Murphy (left) and Falchuk (right foreground) are calling for backup. / FOX
As you know if you read this blog, I have love for Glee, but it’s a tough love and sometimes hard to justify. The show fascinates me and, especially in this past season, frustrates me. It can be transcendent and self-indulgent, emotionally true and utterly ridiculous, inventive and repetitive. Often within the same scene!
There are plenty of theories you can advance about why the show hasn’t lived up to its creative potential—if you’re someone like me who believes that—but one big reason may have been hiding in plain sight. Three producers, Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, have been writing pretty much everything. This is going to change in season 3, as the Glee triumvirate is bringing in six pairs of typing hands to lighten the load, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The six new writers, appropriately for a show that can be a smorgasboard of tones, come from all manner of backgrounds. There’s new co-executive producer Allison Adler (Chuck, No Ordinary Family), Marti Noxon (Buffy, Angel and others) and writers with experience running from United States of Tara to the Eat, Pray, Love movie to comic books. None of which I can entirely call inappropriate. (I’m especially excited about Noxon’s addition, but I’m on record as a much bigger fan of the notorious Buffy season 6, when she became executive producer, than many.)
The crew will have plenty of work, as the new season reportedly will introduce a bunch of freshman characters. (The producers, at least in the past, have said they plan to have the original characters graduate on time and introduce new stories.) Glee fans, what would you give the writing staff as their first assignment?