Season 4 of
Glee premiered last night and although I am often hard on the show, I really did not have much of a problem with anything I saw. Jacob Artist and Melissa Benoist are welcomed additions and Dean Geyer (pictured) sexes up the screen making Finn a distant memory. Kitty (Becca Tobin) seemed a waste of space and for me a little Unique (Alex Newell) goes a long way. Alex's
Pinball Wizard was one of my favorite songs from last season, but as a character he is a bit much in more than small does. Kate Hudson is good, but she is playing a fairly uninspired character, seems there is a teacher like her in almost every movie or television show about the performing arts, and Whoopi Goldberg plays arguably the least memorable role of her long career.
I think the problem is what I didn't see. I understand the producers did not want to make high school 7 years for their cast, but they could have easily gotten away without graduating anyone for another season or 2. Except for Rachel and Kurt (duh), they spread the rest of their graduates all over the country. A
Glee premiere with out a second of Mercedes, Mike, Santana, Puck, Finn, Quinn, Emma, not to mention Becky just fell a little flat to me. The ensemble cast was always what made the show to me, and splitting up the original core cast, while adding so many new faces is just unnecessary. No matter how talented the writers, juggling all these characters, in so many different locations is an almost impossible task.
Glee Season 4
Glee is a musical and musicals are for the most part not based in reality. Fantasy is fine when characters break into song every five minutes. Puck could have failed, Mike could have been hired to assist Will, Quinn, Santana and Mercedes could all be at the same college, would not have been that much of a stretch. The season is just getting started, so we shall see what happens but given Ryan Murphy and company did a fairly poor job of juggling it's large cast when they all existed in one setting, prospects are not looking up.
Dean in
Never Back Down