The “Glee” farewell to Finn Hudson, who started the series as pretty much the main character, was finally staged Thursday. The actor Cory Monteith overdosed in July and the show could hardly not refer to it.
But it seemed done in an odd way. The season started with two Beatles episodes as planned, then this episode began, full of sad songs, lots of crying and just the thinnest of story lines.
There’s something cathartic about all this, of course. The idea is that after a actual funeral a couple of weeks earlier, this was a memorial for the music room for glee club members old and new who recalled them.
Not that there were any flashbacks to Finn’s high points on the show (there was one, but it had to do with Puck, Kurt and the dumpster).But the song selection was pretty good: a group version of “Seasons of Love” from “Rent”; Mercedes doing the Pretenders’ “I’ll Sand By You,” Artie and Sam doing James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” Puck doing Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender.”
And all while they sang these heartfelt songs, the tears in their eyes looked sincere, and the sad and teary looks of their cast mates looked like they were from a documentary — these were friends and colleagues who shared a time and songs with this guy who was gone.
And then, when the show was almost over, Lea Michelle’s Rachel finally showed up to sing Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love” — a more emotional moment since she was his real life girlfriend too.
In between all the music, there was a semblance of a story, how Puck couldn’t handle it and tore down the memorial tree to Finn (because he wanted a bigger one); how Kurt wanted Finn’s letter jacket, wouldn’t give it to Puck, but gave it to Santana (who sang The Band Perry’s “If I Die Young,” I almost forgot). Then Santana lost the jacket, and everybody thought Puck took it but it was really Mr. Schu who took it and it helped him cry about it all for the first time.
There was some Sue Sylvester stuff, but I am so over Sue Sylvester and her unnecessarily mean and thoroughly unfunny cracks that stopped being in any way amusing in season two. Even when she has a serious moment explaining her pain it doesn’t work because her character is so horrible.
What was most strange about the episode is that nobody seemed to care why he died.
“What can you say about a 19 year old who dies?” Kurt says in a spoken intro, lamely quoting “Love Story.”
“Everyone always wants to talk about how he died, too,” he adds. “But who cares?”
Well, if his character died of drug addiction then it may be a dramatic and true story to convey to a young audience who might be faced with a similar problem. At the very least, an explanation could make the episode mean more.
Instead, nobody says a thing. At the end, over credits, there’s a sort of PSA about addiction and how to seek help if you need it. But it’s a little late by then and still without any overt connection to what had gone before.
Certainly the “Glee” salute could have been a lot worse: More maudlin, way overdramatic and much more exploitative than what occurred. But behind the songs and tears, it was a little hollow without context or reason.