I would just like to admit, before I start, that this review will be biased due to the facts that 1. I don't like Glee and 2. I am a massive Rocky Horror fan who hates to see it ruined, may have affected my judgement a teensy bit. If you're looking for an impartial, completely objective review of The Rocky Horror Glee Show, this isn't for you.
Otherwise, let's dish!
When I first heard that Glee was doing Rocky Horror, I was filled simultaneously with both dread and cautious curiosity. 'If nothing else, it'll introduce Rocky Horror to a new generation' some fans said tentatively both before, and after, the episode aired. Personally, I don't think this is very important - as I've pointed out several times, a show which can last majestically for over 30 years without showing any signs of stopping (all without the help of Glee) must constantly be revealed to new generations anyway. I myself am 17, part of Glee's target audience, and I found Rocky just fine on my own. But I digress. Although it's true that Glee might introduce new fans to Rocky, I personally don't think this should be their first taste. If it was mine, I wouldn't come back for more.
The episode, which aired just before Hallowe'en in America and can be found online for UK fans if you're interested (I was curious, and regret it now), sees the guy who I assume is the teacher deciding to put Rocky Horror on for the school's annual play because an annoying woman (another teacher, I assume) tells him she loves it and so does her boyfriend, and teacher guy wants to win her over even though I don't think he cares much for the show at all. Still awake? Okay, let's get into the nitty gritty. Half the episode is spent dwelling on the love triangle, the other half sees the moaning teens bitch repeatedly about the revealing costumes (which was stupid, really, since the cheerleaders in particular were more covered up when wearing their costumes than their regular clothes...) and about the risque content, and a further half (I know that's three halves but that's what it felt like) dealt with some stupid opinionated woman in a tracksuit also bitching and condemning Rocky Horror (!), which really left very little time for anything else, not that I would have been awake to see it.
And then, after almost an hour of tedious will-they/won't-they, the show gets cancelled because it turns out that it's not okay to be who you want to be and give over to pleasure once in a while. What a wonderful message, Glee. They try to pull themselves out of the gutter by performing the play 'for themselves', ending the episode on an appallingly bad rendition of the Time Warp, and after all that moaning about tax dollars being spent on something like that, what happens? Oh, right - all those tax dollars are in fact wasted because the elaborate set and costumes go to waste since the show is never performed before a paying audience. Logic???
Let's step aside from the ridiculously bad plotting of the episode for a minute to look at where Glee's take on Rocky Horror managed to suck just that little bit more. First of all, there was the casting of a female Frank. Fair enough - she was not the first pick and she only volunteered because she wanted to be empowering, et cetera, et cetera. But it just did not work. For a start, you cannot be a transvestite, let alone a sweet one, if you are a woman wearing women's clothes. That just makes you a woman. Duh. And then the casting of a female Frank led to innevitable lyric alterations ("I'm not much of a man by the light of day..." couldn't exactly work anymore, and so on). This is acceptable. But the further lyric tinkerings were not.
Whoever rewrote the lyrics to "Toucha-toucha" should be slapped. Hard. "I thought there's no use getting into heavy petting, it only leads to trouble and seat wetting" became, tragically, "I thought there's no use getting into heavy sweating (seriously) it only leads to trouble and bad fretting". What does that even mean, apart from being a little disgusting? "Toucha-toucha" was subject to the worst of the alterations - "then if anything grows" became "if anything shows" and so on - but it was not the only song to be dismembered. Immortal hit "Sweet Transvestite was also quite epically ruined when the word "Transexual" was replaced with "sensational". I'd just like to point out to Glee that "Transexual" was the name of the planet that Frank and crew came from, in the galaxy of Transylvania, so that little change not only killed the mood but the entire story. Round of applause.
Not even the appearances of Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf playing bit parts could redeem this sordid thing. It had a lot of potential, and I'll admit that some of the renditions weren't bad - 'Hot Patootie' and 'Over at the Frankenstein place', for instance, were actually pretty listenable - but the makers of this programme took something wonderful and dragged it through the dirt.
And yes, Glee might introduce a new generation to Rocky Horror, but if I was watching that episode, which seemed to say it isn't acceptable in our society to be Rocky Horror fans and that we should just do it in the privacy of our own homes, or not at all, I don't think I'd be very impressed.
As the episode ended, it was with an enormous relief that I remembered I'm going to a live show in just over a week, before that abomination becomes stuck in my head.
"Don't dream it; be it"? The Rocky Horror Glee Show was more like a nightmare.
