Is this a season premiere fans can love, love, love? Our verdict on Glee's Season Five debut.When news of Cory Monteith's tragic passing was announced during the Summer, few viewers would have blamed the production team of Glee for taking an extended hiatus and/or electing to bring the show to an end. While the former eventuality is coming to pass after Season Five's third episode broadcasts, it appears that the show will go ahead with its final two seasons, and with Love, Love, Love it's off to an admirable start.
If anything, it remains an extreme surprise to this reviewer that the Beatles haven't come under Ryan Murphy's radar before this stage in his Fox musical-drama. The absence of their music from Glee prior to now only serves to strengthen the impact of its presence here, with many of the Fab Four's earlier tracks such as Baby You Can Drive My Car, Yesterday and All You Need Is Love receiving full justice from the talented cast ensemble over the duration of their premiere story. Certainly, the quality of the episode's track listing was high and above most of those setlists provided in Season Four's weak latter half, a potent precedent for the series' latest run.
Glee's difficult balance has always lied in the counter-weights of music and drama, though, a balance which if misconstrued can prove to be a single episode's downfall. With Love, Love, Love, Murphy and co have effortlessly regained their confidence in integrating both hit songs and empathetic drama sequences, their perspective on controversial issues such as disability and employment prospects remaining satirical yet emotive at the same time. A relationship as delicate as Arty and Kitty's is something which requires sufficient screen time and intricate portrayals to warrant inclusion, so that the series' scribes and the actors themselves achieve the unlikely feat of succeeding in both aspects is an admirable accomplishment to say the least.
On the other hand, a potentially restrictive aspect of the show which still remains persistent is that of its split focus on several groups of key characters. It becomes evident over the course of this first instalment that Murphy intends for his viewers to engage as much with the narrative arcs of Sue Sylvester, Principal (now Janitor) Figgins and Will Schuster as they do on a weekly basis with the likes of Rachel and Kurt, but that's a hell of an ask when it feels as if neither of these groups are offered half as much screen time as they have proved that they deserve. Even if ultimately the writing team end up alternating between McKinley High and New York each week, that's a preferable outcome to the uneven tone visible in this outing due to its variety of ongoing storylines.
More than ever, however, it should be of note that Glee is back on great form. While it can hardly express itself as being devoid of shortcomings, Love, Love, Love is a fantastic foundation on which the show's writers will hopefully continue to build and improve over the course of the next twenty-two episodes. If the team need a while after Finn (and Cory)'s passing is brought to light in The Quaterback in a fortnight's time, then by all means, fans should allow for such a delay- judging by Season Five's brilliant opener, when Ryan Murphy's production team are offered a period in which to develop future storylines, they'll use it efficiently, returning to centre stage for an encore which could potentially elicit universal acclaim.
4.5/5
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