TSTL: Not Just for Heroines

I've been watching this season's TV darling, Glee. It's cute. The music is really fun (although I have yet to feel the urge to download any of the performances off iTunes so that phenomenon escapes me), and the characters are interesting. The show clearly sees itself as camp because most of the characters are so over-the-top cartoonish no one could be expected to take them seriously. Between the cheerleaders who ALWAYS wear their cheerleading uniforms to the bombastic bully of a cheer coach, Sue, and the germaphobe guidance counselor Emma, nuance is a concept that is ignored completely.

But I do have one fundamental problem with the show that is getting to the point where I'm thinking of bailing.

Warning: this post includes SPOILERS for Glee. Don't read after the cut if you don't want to read SPOILERS.

First, a little background for anyone who doesn't know. Glee's central character is Spanish teacher Will Schuester who recalls his days in the McKinley High School glee club with such fondness that he determines to return the current glee club to its former glory. Over the course of the season, he's managed to recruit both enthusiastic and reluctant singers to flesh out the chorus, all the while fighting the not-remotely-subtle efforts of cheer coach Sue Sylvester to thwart him so that any extra curricular funds go to her champion-level cheer squad.

Will is married to Terri, but he has an obvious attraction to guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury. Football star Finn is dating cheerleader Quinn but has an obvious attraction to glee club star Rachel. And in order to add conflict and tension to these two love triangles, the writers at Glee have stepped out of camp by using a serious storyline that veers so much into soap-opera that I'm about to give up on the show.

See, Terri (Will's wife) is the most annoying sort of characters. She's a prima donna former cheerleader who feels entitled beyond the ability to believe. She treats Will not so much as her life partner but as the person responsible for giving her everything she wants and more, regardless of what he might have to sacrifice. When Will finally showed enough frustration that Terry believed he might actually kick her to the curb where she belongs, she told Will that she was pregnant. He was thrilled and, as would be expected, committed to staying with Terri and being a family. Problem is, Terri is not pregnant.

Cheerleader Quinn's situation is equally self-serving but almost more evil. As president of the McKinley High chastity club (do those really exist?), she's refused boyfriend Finn's attempts to take their relationship physical, a situation he accepts reluctantly. However, after a few wine coolers too many, Quinn gives her virginity to Finn's best friend, Puck, and winds up pregnant. Instead of telling Finn the truth, she convinces Finn that he's the father despite the fact that the two have never had sex. He actually believes the urban myth that a hot tub can serve as the perfect incubator that allows conception sans penetration. He turns his back on his growing feelings for Rachel, freaks as he sees his future going up in smoke, and worries how he'll explain what he's done to his single-mom mom. Not to mention the looming nightmare of being a teen father.

And herein lies my issue with the show. At first it was that I so completely and totally despised the characters of Terri and Quinn I couldn't stand to watch them on the screen. How two women could lie so openly to men they are supposed to love is beyond me. I won't even go into the Grand Canyon-sized plot holes a faked pregnancy presents because I can't get past the concept of faking a pregnancy in the first place. Does Will NEVER see his wife naked? And how will she "fake" labor and delivery?

But as time has gone on, I've come to see that my problem is not so much with Terri and Quinn, it's what these two characters force Will and Finn to become. I like Will. I like Finn. But my respect for these guys is quickly approaching the negative double digits.

I mean, come on, Finn! How could you actually believe that you are the father of Quinn's baby when you've never had sex with her? Maybe we're supposed to like Finn all the more because he's so trusting and devoted to his girlfriend that he believes her without question. But really, when faced with such a life-shattering situation, I'd encourage even my own son to ask the tough questions.

I sure hope Finn's ignorance is not a commentary on the poor state of the American public school system's sex education program. Because if that's the reason we're supposed to accept Finn's buying Quinn's immaculate conception BS, the writers need to work a lot harder.

And while Will is admirable for staying with the shrill, shrewish Terri because she's supposedly having his baby, all I keep asking myself is how he ended up with such a woman in the first place. She's unbearable. Honestly, I don't see one redeeming quality in the character. So what could have possibly inspired Will to marry her?

So my problem is not so much that Finn and Will are being lied to. It's that they are so easily duped. There's naive and there's trusting and there's loyal. But this goes beyond any of that into Too Stupid To Live territory. I can't feel bad for Finn or Will because the solutions to their problems are so obvious. (Has Will NEVER seen his wife naked?)

And even if these two good men are subconsciously ignoring the obvious, neither the Terri nor the Quinn character has been portrayed as a woman worth such self mental-subterfuge. If Terri and/or Quinn had shown at least one redeeming quality that made me see why Will and Finn love them so deeply as to allow themselves to be lied to so poorly, I could suspend my disbelief in their belief in the lies.

If the show follows the premise it's establishing - that Terri plans to claim that Quinn's baby is hers and Will's - and Will and Finn buy into it, I will stop watching. If I wanted to watch a soap opera, I'd tune into Days of Our Lives.