From ‘Glee’ to gloom

After three successful years on the tube, the “young musical” TV show, “Glee,” has opted not to conclude its storytelling at its peak, but to go for yet another season, with some of its resident characters graduating from high school and dealing with “real” life in college or at the workplace.

In theory, that sounds like a natural extension of the series’ plot and character development. In actuality, however, it has generally resulted thus far in a radical change of tone, from gleeful to glum, that has to some extent soured up the show’s initially hopeful premise.

To be sure, the series may simply be pointing out that this happens to all young people as they continue to grow up, so it’s nothing to get alarmed about.

The time after high school graduation can be like “the morning after” a drunken binge, so some disappointments and even a bout of depression are par for the downbeat course.

Last week, however, the disappointments and other downbeat developments, came one after another, with couples breaking up left and right. When the smoke started to clear up, the emotional pillage was downright disturbing.

With so many key relationships sundered and given up for lost, where do we go from here?

Less emotionally, we understand that major changes need to be made to open the series up to other possibilities, and to make room for new characters to take the storytelling into different directions that can accommodate fresh themes and insights.

However, the radical shift from “Glee” to “gloom and doom” has been so overwhelming that we find ourselves confused and confounded.

We think that the new season’s adjusted focus will be on how new challenges will test some characters and key relationships’ mettle—only for them to emerge more strongly and maturely in the end.

Tested in the cauldron and crucible of harsh reality, they will prove their love for one another, and it will all be truly and not just dreamily inspiring to behold.

Aside from the show’s “old” characters, the new season has introduced new students and glee club members—most strikingly, a tall and lovely girl who’s also a great singer (Melissa Benoist). Even as Lea Michele and Cory Monteith’s characters are slugging it out elsewhere in the “adult” world, we can expect these new performers to generate fresh excitement in their alma mater.

So, it looks like “Glee 4” will have a shifting focus, from “still in school” to “real life” with its many new challenges. Making sense of that more complex shifting scenario will test both the production and its viewers, so focused storytelling is called for, more than ever before.

Will the show be up to it? At the moment, the verdict on that score is still decidedly in a state of flux, but we trust that, after a few more telecasts, the series’ now complex-compound storytelling will still emerge as an insightful winner.