Glee may have hit a ratings high, but the popular show has hit a new low in terms of story. Jace Lacob on where the Fox musical-comedy has gone horribly, offensively wrong. 
 
 From a ratings standpoint, Fox’s musical-comedy Glee is on a roll. 
 
 The show has managed to break its own records with this week’s Britney Spears-themed installment, which attracted 13.3 million viewers. Those are massive numbers in this fragmented media age. 
 
 But even as Glee continues to steamroll the competition, it’s increasingly apparent what’s being lost as the show piles on the musical numbers, gimmicky guest stars, and theme episodes: Plot, characterization, and logic fly out the window. 
 
 And while Glee might be one of the more inventive broadcast-network offerings in recent years because of its format, it’s also at times the safest, a show that’s more concerned that it will confuse the audience with things like serialization or three-dimensional characters than delivering a consistent narrative experience. 
 
 Following the trend established in the latter half of its freshman season, after two episodes of Season 2, Glee’s characters are still little more than archetypes. Rachel (Lea Michele) hasn’t been expanded beyond her self-absorbed bitchiness; Finn (Cory Monteith) is little more than a void with a haircut; Kurt (Chris Colfer) is fabulous but one-note; and second-tier characters like Mercedes (Amber Riley), Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), and Artie (Kevin McHale) rarely get a line of dialogue, much less a meaningful storyline these days. And don’t even get me started on Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), the preening man-boy with a penchant for rapping and embarrassing dance moves. 
 
 Meanwhile, creators Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, and Brad Falchuk have stolen some of Sue Sylvester’s bite. Whereas Sue (Jane Lynch) initially was a major antagonist of the glee club, she’s been undone by cheap attempts to give some shading to her loathsome character in the forms of a mentally disabled sister and Becky (Lauren Potter), a cheerleader with Down syndrome who flutters about Sue like a bespectacled Tinkerbell. 
 
 I’m not sure what to make of newly installed mannish football coach Shannon Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones), clearly intended to become a new adversary for both Will and Sue, but who has already been reduced to a saccharine storyline about her self-esteem—she is a crying child inside a beast’s body. Her oddness might be an effort to make Sue seem more grounded. Or it’s just a Ryan Murphy trope about twisted exteriors that viewers of his Popular and Nip/Tuck find queasily familiar. (Both shows went off the rails creatively.) 
 
 Worse, while rough edges have been intentionally shaved off of Sue Sylvester, the supporting characters have become even more egregiously offensive, but none more so than Jacob Ben-Israel (Josh Sussman), a.k.a. “Jew-Fro.” 
 
 The handling of the character—here presented as a sweaty, stammering, and compulsively masturbating Jew—borders on the anti-Semitic. Is it a case of Kosher panic? Or another symbol of that eternal Glee crutch: the use of stereotype as shorthand for character development? Either way, the butt sweat stains, over-the-top hairstyle (“It’s like a Jewish cloud,” cooed Brittany), self-pleasuring during the pep rally performance, and his attempt to actually buy Rachel from Finn are in shockingly poor taste, considering the series’ self-professed messages about acceptance and equality. 
 
 Instead of illustrating the unspoken and inner desires or fears of the characters, the songs here seem like coldly calculated viral videos, designed to rapidly spread across the Internet. 
 
 • Watch the Six Best Moments from the Britney Glee Episode 
 
 
 
 • Itay Hod: Glee’s New Villain(It’s also another indication of the often-contradictory nature of the series itself, one that vacillates between the cheesy and the caustic, sometimes in the same scene.) 
 
 What is Glee doing when other shows would be moving forward, or showing their characters in challenging, or funny, situations? Well, Glee has become a music single-delivery mechanism. Scenes involving dialogue or plot development are shoehorned between massive musical set pieces, which draw from the vast and varied world of popular music. Instead of illustrating the unspoken and inner desires or fears of the characters, the songs here seem like coldly calculated viral videos, designed to rapidly spread across the Internet. ||||| Lea Michele is slowly but surely becoming a magazine covergirl. 
 
 After announcing her love of vegan baked ziti in Glamour, the Glee diva graces the cover of November's Marie Claire UK, stepping out of Rachel Berry's buttoned-up cardigan in favor of a beautifully-beaded Roberto Cavalli gown. 
 
 She also goes (almost) topless in a few sexy photos for the cover shoot, telling the magazine she was "comfortable" showing her "sensual side." 
 
 Lea also said her crazy-big Glee success is even sweeter after years of TV producers telling her "there wasn’t a place for me in television." 
 
 "I wasn’t pretty enough. No one could figure out what I was," she said. "The great thing about Glee is that it gave me a chance and it shows that you don’t have to look like how everyone else looks." 
 
 For the record, she looks pretty gorgeous to us! 
 
 What do you think of Lea's sexy look? Let us know in the comments. 
 
 Photo Credit: Marie Claire UK
– Based on the 13.3 million viewers who watched this week’s much-anticipated “Britney Spears episode,” everyone loves Glee—everyone, that is, except Jace Lacob. “As the show piles on the musical numbers, gimmicky guest stars, and theme episodes,” he writes in the Daily Beast, “plot, characterization, and logic fly out the window.” Forget “serialization,” “three-dimensional characters,” or “a consistent narrative experience:” Glee is simply “a music single-delivery mechanism … the very definition of mass-produced entertainment that’s intended to distract even as it asks you to hit download on iTunes.” Its “characters are still little more than archetypes”—sometimes offensively so, as in the case of one Jewish supporting character whose characterization “borders on the anti-Semitic.” The “massive musical set pieces” that distract you from the lack of character or plot development “seem like coldly calculated viral videos, designed to rapidly spread across the Internet.” But that’s probably why people love Glee, with its never-ending covers of songs that are “part of the pop-culture lexicon already.” To Lacob, it’s just “a cottage industry of mass-produced knockoffs.” (If, after reading this, you're still obsessed with all things Glee, check out Lea Michele's near-topless photo shoot for Marie Claire.)