life goes on outside that study group and the writers of Community know it. Glee again never mentions this. I really want to there to be an episode of Glee that plays on this idea. In my head it would start with a song by the glee club at a school and a student would say something similar to Fat Neil's girlfriend and then the rest of the episode would be about their school experience maybe now and again see glimpses of the New Directions members or as the random walked past the choir room we would hear a snippet of a song. Glee portrays high school as difficult but only really for the ones we see. Other students we get introduced to could be struggling with issues (or clearly are). But we never really acknowledge that properly or see them deal with them. An admission that high school is difficult for everyone would be nice. If Community did a show where we spent time with random's at Greendale, I would love it and I think they'd do a really good job at it.They've proven they are good at gimmick episodes e.g. Paradigms Of Human Memory (did I mentioned that I loved that episode?) But it doesn't feel as necessary as it does for Glee. Partly because I think Glee needs at least a little self awareness and humility to make it a slightly more endearing as show. It needs to admit that everyone is fighting their own kinds of battles and not everyone deals with that through music and thats ok. Sometimes it feels like its suggesting that the arts cure all and everything should go to hell, that's not true and I'd like it say that just once. Obviously I'm not suggesting it should show everyone all the time that would be stupid and you'd never have enough time to do it justice.
I'm aware that this reads like I'm saying Community's great and Glee sucks. I'm really not Glee's aim is a good one and it does help people but it's needs to gets its head out of its own arse. Glee is a statement show with a blatant agenda and message. This is a completely legitimate thing for a show to have but Glee needs to balance it better It's painfully obviously smug about its agenda lots of the time but also I think if you'd asked it (personifying the show momentarily) it would claim ignorance. If people said Community should also take its head out of it own arse and stop being so pleased with its self, it would be hard to argue. So yes both are smug, but why I forgive Community more than I do Glee is what I think Community knows its a smug git of a show. This admission should make it worse but personally I like that about it (The hipster in me talking perhaps). Glee pretends it better than the rest of us but it's not, not even a little bit.
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