"Glee" finally gets a writing staff, could get good again

It's a well known fact that Glee, as a show, has some severe ADD: characters, plot lines, and motivations come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. As a result, much of the second season was... "messy," to put it kindly. (You might be more inclined to say "shitty.") But what you might not have realized — I didn't — was that Glee had no writing staff the entire time. Every episode was written by the show's three co-creators, Brad Falchuck, Ian Brennan, and Ryan Murphy. That's not unheard of early on in a show's run, but given that it's been two seasons and Glee is a bit of a special case, this borders on the absurd:

Series normally staff up between seasons but last summer was particularly hectic for Murphy with the first ever Glee tour and the release of his movie Eat, Pray, Love. But between writing and directing (Murphy, Falchuk) episodes, supervising music, wardrobe and choreography and planning the summer concert tour, the 3 never found the time to read spec scripts and interview writers.

This is pure conjecture on my part, but maybe this fact contributed to the show's less-than-focused nature? Think back to the pilot — you know, before Murphy et al. had to worry about that concert tour or how to justify a Britney Spears-themed episode. That shit was awesome. So will hiring some writers finally get the insanity back on track for the third season?

One can hope. Some of the names seem promising — like Buffy scribe Marti Noxon and Christopher Guest collaborator Michael Hitchcock — and others less so — like Roberto Aguierre-Sacasa, who did the decidedly tepid rewrite of Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark. But at this point, I think anything that takes some of the decisions out of Ryan Murphy's hands can only be a good thing.