i actually feel ok with the spears episode. it wasn’t great like the season premier, but i like seeing Brittny featured for her dancing. i know people hated the music on that episode, but for me glee is about song and dance, and the dance in this one is just amazing. Heather Morris totally should be a teen icon…
and i enjoed all the one liners from Santana and Brittny, also the interactions between Schue and Stamos… so it wasn’t that bad for me. it certainly isn’t moving or heartbreaking/warming, it’s just entertaining. But they should do this kind of episodes too much, because i watch Glee mainly for amazing songs that ties into the plot.
I am THRILLED with this week’s episode- everything that is great about Glee was present tonight. I laughed, I cried, I tapped my toes. Beautiful, earnest episode. I don’t know how they manage to take such touchy subjects and show them from avery angle with such honesty.
So the atheist asks his religious friends not to use his grief as a lever to try and convert him. They persist, he asks again, they persist, and the happy ending is the atheist apologizing for asking them to respect his decision and then they take him to church… this was pretty bad.
I am torn. I stopped watching after the Lady Gaga ep last season. Loved the first half of season 1 but I felt it turned into more of a music theme of the week with less focus on the characters and relationships that drew me in originally. So my question is, is it worth catching up on this show?
FWIW I don’t have a lot of faith in Ryan McMurphy as a show runner. His previous shows (Nip/Tuck for example) have all had amazing first seasons that later floundered with freak of the week stunt writing. I guess I just have a hard time investing in another one of his shows.
I respectfully disagree. I thought they handled religion and spirtuality incredibly well and gracefully. It was never about conversion, or forcing him to see the proverbial light. He goes to church not for a religious purpose, but to allow his friend express her support for him. Before she sings she says specifically, “Kurt, I know you don’t believe in God and that is ok. You have to believe in something.” At the end of the episode he is still an atheist, but he has found what he believes in, he believes in his Father. He refers to his relationship with his Father specifically as sacred.
In the end, the episode wasn’t about religion or spirtuality, it is about what we believe in and how we allow that to define us. Whether it is Grilled Cheezus, God, Acupuncture or your Father what you believe in is where you draw strength from in the darkest of times.
I close with one who expressed this far more eloquently than I.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Ah, hell, Shepherd, I ain’t looking for help from on high. That’s a long wait for a train don’t come. Shepherd Book: Why when I talk about belief, why do you always assume I’m talking about God?
Shepherd Book: I don’t care what you believe in, just believe in it.
I also disagree with you on this one. Kurt was the only one not open to respecting everyone else’s beliefs. So often we see Christians as the buffoons who try and peddle/push their beliefs on others. I appreciated that this episode didn’t take that approach.
I also love how they contrasted the serious (Kurt’s dad) with Cheesus. To me Cheesus successfully represented how kids view God. It’s more of a sitting on Santa’s lap type of relationship. How they got Finn to see around that was perfect.
I agree with you, but I would say to keep watching. If this week had been another Artist-of-the-Week show, I’d have been tempted to walk away. I think the show is struggling with maintaining its creative integrity in the face of a greedy network. I’m hopeful the show will win.
She is placing a burden on him to attend her religious event, no matter what lip service she gives to not trying to convert him. If she had instead brought him against his will to a voodoo ceremony where a chicken was sacrificed and the same ‘realization’ was proffered, would that be reasonable? If I insisted that my friend whose father was in a coma come and attend a ‘Jedi service’ where we all dress in robes and ceremonially wave lightsabers around, would that be reasonable? Quick note, if you feel the examples I give are ridiculous, please understand that for myself and many others, they’re directly equivalent to going to church. All three are equally boggling to someone like myself who lack the beliefs in the supernatural, and there is no inherent moral superiority of one over another, to my perception.
I think theists, no matter how good their intentions, cannot truly relate to this subject. I often feel as if the religious (or ‘spiritual’) people around me cannot accept the possibility that an individual could live happily without some type of surrender to ‘a greater force’. Rephrasing it as a belief in his dad may offer comfort to a theist, comfort that the ‘poor ol’ atheist’ has finally shown some sort of crack in their ‘angry facade’, but it’s just incomprehensible.
I don’t write this to try and convince anyone that I’m right about religion and they’re wrong, I don’t write this to complain about the battles I must fight each day to raise my children without them being indoctrinated by well meaning strangers into a fantasy. I write this to try and communicate that this episode of Glee operated from an inherent position of assumption that, as best as I can see, is very difficult for a theist to comprehend exists. I respect that y’all have beliefs, I’m just sharing that this episode was very very very sub-awesome for someone outside of that belief structure.
His only offense, as best as I could see, was that when they pushed their beliefs on him, he asked them to respect his.
And they didn’t.
Respect is one a one-way street, the assumption in the episode (and your post, to my perception) is that atheists must accept religious proselytization. He can’t even gracefully bow out, they followed him home, and then followed him to the hospital. If ‘respect’ can only exist in the form of sitting and being religioned at, then it is a definition with which I am unfamiliar.
I think you co-mingling some thoughts here that I would like to seperate. I want to uncouple the idea of friends trying to support a friend in need with proselytization. When Kurt asked them to stop singing religious songs in school they did. When they went to the hospital they did it in support of Kurt without him even in the room and sang a song from Yentil about one’s Father. They were there in support of a friend with no agenda or objective.
I come back to the point I made before, the point of the episode was about what one believes in. Whether that belief is misplaced in the awesome power of a grilled cheese sandwich, whether that belief comes from community or whether it comes the relationship with one’s Father it is about what one believes.
Now, if you want to argue a more fundamental philsophical point that a person with no belief in anything (self, family, jedi, voodoo, God) can be a fully realized person then we can continue down this path.
Thank you DP, that is definitely close to the core of my argument. I would stand by the fact that in order to live a fully realized life one needs to believe in something. However, I wouldn’t say a god-like being or a void by lack thereof is contingent on my argument. It isn’t binary. My argument is based on my belief that we are defined by what we believe in. God is simply an option.
Does this clarify my stance? I am not arguing pro or con religion. I am arguing pro belief.
My world view tends to be based on knowledge, not belief, so I can’t really get behind that interpretation but I respect that you have beliefs and hope you’ll respect that there are other mindsets.
Shucks, if we all thought the same about everything, this would be one boring planet!
So perhaps the middle ground here is about being passionate about something instead of using the word belief. Would you say you are passionate about knowledge?
So that’s a no, then, on respecting that other mindsets exist.
I respect that you have beliefs and that this is an absolutely-OK thing. I don’t feel any need to pin y’all down on the logic of why you feel the way you do because humanity is a heterogeneous mix of people with enormously complex combinations of thought, emotions, motivations, and so on.
I don’t think w really need to come to a middle ground because sometimes people just think different about a thing, and that freedom to think different should also be A-OK. Here’s hoping you agree.
I think that is an over-reaction my friend. It isn’t that on not respecting that other mindsets exist, perhaps it is my belief that I can determine a middle ground from which to build understanding. Do you really feel it is impossible for people of two different mindsets to build a common ground?
The middle ground is not boxing either side into one conclusion or the other imo. People who believe can run a huge spectrum as can non believers. The common ground is respect.
Basically “Hey that works for you cool” and that’s it. No classifiers, no stipulations, nothing more.
For me personally having my lack of belief shoe horned into “Oh he believes in evolution and science and athiesm” annoys the crap out of me. That’s not a comment on any post in this forum just something I’ve had to deal with before.
I felt that at the end of the episode everyone got their way. Kurt didn’t start believing in God, and I was satisfied with that. It wasn’t necessary to the episode or his character arc that he believe.
I get what your saying, about not need a belief in something as a requisite for successful living. That’s not my paradigm, but I accept your point.
I agree, if we were all alike it would be boring. That’s part of the fun of the forum, to have healthy discourse.
