Time: Wednesday, 9:00-10:00pm
Cast: Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Amber Riley, Chris Colfer, Kevin McHale, Dianna Agron, and many more...
Creator: Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuck, Ian Brennan
Summary: To put it quite simply, this is a show about the Glee club in a fairly typical (though slightly insane) high school in America. Will Schuester, a Spanish teacher and former Glee member, is trying to restore Glee to its former glory (his idea, not mine) by coaching them to win Nationals. Meanwhile the high school hierarchy is conspiring against him to try to make him realize that, no matter what Glee does, they're still going to be the geeks of the school.
Review: You know how sometimes a show is just so absurd you can't stand it? The characters seem forced instead of funny, the plot makes you roll your eyes and look away, and the jokes fall completely flat? Well, that's not Glee.
Think about it: they created a show about a high school Glee club. I'm looking forward to its spin-offs, the Marching Band and the Chess Club. But, unlike Drumline--where the marching band was considered the cool thing to be a part of--Glee has much more realistic portrayal of its members. In other words, they're geeks.
That may be what I appreciate most of this new show, this one inch of realism in what is otherwise an absurdly hilarious program. Yes, kids who did Glee in high school were considered dorks. They ranked somewhere above the marching band and somewhere below the soccer team (because, even though soccer is a popular sport everywhere else in the world, Americans scorn it for reasons no one's ever been particularly clear about). Glee understands that. This show doesn't make the Glee club out to be the coolest thing since Justin Timberlake split from N*Sync. And if anyone thinks differently, there are football players and cheerleaders (aptly called the Cheerios) who are more than willing to put them in their place.
Other than this smidgen of reality, however, Glee tries really hard to make everything else... completely implausible. Let's start with Sue Sylvester, the head coach of the Cheerios. Sue is mean. Very, very mean. She likes to win, and she doesn't care who she runs over in the process. She doesn't seem to care thar she's working with children. In fact, she doesn't even seem to LIKE children. No real principal would ever let her stay employed.
Then there's Will Schuester, the main character. Will is probably the only somewhat normal person, and even that's stretching it a little. Will is a Glee-club graduates who's trying to relive his high school glory days--back when Glee was cool. I don't know when exactly Glee was cool, but Will seems to think it was, and he's trying to get it back to that status. Good luck with that.
Meanwhile, his wife--who is probably the most psychotic character on the show (and that's saying something)--is pregnant. And instead of cutting back on expenses in preparation for the really expensive bundle of joy they're expecting, she pressures Will to quit Glee and get a better job to support her in the manner to which she hopes one day to become accustomed.
And then there's Emma, the OCD guidance counselor who's in love with Will. There's not really much more that needs to be said about her. That pretty much sums it up.
As for students, well, they're certainly... diverse. There's Rachel, who believes she's the only good singer in the Glee club. There's Finn, the high school quaterback who Will blackmails into becoming a singer as well. His girlfriend Quinn (yes, Finn and Quinn... say that five times fast), who's the head Cheerio and never (I mean, never) takes her uniform off. She and Finn are also the co-Presidents of McKinley High School's chastity club. And there's effeminate Kurt; tough, gutsy Mercedes; stuttering Tina; crippled Artie; and a ton more. I couldn't list them all if I tried.
Long (long, long) story short: this is definitely a show to check out. It takes stereotypes and enhances them to the point of hilarity. It is absurd, but in the best way possible. For a change, absurdity actually makes the show funnier. The characters all have their annoying quirks, but there's a little something about (almost) all of them that makes them really lovable despite their faults. Plus, there's singing in every episode (this episode had a really great version of Don't Stop Believing by Journey). And, really, what isn't made better by a musical number?
Rating (this episode):
[1] Run in the other direction
[2] Don't bother
[3] Worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do
[4] Definitely try it out
[5] A total keeper
[1] Run in the other direction
[2] Don't bother
[3] Worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do
[4] Definitely try it out
[5] A total keeper
I agree with your rating and your assessment of the show's absurdness. You're right that a lot of shows can't pull it off right, though some have - I'm thinking about Pushing Up Daisies and Touching Evil. Both of those shows were unjustly cut short, and I'm hoping the same fate doesn't befall Glee.
ReplyDeleteI am very very very wary of song in tv shows. It's normally awkward and out of place. But this shows pulls it off, mostly because it has to, the songs and singing and dancing are the whole point. And I like the fact it handles the "real" songs - the ones the club sing in the club; but it also toys with the internal and fantasy songs, such as when Rachel sings "Take a Bow" to Finn, but it's not really happening.
Glee has a huge cast, like you said, and yeah, they really are addicting. Though I think the characters that are the best and most engaging are the adult characters. I know Emma didn't have a big part in the pilot, but I think she's the best character in the show, and I look forward to hearing what you think about her role in other episodes. Really, the only teen character I think is emotionally engaging is Puck, which is odd because in the pilot episode I really didn't like him. Now him and Emma are my favorite characters, well, and watching Will's crazy wife get... crazier.
Maybe it's because, while these characters are also stereotypes, they're not often seen stereotypes? Or if they are often seen, this show is doing a good job making them feel more original than the others. That, and it's hard for a show with such a huge cast to give the proper attention to each and every character.
You didn't touch upon the internal dialogues that Will, Finn, and even Puck have. Probably because they don't have them that often, and not all of them have them in every episode, and well, you've only talked about the Pilot. But I really hope you talk about them in the episodes they happen, because I think they're actually very important. To me they mark what the show is really about, how those three characters will grow during the show.
I can't wait to see how your opinion evolves on all the different characters as you review more episodes. You have a fun critiquing style so I hope you'll continue to be fair in how you assess the way the show evolves.