Gleefully Cliche

I like the TV show "Glee." I often tell my students that they should not feel the need to leave high school to experience the "real" world. For better or worse high school is part of the real world and it's best not to delude oneself otherwise. (If anything college is not the real world, but that is for another post.)

Glee has proudly positioned itself as the champion of the outcast, the downtrodden, the bullied. But it is frustrating because its depiction of the different groups that fall within these categories is so uneven. Glee is rightfully admired for its compassionate, subtle, nuanced and bold depiction of the plight of the gay teenager. The character Kurt Hummel is arguably Glee's biggest breakout and best character. Episode after episode tackled issues rarely touched by network television: coming out to your parents, being bullied because of your sexual orientation or one's first romantic experience.

But when the show strays from this story line to tackle issues of other characters whether they be Asian or obese or pregnant the show stumbles in to cliche or delusion. The Asian characters Mike Chang and Tina Cohen-Chang get their turn in the spotlight in the episode "The Asian F." But the show turns on an old Asian stereotype; the overbearing Asian parent who considers anything other than A pluses and medical school to be self indulgent and trite. This storyline isn't even very original seeing as it was done with a WASP twist twenty years ago in "Dead Poets Society."

The depiction of the life of a pregnant teenager, as seen in the story of Quinn Fabray, also fails to illustrate anything remotely connected to reality. On this topic Glee can't hold a candle to MTV's "16 and Pregnant" or "Teen Mom." But not only does it not do a very good job of wrestling with the reality of being a teenager in high school and pregnant but it manages to paper over the issue like it was really no big deal since Quinn puts her baby up for adoption, and after a brief period of lame rebellion, returns to school with her position on the Cheerios and the Glee Club restored. The baby story line seemed like a plot device that had served its purpose, become inconvenient, and needed to be discarded. It seems a pregnancy story line is manna to writers throughout Hollywood who then seem incapable of dealing with the consequences of a baby in the subsequent plot. It's like these writers need a television writer's version of birth control.

Of course a newborn baby that can be written out of the script and ignored is about as far removed from reality as one could get. But Glee and Quinn Fabray's are not alone in their dalliance with a TV show pregnancy. They have joined legions of other network TV hits who found a pregnancy story line much more interesting that the baby it produces such as 80's classics Family Ties and Growing Pains. (Of course I'm a child of the 80's so I'm sure there are many more recent examples to choose from.) Having a baby might threaten Happy Days "jumping the shark" as the new sign of the impending decline of a once enjoyable series.

But no story line was as disconnected from reality or shallow as its portrayal of the obese student Lauren Zizes. Lauren was written as a sassy, overweight girl whose attitude would rival the most callous prom queen. And this attitude seemed to pay off as she eventually attracts the attention of Noah Puckerman, the show's resident not-so-bright jock, who eventually serenades her with Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls." But does Lauren's character ring true in any way as compared to the way Kurt Hummel's does?

There is certainly plenty of territory for Glee to explore concerning the plight of an overweight student in high school. The epidemic of eating disorders, cutting and depression testifies to this fact. It appears that Glee is either incapable or unwilling to go there. And not only does Glee not go there but they seem to have unceremoniously dumped the Lauren Zizes character for season three.

In the end the fat character was dumped just like the baby.