Not-So New Directions: Glee Returns Tonight

While some viewers swoon for Glee, I've had more of a love-hate relationship with Ryan Murphy's crooner comedy.

There are times when Glee makes me roar with laughter at its often witty and risque dialogue. Laden with innuendo and pop culture savvy, these are volatile bon mots delivered with precision and a killer left hook.

But these moments often serve to remind me that Glee can and should be so much better, they're glimpses into the better series that's buried within Glee should they mine deeper territory, instead of offering a series of saccharine treats.

That's not to say that there aren't moments in the next three episodes of Glee, which returns tonight to the FOX lineup, that aren't genuinely entertaining, because there are. Next week's episode in particular, "The Power of Madonna," might be the best episode of the series to date, focusing as it does on Sue Sylvester and the empowering music of Madge herself.

As a whole, the next three episodes offer a series of high and low points. And when the series hits those high notes, it does so with a terrific sense of accomplishment and joy. There are moments within "The Power of Madonna" that are far funnier and stomach-clenching than most sitcoms these days; the--SPOILER!--shot-by-shot remake of Madonna's "Vogue" music video starring Sue Sylvester is meticulously shot, lovingly produced, and with a nice wink or two thrown in for good measure. The episode, while it has some small flaws, offers a look at how great the series can and should be: the heights that it should attempt to reach and the right mix of sweet and sour, light and dark.

After all, the series thrives when it embraces its own quirky humor. The same episode features a scene between Kurt, Mercedes, and Sue as Kurt offers to help the Cheerios coach with... Well, that would be telling. But suffice it to say that Kurt's line effortlessly sums up the sort of dynamic humor and storytelling that the series should be embracing: "I'm gay, she's black. We make culture." It's a throwaway line but one that should be held onto tightly. I'd rather see some depth and grit here than another iteration of will-they-or-won't they couple Finn and Rachel get it on or break up or get back together.

Which typically happens over the course of a single episode. I've taken the Glee writing staff to task in the past for accelerated storytelling, whereby they rush an entire story arc through a single installment, introducing a plot twist at the beginning and then resolving it by the end of the episode, never to be seen again. There's a fair amount of that going on here, though I do give them credit for bringing up the star-crossed romance between Artie and Tina. But having Kristin Chenoweth's April Rhodes show up out of nowhere in the third episode ("Home") as a roller rink owner, offer the glee club a place to rehearse (which, oddly, they never do), and then depart again by the end of the episode doesn't really serve any story needs.

It's that third episode, jam-packed as it with music (some would say over-stuffed), that really got under my skin. Glee tends to flag when it attempts broadly thematic storytelling, attempting to link everyone's struggles in a single episode to a single theme, here the need to belong, to have a home, a family. From Mercedes to Will, nearly every character in this episode either sings a song (or multiple ones), argues, cries (and, yes, there's a lot of crying here), or just generally waxes about the concept of home. (There's also a really shrill storyline that involves Kurt and Finn and their parents which seems to spring out of nowhere and which definitely rubbed me the wrong way.)

I think you can accomplish thematic-based episodes if you have the foundations for some solid characters, but many of Glee's faces are little more than just that. I don't feel like I know many of these characters better than I did when I first met them thirteen episodes ago. While Finn and Rachel seem to get a lot of air time (along with Will), the rest of the characters still seem to be mostly background players comprised of reductive stereotypes.

But there are some fun moments embedded within these episodes: a showdown between Emma and Terri, Finn and Rachel's mash-up of Madonna's "Borderline" and "Open Your Heart," every second of the "Vogue" video, anything with Sue (especially when she claims her parents were Nazi hunters), the awkwardness of a certain three-person date, the nicely staged "Like a Virgin" montage, the scenes with Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff's involvement, and most of "The Power of Madonna" as a whole, the strongest episode of the three.

And there's some new competition for Jane Lynch's Sue Sylvester (who brings her A-game to every scene she's in) in the form of airheaded Cheerio Brittany, who is now getting some of the funniest lines in the entire show (look for the scene where Jonathan Groff's Jesse St. James is introduced by Will) and providing some much needed humor to some highly repetitive rehearsal scenes. These two, particularly together, could be a combustive force of comedy.

All in all, these next three episodes of Glee offer some fine moments and some not-so-fine ones. I had been hoping that the back nine episodes of Glee would have proven to be an improvement on the thirteen that came before but my ultimate feeling is this: you either love the series already or you don't. But if the writers want to built a long-term franchise rather than just a flash in the pan, they need to look towards constructing longer arcs, deepening the characters, and finding a tone that's consistent rather than all over the place. For a series that's meant to be as diverse and progressive as Glee, it still can feel awfully directionless.

Glee returns tonight at a special time of 9:28 pm ET/PT on FOX.