I love Glee.  I'm a total Gleek. 

From the moment that they opened their mouths on the pilot and sang "Don't Stop Believin'," I've been hooked.  But past the great music and endearing quirkiness of the show, there's one other thing that has impressed the heck out of me: Glee is not afraid to get to the awesome.  

What does that mean?  Well, the "standard" in many TV programs is to drag things out as long as they possibly can.  They set up that something awesome is going to happen at some point in the future, and then take as long as freaking possible to get there.  It's seems that they are afraid if they just go ahead and resolve the awesome plotline, they're going to run out of awesome or something.  So nothing moves.  They rely on the the tension and anticipation of the awesome thing coming to keep viewers plugged in, but unfortunately, also set them up to expect too much.  Because after an entire season of waiting for something awesome, nothing could be awesome enough to satisfy the hype.

In Glee, however, they let things resolve and then get to the business of making more awesome.  Let me give you two examples (spoiler alert!).  In the first half of the season, Mr. Schuester's wife had a fake pregnancy that she was trying to keep hidden.  She arranged to adopt Quinn's baby when it was born, and in typical TV fashion, I figured that we might would see some resolution at the season finale.  Imagine how surprised I was then when Will discovered the lie, confronted her, and left the marriage.  Heck, we even saw some resolution of Will's little romantic tension with Ms. Pillsbury!

The second example came from just last week's episode, when we discovered why Jesse St. James had been faking a relationship with Rachel.  It was pretty freaking awesome, and now we get to see how the awesome makes a difference in the lives of the characters this week.  I can't wait to see what awesome thing happens next!

So, what does all this have to do with roleplaying? 

Far too often, both as players and as GM's, we come up with something awesome.  Maybe it's a secret about our past, a huge reveal about the big bad guy of the campaign, or maybe the resolution to a mysterious subplot.  But then what do we do with that awesome something?  We tend to hide it, keep it secret, and look forward to the perfect time when we can spring it on the rest of the group and have them gasp in surprise and marvel at just how awesome we truly are.  But you know what else?  In the meantime, you sort of play through the game looking forward to the awesome but living in the utterly mediocre.  And the really tragic thing is that when we delay the awesome, we tend to lose interest in the story.  So instead of getting to the "big reveal", we abandon the campaign before it even happens, and the awesome it totally wasted.     

What if, instead, you just got to the awesome right now?  You know, see how that awesome thing affects the characters in the story.  Deal with it and explore it, rather than just marvel at its awesomosity.  And then, just maybe, get on to some other awesome thing.

"But Chris, what if I run out of awesome?" you may ask.  Well, awesome is not a finite resource.  And more often than not, awesome will breed awesome.  And even more often than that, awesome is a lot more likely to come out of collaborative play than from solo laboring.  Trust your fellow players, and yourself, to be able to handle the awesome and let it multiply.