Is 'Glee' Moving Too Fast?

Sometimes Glee just gets it right and Tuesday night's first NYC-only episode, "New New York," was almost one of those times. After a six-month time jump, Blaine, Artie, Sam, and Mercedes all packed their bags and relocated to the Big Apple to join Rachel and Kurt. The new core cast is great together (I mean, duh), but everything seemed really rushed and left me wondering if Glee's taking the hustle and bustle (hehe) of NYC a little too far.

Every single character (with the exception of Mercedes, who appeared at the end of the episode) seemed to have a conflict-resolution scenario in the 42-minute episode — that's a lot of quickly solved issues, especially for Glee. The series is notorious for dragging things out for longer than they need to be, so does this huge location shift mean that Glee itself has made huge changes?

Rachel, Sam, and Artie's storylines from this first episode since we left McKinley for good all happened so quickly that they almost seemed to not be genuine. With Rachel, her newfound stardom and a personal chauffeur turned her into an even bigger diva than she already was. But she's always been a diva — that's part of what makes Rachel Berry Rachel Berry — and it only took one tongue-lashing from Artie for her to completely turn her attitude around. Since when does that ever happen? Rachel never second-guesses herself and it's her dream to be a star and to have all of the perks that go along with it — this was at least two episodes' worth of conflict and it ended up resolved and wrapped up with a bow by the end of Tuesday night's episode. See what I mean? Rushed.

Now, granted, this episode seemed to take place over the course of a week or two and the gang was supposed to be reunited in the city for a few months by this time, but I still felt like we sped through a lot. We caught a glimpse of Artie's struggles in NYC — navigating the busy city sidewalks in his wheelchair, taking the subway, and catching his first few acts of unkindness (some jerk ON CRUTCHES — what — stole his backpack with his laptop, wallet, and other belongings inside) — but even that seemed like a lot packed into one episode. Especially when he and Rachel ran into the guy on the subway a few days (or weeks?) later and he pepper-sprayed him in the face and ended up getting everything back. It was just way too picture-perfect of a resolution — even if Artie's verbal takedown of Rachel's diva mentality about being a "true New Yorker" was a shining moment, the show glossed over letting him feel anything about his struggles in the city for a sufficient period of time.

Even Sam, whose character has had some of the slowest storylines on the series and is one of the laziest guys on Earth (this was a huge part of the episode, too), seemed to get his act together really quick. After spending months chillaxing on Kurt's couch in the loft, in ONE DAY, he got a haircut, booked a huge modeling job, and moved out. IN ONE DAY — after spending six months couch-surfing and playing video games. I mean, sure, we get it, his "hippie-hair" just wasn't cutting it in the commercial modeling world. But that just happened so incredibly fast that it seemed like there was another, unacknowledged, time jump somewhere in the middle of "New New York."

The only storyline that we were grateful to not have to watch unfold over the course of 10 episodes was Kurt and Blaine's relationship. The pair went from content to smothered to content with living separate-ish lives over the course of the episode — which we still don't know whether or not it lasted just days or weeks — and that was kind of okay. But again, the six-month time jump made it seem like they got sick of each other overnight — and even though that would've been feasible, considering Blaine basically wanted to spend every, waking minute with Kurt, it just wasn't. At least they didn't break up — yet. Because that would've just ruined everything — kind of like how the time jump did its best to ruin what a great set-up episode Tuesday night could've been.

Maybe, the moral of the story is that, Glee should just quit it with the time-jumps. They're really just kind of a cop-out and if you're going to squeeze and unrealistic amount of conflict-resolution into a single episode, what's the point? We're positive that Glee isn't pressed for time to tell the stories they need to tell this season (they spent like, three weeks on Rachel and Santana bickering over Funny Girl ) and they STILL didn't tell us what happened with Kitty and Artie. We told you three times already, Ryan Murphy — WE'RE NOT GOING TO FORGET.

Images: FOX, Rebloggy