Glee: The Complete Second Season [Blu-Ray]

The illusion of Glee is that it's harmless fun for the musical theatre crowd, giving women and gays everywhere something to sing along to and fawn over when their favourite musical artists are covered and degraded by vacuous teens doing karaoke with Auto-tune. But there are a few things awry regarding this colourful high school comedy about a band of misfits kids in glee club that leaves a bad aftertaste. Firstly, this, much like the many grotesque reality singing and dancing competition shows, suggests to an entire generation of impressionable youths that being practical, realistic and obtaining any form of functional education is useless when the road to success is dressing up in the latest fashions and emotionally singing and dancing around in circles to songs you didn't actually write. We are collectively imbuing distorted, superficial values in culture by rewarding people for vapid frivolity, blogging and degrading themselves publicly. There's also the issue of deluded idealism, which is ever-present throughout the entire second season of this sanctimonious nonsense. For the first half of the season, the show focuses on Kurt's (Chris Colfer) struggle with a closeted, gay bully, leading him to sing many a song about victimization while the show hops on his soapbox and gives a glib speech about inclusion and openness without factoring in basic human nature. Along with boiling everything down to two-dimensional, archetypal clichés, it suggests that the road to diversity inclusion is ideological assimilation, which is contradictory and, let's face it, stupid. The latter half of the season gets a bit better, with the gang practicing for Nationals and actually singing some original material, but again travels down the same condescending road by having hottie bad boy Puck (Mark Salling) pine after the potato-like Lauren (Ashley Fink) because she's sassy and confident – something mentioned in every single episode. And in case this bastardization of teen reality wasn't enough, telling people that the world can be beautiful if everyone becomes a completely blind, vapid, politically correct robot, they go on to suggest an attraction between the curvy Mercedes (Amber Riley) and blonde pretty boy Sam (Chord Overstreet). Quite frankly, it's insulting and patronizing to anyone that has ever dealt with the realities and vulgarities of basic human socialization. While seemingly harmless, Glee also deludes its viewers with counterproductive fantasy that impedes progress. The Blu-Ray includes an abundance of special features about creating a stage set design, shooting in NYC for the season finale and a "Making of" for the Rocky Horror episode. There are also supplements with Jane Lynch and Heather Morris that add a bit of comedy to other music-heavy jukebox and video extras.