Pressure’s On

Can Glee Deliver Under Fire?

Blogosphere turning up the heat on the show’s finale

As Glee rounds out its first season tonight, there brews the beginnings of a backlash in the blog world. While contending that Glee remains one of the freshest new shows in prime-time, critics and fans are sensing that the whole ensemble has become a little smug in their quick rise to fame. As Entertainment Weekly reports, “Glee has become, a bit strained, a tad self-congratulatory” and outlines three ways the show can improve for an exceptional second season. Zap2it mentions the “undercurrent of frustration with the more-bigger-crazier direction of the show.” New York Magazine, meanwhile, coined the show’s late onset “big-headedness” simply “Ryan Murphy Syndrome,” explaining that “the corrosive ailment in which the writer of a groundbreaking TV series…effectively combines fantasy and reality, only to push the show into a black hole of mind-numbing weirdness.”