Somewhere in the transition between the first and second hour of Glee‘s two-hour finale I had a C. S. Lewis thought, a thought that was confirmed when the show’s second hour started with Will Schuester’s high school glee club coach reminding them that glee club wasn’t about winning something like nationals.  In the end, the coach said, glee club was about “being open to joy.”  That’s something that Lewis understood for most of his life.  And while most of what I saw from my time watching Glee wasn’t about joy, it still had its moments.

Like most viewers of the show, I started losing interest in the show during season two and mostly lost track of things throughout season three.  The show’s weaknesses were evident almost from the start, as this article from Vox asserts confidently.  But when I heard that the show was in its final, shortened season a few weeks ago, I thought I’d pay it the respect that I must admit it deserves.  Let’s face it, Glee holds a particularly weighty place, a particular moment, in our accelerated culture (remember when its covers of old songs topped the iTunes chart along with American Idol?  yeah.  You don’t see that happening anymore on either account).  The show was much like I left it: muddled, misdirected, and scattershot.  Its political agenda was stronger than ever.  And it had eschewed attempts at making the show about any new cast of characters (though the final set of new students wasn’t all that bad).  But the promise of an actual ending is always a draw for those of us who love story.

The finale was more Parks and Recreation than How I Met Your Mother or Lost: it gave long-time viewers what they most wanted.  The evening’s first episode was a flashback recounting how many of the first cast actually met.  It rightfully ended with “Don’t Stop Believing” from the pilot episode.  The second episode of the night was a flash-forward to how most of the original cast turned out, and things turned out well for pretty much everyone.  Everyone got a moment to shine.  After it all, it was a world of piano-band-back-up-choir on demand and the use of slightly awkward songs to convey particular emotions regardless of said awkward content.  How could that world end sadly?

It will be interesting to see how the show is remembered in the long run.  Like the author of the Vox article suggests, “The general consensus is that Glee‘s best season was its 22-episode first season, which is true. But I would go further than that. The best “season” of Glee is actually its first 13 episodes, produced in one chunk, before the last nine episodes of season one were produced later.”  Season two definitely had some good moments (I grow more and more fond of the “Grilled Cheesus” episode each time I watch it).  Still, as the article suggests, it was a show where “sacrifice was only illusory at best.”  If nothing else, it will remind us of just how good singing can be and how, regardless of the moment, maybe we can find some way to be open to joy, even if its seems illusive in a 44-minute network dramedy.