Episode 520

I was recently sent an interesting article by my east coast contingency entitled "When is it time to break up with your favorite TV show?"  I have asked myself that many times in the past and now I pose the following question: is it grinchy to do it around the holidays?  Or more specifically, because of the holidays?  The way I see it, if Glee can't pull off a successful Christmas episode, at least in terms of its musical numbers (other than Kurt and Blaine's rendition of Baby It's Cold Outside), what can it do? Christmas should be so easy for that show, and it totally blew it.

On the other side of the coin, the Christmas episode of Community was completely in Claymation, something that should not be easy to pull off, and it was absolutely brilliant.  In it, Claymated Abed is looking for the meaning of Christmas, and in one of the more perfect moments of the episode, is led to a box containing the first season of LOST.  "It represents lack of payoff," Abed asserts.  As much as I resent this comment (while absolutely dying from the hilarity), I can absolutely see how someone who broke up with LOST during Season 3 or 4 would have a completely valid reason for saying this.  In fact, I was almost a victim of a LOST break-up.  And so I second guess my desire to end it with Glee, because there are also plenty of other shows that I nearly broke up with - namely 30 Rock during Season 3 and Parks and Recreation during Season 1 - that turned themselves around in such a massive way that I feel bad even having thought about breaking it off.

(On a semi-unrelated note, there is not one other program on television that could pull off a Claymation episode without really changing the tone of the show. Similarly, I would be hard pressed to think of a sitcom other than 30 Rock that could complete a successful live episode or a show other than Modern Family that could take its whole cast to Hawaii and not have it turn into a Saved by the Bell cheese-fest fiasco.)

And then, of course, there are the shows that I still wish I'd had the gumption to break up with.  Unless there's a miracle on 5th Ave., I think I've stayed with Gossip Girl three seasons too long.  And while it's easier to end it with a reality TV show, I still can't resist the pull to The Bachelor, even when Jake and Vienna make me embarrassed to be a human being.  But I suppose it's better to stick with a show only to be disappointed than to be the dumpee, as we all were with the likes of Arrested Development and Freaks and Geeks.  Those are scars that just don't heal.