Higgs

I wonder what explains the enormous asymmetry in the correlation of support for one Glee character to crossover criticism of another, not only in the statistical disparities but in the threads where it occurs. (Study it for causality in a sufficient number of shows across multiple dramatic genres, and there could be a Sociology/Gender Studies/Psychology Ph.D. thesis, and maybe even a book, in it.)

It's not the number of comments that matters, it's the number of commenters who voice a particular view, often over and over again. Check it out on that basis, and check out the correlations between their views on Blaine and their views on other performers, and the pattern will quickly emerge in all its glory. Blaine can't act and Lea can't dance, don't you know. (Actually, the latter claim is true, but no music industry professional in the entire world, especially including Lea Michele, gives a shit.)Commenters are a minuscule fraction of the entire audience, and not representative of it. Furthermore, the internet has its own sociology, and sometimes a particular forum develops a critical mass psychology that drives out all but a handful of faithful insurgents such as myself. In all opinions, consider the source.

Rachel, and Rachel alone, got ND to a deserved victory at Invitationals. Rachel should pay Sue again to lock Kurt in that elevator long before all competitions. A class party at a teacher's house, for whatever reason, is generally considered a great means to bond with students. Who knows, maybe Sam has as high a social IQ as Finn did. It will sure come in handy when he's a head coach in New Jersey. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. Rachel was fucking Sam during the Klaine duet, which at the very least relieved her of having to endure the stress she experiences in listening to such a horror, as she described to Puck whilst seducing him for RJR. Rachel's post-coital lit up the room. It's all good.

Head canon? No need. It's fact. Samchel approved? Who the hell are they not to? What does anyone think they're doing?Sam is Rachel's rock? I hope she discovers he's more a pebble in her shoe.

It's a very long-established convention in film that when a couple embrace and fall horizontally beneath the frame they are having sex. (I point this out because there were people who actually believed in the S4 Finnus Interruptus episode that Rachel was only going to make out with Brody, as though she were still a middle-school virgin.) You can either have Finn on the wall or you can have Samchel sex, but you can't have both. Glee made the wrong choice. "Time After Time" didn't absolutely need to be a post-coital serenade. Rachel can sing erotically without having just gotten laid.

I pay little attention to Broadway, although I did go see MM's "South Pacific" the last time I was in NYC. The most recent enjoyable talent I know about from there is Jessie Mueller, who I thought out-performed O'Hara on a PBS "Carousel". Oh, and I was there for Cheyenne Jackson's magnificant Tony in a concert performance of WSS with the San Francisco Symphony. (Good grief, have I been watching musicals!? And there's a solid rumor we'll be getting Matt's "You'll Never Walk Alone" on Glee. Go, Liverpool!) The classical music experience causes me to listen to all singers in perhaps a different way than others might. I suspect the same might be true for jazz aficionados. In general, I prefer folk and rock to pop and Broadway. Callas is extremely divisive among opera fan(atic)s. I hated her voice for a long time until I learned what to listen for. She was an interpretive genius, but her voice was in decline by as early as the late '50s. But she illustrates, like almost no other, the difference between great technique and great singing acting. Here she is, long past her vocal prime, as a teenage girl begging her daddy to let her marry her boyfriend or she'll kill herself. (And people complain about the faces Lea makes!) (Now check out how the stronger-voiced divas sing it.) Neither RM, nor anyone else I know, ever said Lea had "the best voice" in a generation or even for an hour on some given day. "Best voice" has no meaning, not even within the same genre. What RM did say was that Lea had a voice that comes along once in a generation, and named Streisand and Garland as examples. (Neither of them had anything approaching the "best voice", either.) What he meant is that she had a very special, almost unique, quality that transcended sound and technique, and even that was limited to narrow musical genres. That's all, and it's plenty, but no more than that.

I can't cogently discuss Darren's acting because I haven't been able to watch Blaine (sans Rachel) for a very long time. Now some may think my actions speak louder than words, but not in this case. I realized Blaine was being used to create what little comedy remained on the show, that his clothes and hair style were chosen to that end, and that he was being directed to do virtually everything people complain about. And it's not just him. How differently would we have perceived the Unholy Trinity if they hadn't always been in their Cheerios uniforms with their blond hair pulled back, Kurt dressed and coiffed like Chris, Rachel more demure and fresh-faced, Artie not nerded up, Sue in a Hillary power suit. Clothes may not make the man, but they sure can make the character.

So I went to YT to listen to Laura Benanti. I heard a classically-trained singer who, like Chenoweth, O'Hara, etc., isn't remotely good enough to make it in opera. (Yes, I know about "The Merry Widow" at the Met.) She also doesn't have a clue about how to sing pop. I wouldn't cross the street to see her perform, but I'd fly across the country to see Lea in the right context, as will many if she ever does FG. Virtually the only vocal music I listen to is classical (opera, oratorios, art songs). It's difficult to explain to people unfamiliar with that stuff, but Lea, whose vocal technique doesn't begin to compare, sings in her genre with the precision and sensibilty of a Callas, Baker, and, currently, Di Donato. There have been thousands of singers with greater vocal instruments (e.g., Streisand, in B'Way/pop), but that's not the same as being a greater singing actor.

"Unpretty" was great because of Anders' genius arrangement. There should be nothing surprising about the fact that Lea, toned down to accommodate [fill in the blank], could do this five times a day. It's only a shame it didn't happen more often. Lea could sing it as a quiet ballad a cappella, or (gods forgive me) with Sam on guitar.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. This may be the crux of the issue."Too-perfect voice" was a phrase Rolling Stone used to damn her album. Lea cannot possibly become a pop megastar under the constraint of the current tastes of the demographic whose purchases determine official popularity, and neither could Streisand or Dion if they were just starting out today. Lea's forte is as a singing actor. By that I do not mean merely an actor who can sing, nor do I mean anything having to do with Broadway musicals. I mean that she acts through song to unveil a character's inner world in an intimate setting, and there is no more a mass audience for that kind of vocalism in pop than there is in jazz or in classical art songs (e.g., Schubert lieder, whose audience is a tiny fraction of the one for opera). The best suggestion I have to illustrate her (yes, once in a generation) talent is by a very detailed comparison of Lea's and Celine's versions of "It's All Coming Back To Me Now". Through phrasing and vocal coloring, Lea achieves a depth of emotion that Celine can't match. In the very last breathed phrase, Lea is chilling, and while Celine could do it if she wanted, not being an actor, she would never think of it. None of this is to suggest Lea couldn't put out a hugely successful album, just that it would require she short-change her greatest gift (as she mostly did in the album, except for the iTunes extra "The Bells") and sing a little ugly for those who just want to dance or who equate vocal strain with emotion. Or she could put out "Touch Me" as a single. I have no shame.

I wrote that Lea made Glee castmates "better", not that she took them from bad to good. A good actor can establish the inner nature of a character in 10 seconds, sometimes without a word. That's what Lea did on SOA, and it's all I meant. (I had never seen the show before pre-season reruns, and found the acting, plotting, and writing to be awful, an opinion that seemed to be shared on AV about the current state of the show by a very high percentage of long-time fans.) I know nothing from pop. The only stuff I've listened to in a very long time are the originals of songs Lea covered. Now it's easy to throw out the charge of "derivative" in any art form, but I'd like someone to refer me to songs that could be considered prototypes for "Cue the Rain" or "Burn With You". That the album was "too old for her" has to be the strangest comment I've ever heard about it. Is that from a career-building, marketing, or artistic perspective? Was "O Holy Night" or "The Rose" or "Promises, Promises" or ... also too old for her?

When an actor has to release a statement to his own fans to resolve a debate about his character's key motivations that form the heart of his SL, there is a serious problem. One could watch the corresponding Finchel scene with the sound off and know exactly how they felt about each other.

Not only was Happy better than Suddenly, but I once wrote that Chris was better than his friend Judy in it. Ah, those were the days.I was comparing Suddenlys, not Lea's duets with various partners.

Nor should you. Chris has never been able to convey as strong feelings by Kurt for Blaine as for Finn or Rachel. This is not just recently, where Chris has been essentially MIA, but it goes all the way back at least to the final episode of S2. The quality difference in the parallel romantic scenes between Finchel on the floor of the library and the Klaine Nationals ("The Kiss") debriefing is night and day. Kurt's response to Blaine's ILY was so ambiguous (to his own fans) that Chris actually released a statement saying that of course Kurt loved him. (If anyone wants to see what a talented, yet still unknown, actor can accomplish in evoking a gay teenager's homoerotic affection, check out the '93 movie "This Boy's Life" - Di Caprio, DeNiro, Barkin - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Boy%27s_Life_(film))Oh, and as a strictly Lea fan, thank you, thank you, thank you to Klaine for providing the outlet that helped keep Chris away from Rachel's duets. Sorry, Darren, it's a nasty job, but somebody had to do it, and better you than Lea. (If only Samcedes had done the same with Chord.) And we'll always have "Suddenly Seymour", which was a whole lot better than this: http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Megan-Hilty-Brian-Gallaghers-Stunning-Suddenly-Seymour-From-LITTLE-SHOP-OF-HORRORS-20150210#.)

What the audience perceives as the quality of an acting performance is an unseparable combination of acting talent, direction, script, storyline, castmates, cinematography, and even costumes and lighting. On Glee, Lea has long been forced on occasion into an immature, higher-pitched, sing-song voice to enhance the little that is left of the comedy. Abso-100%-lutely. For recent examples: and from a live performance of a track from what I still consider to be her very underrated album, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bQxNKxZtx-Y But Glee has always played with her voice, usually to get a specific effect to make the cover more reminiscent of the original. Compare the chipmunked studio "Loser Like Me" with her performance on the tour, for example.

Lea's acting and singing are better than ever. The scooping is long gone, "Let It Go" was finally performed by someone who didn't sound like she had a cold, "Uninvited" was one of her greatest pop solos ever, and "Promises, Promises" was sensational (compare it to the incompetent performances of Dionne Warwick on YT) despite being one of the most technically difficult songs she has ever performed (in terms of breath and tone control). Her single-mom waitress cameo on Sons of Anarchy was on a level with the first diner appearance of the very great Ruth Wilson on "The Affair". Lea has always been and continues to be the Michael Jordan of Glee, i.e., she makes everyone around her better. Just compare the acting of her castmates in scenes with her and with anyone else. Biulding a career involves synergy. These days, starring roles in movies or Broadway are made more likely with a claim to box-office potential, which means broad name-recognition, regardless of genre. Her first album needs to be seen in this light, especially when one considers that the "Wicked" movie (for which she is a rumored candidate for Elpheba) has been put off until the road show winds down, and that a major part of its audience is girl tweens. Lea had long ago said she wanted a girl power album, and has mentioned her second as leaning more to an Adele vibe. Lea Michele Enterprises is a horizontally integrated corporation. Don't cry for Lea, America.

I know for a FACT that Lea IS being typecast. "Scream Queens" is about girls competing for roles in horror movies based on their ability to evoke existential terror. Lea's character realizes she is the reincarnation of a young, sexually repressed, late-19th century German school girl, and kills her audition by recalling the scream she produced upon the the occasion of her first penetration by a classmate. In the show-within-the-show, the resulting impregnation by a vampire leads, after much anguished guilt, to a self-induced abortion, sepsis, and a season finale death scene in the arms of her fanged lover, as she sings "A Little Fall of Rain", followed by a commercial break in which Ryan Murphy appears in person to plead for a woman's right to choose.

Lea appears to me to embody the paradox of a fundamentally shy/secretive person who loves to perform. I have seen a video where she was overwhelmed by an adoring crowd, and in all her live YouTube performances, including the Glee tour, she backs away from the applause as quickly as possible, almost as though she were embarrased by it. She hides her true self behind public performance art, whether on twitter, red carpets, magazine interviews, or talk shows. I take nothing she says or does in these venues at face value. The only glimpses I've had of her that I trust have been in rare, intimate events with fellow pros such as the Emmy roundtable, Seth Rudetsky's Sirius interview (on YT) re some Glee and with live singing, and here: http://www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay.php?colid=19232#.VNkLu4Y76rV. If she wanted a huge book payout, nothing, by no other player, would come close to her talking her Glee story and everything Cory into a recorder for write-up. Ain't gonna happen. She'll give us her characters and a fake persona, but never her self.

The episode featured two great ironies. The first was that, despite all the farcical manipulations involved in staging the "Invitationals", ND achieved the most clear-cut and naturalistic show choir victory in the history of Glee, via the simple expedient of singing harmonically, or, as Sue put it, "in unison"**, Essentially, the ND show CHOIR actually deserved, on the bases of individual and group technique and musicality, to beat their competitors' SHOW choirs. The second irony was that Lea gave one of her most memorable performances on Glee by evincing ineffable joy and pride without a single utterance. And kudos to the Incestuous Twins, the funniest Glee duo since NYADA's Gay Sycophants. All in all, as The New Yorker recently put it (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/house-chords), "Glee is finally on an upswing". **Great meta joke alluding to the completely unrealistic use of (Rachel) solos/duets in show choir competitions.

Rachel can't sing with Will because then we might get something like this: Suddenly, it would not be only Seymour's level of talent that could be called into question.

Rachel was critically-acclaimed for her performance in one of the most dominating and demading female roles in the history of the Broadway musical. Following her flight to burn in the Hollywood sun and crash into the Pacific, she would be one of the most famous/notorious singing actresses in the country. If a Broadway producer still wanted her for her talent and box-office draw, they'd know where to find her and she'd be in. If a Broadway producer couldn't trust her to stick with the show, she'd be out. No one not financially or personally involved in the show could possibly influence the decision. The "interested party", in order of likelihood, is: Kurt, Santana, Tina (remember the virginity business?), Will, Blaine (last because of the supposed Jane poach.) The most compelling reason for having Rachel return to Broadway is to enable Will to get his square peg out of the round hell hole in VA and return to lead ND. (Co-direct? Over Emma's dead body; she's seen "Intermezzo".)

Baton Twirling For Dummies: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=baton+twirler "Google and ye shall find"--an adage for a new age.

"[Kurt] looks lIke someone who just removed their top row of dentures every time they smile". (Prison rape sometimes begins when a dominant male knocks out the front teeth of someone he wants to make his "bitch".) While the accusation of committing fellatio should not be insulting to a gay man (or to the huge majority of straight women who also indulge in the practice, even if not always with the same degree of enthusiasm in real life as actresses display in porn), and accounts in large measure for Kurt's rather bemused reaction, to say Kurt "looks" like he does is an underhanded attack on Chris's acceptability to a straight male audience. It's for that exact same reason that Lea objected to being characterized as flat-chested: (Her nose is about as much a handicap as the great Ruth Wilson's upper lip.)

My objection to Santana's rant has nothing to do with Santana or Kurt or anything that has ever happened on Glee. It's about the writers and Chris, only. A single specific aspect of Chris's physical appearance, unrelated to any imagined effeminacy or artistic style, was used as proxy to denigrate his sexuality. It was a "dog whistle", i.e., meant to be picked up only by those sensitive, for one reason or another, to the signal. Nothing remotely analogous was ever done to any other performer on the show. I'm no fan of Chris/Kurt, and, not knowing their mindset, I can't accuse the writers of homophobia, but what Santana was given to say in this one instance was beyond the pale.

http://education-portal.com/articles/How_to_Become_a_Football_Coach_Education_and_Career_Roadmap.html Sam wouldn't be hired as head football coach of a suburban high school with a fairly competitive program becaue he never played college ball, not because he doesn't have a college degree. Also, he has never been an assistant coach, has never attended widely-held coaching clinics, and knows about as much about football strategies ("x's and o's", in the jargon of the sport) as Cassandra knows about ballet. And he's a verrrrry slow learner who irons jock straps. After S1, Lea was on an Emmy panel of leading TV ladies. (It's on YouTube. She exhibits a persona almost unrecognizable from her talk show appearances.) When asked if she ever had to deal with misconceptions that male writers had about women, she replied that when they wanted Rachel to say she was wearing a training bra, she objected strongly on the grounds that that was "about me". By the same token, they had no business using Santana to attack Chris's physical appearance. (I will not go into details, but it was much worse than it appears on the surface, and much worse than has ever been done to any other actor/actress on the show.)