I don't hate Glee.

I don’t.

Really. I don’t.

Ah. The good old days...

I can’t. It is physically and emotionally impossible for me to hate Glee. Why? Because despite all my personality, my education, my assertions of my own epic awesomeness, at my core, there is a 13 year old teenybopper with braces and pigtails who has plastered her dark corner of my insides with ‘NSYNC posters and scattered volumes of Roswell fan fiction.

While this is something I’ve had to come to terms with (or hide from my love ones, not unlike someone who heavily self-medicates), it doesn’t help that her next door neighbor is a nerdy, quasi-hipster kid, who goes on long tirades about how Mad Men is all flash and no substance and Firefly is a manifesto by which everyone should live their lives.

So, on Valentine’s night, in the spirit of the hoards of the lonely and desperate who do things they know they’ll regret in the morning, I decided to go back on the promise I made to myself only one month ago:

I was going to catch up on Glee.

And like a hung-over, bedraggled co-ed, I emerged from behind my computer screen, older, wiser, covered in self-pity and chocolate crumbs, yet determined to not let this experience go to waste. I give you:

Somewhere deep in the TVLove war bunker...

TV Love Child's 6 Point Plan to Save Glee (From Itself)

Point One: Ditch the Dead Weight.

Glee has, I believe the technical industry term is, a shit load of characters. If the show gets rid of all the unnecessary, boring characters, the show wouldn’t have to stretch its plot so thin (which is already as the thickness of spandex. Glittery, glittery spandex).

My suggestion?

Oh. Ew.

Dump Tina -- who hasn’t been interesting since she lost her stutter and the writers mistook goth for punk rock. 

Dump Finn – who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag and makes Ducan “the House Plant” Kane look like Robin Williams. Lips McSixPack is more than able to pick up the slack.

Dump Rachel – who’s nagging and control ways aren’t funny anymore, and frankly, her broadway voice and duck lips singing face make me want to punch babies.

Point Two: Leave the Karaoke to Kidz Bop.

Do something original. If I wanted to hear a song done by a bunch of nondescript kids… I’d probably put a gun in my mouth, because that’s not a world I want to live in… but regardless, I’d be more apt to see through your hundred musical numbers every episode, if I could see something I wouldn’t get at a karaoke bar in West Hollywood. Which brings us to…

Subsection a: I get it. They sing. A LOT.

The network wants to make money. And you make more money with 6 songs per episode (that you can then release on iTunes and various Glee albums) than with 3. But OH MY GOD, I don’t want to sit through the whole damn Lady Antebellum number just to establish Rachel wants to make Finn jealous. The music should highlight the plot. Not substitute for it.

Point Three: Continuity. There should be some.

This was more of a problem at the end of season one, but it’s still valid. If Puck likes to destroy stuff, we should see him destroying stuff. How did Jesse just disappear from school for a week because his friends were on spring break? Why does Kurt seem to forget every week that his dad loves him?

As the folks on the fabulous Extra Hot Great once said, without continuity, we’re just watching short clips featuring the same actors with the same character names. 

Point Four: Save the theme shows for the real music legends.

Justin Bieber.

Cut your hair, hippie!

JUSTIN.

BIEBER.

Seriously?! Come on. SERIOUSLY?!

Point Five: Interesting characters have dimensions. Not catchphrases.

Brittany is dumb. Mike Chang is Asian. Santana is an attention-seeking bitch.

How much more interesting would it be if we learned something about these characters?

The character we know the most about is Kurt, because he is Ryan Murphy’s avatar in the series. We get to meet his dad and learn about life. Same for Finn.

Why haven’t we seen how Rachel interacts with her two dads? What about Mercedes? Or Tina? How is Brittany passing high school? Where did Mike Chang learn to dance?

If there isn’t a lesson in it for the audience, we don’t get to know. Degrassi had more characters than Glee and managed to make each of them shine. I know the songs take time (see point 3.a), but without knowing who these people are (and I suspect the writers don’t even know) how can we give a crap?

Point Six: OH MY GOD. I GET IT. YOU SING.

Seriously. Cut it out.

Will Ryan Murphy heed my advice? Probably not. But to be fair, it's very hard to hear from behind his wall of rabid teenage fag hags and that laughing he does all the way to the bank.

Now, with all this meditation on a theme, let’s take a look into the old crystal ball for:

TV Love Child’s Shot in the Dark:

Something happens to the Warbler’s warbler  (because if you should a bird in the first act, it better die a horrible death in the third) and it’s all Kurt and Blaine's fault! They lose regionals and transfer back to McKinley. Blaine will be very upset with Kurt, but Kurt and his bully (turned friend) will end up dating, making Blaine incredibly jealous. 

Does your Glee plan include something I missed? Do you think my predictions are way off? Want to declare a musical jihad on my cynical ass? Love eogier's photoshopping skillz? Leave a comment below.