So, I've Started Watching Glee

I don't really know why exactly. I watched a video of one of their recent songs on Youtube, and for some reason or another (I'm not quite sure why) I proceeded to watch a bunch of other Glee songs. So, I figured I might as well go ahead and check out the show in earnest. I've kind of been meaning to anyway. I realize I'm about a year and a half late on this, but whatever. Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, I mean, it's a goofy-looking show about a high school glee club. That isn't exactly up my alley. Sure, it's massively popular, but so are Desperate Housewives, Survivor, Two and a Half Men, and Glenn Beck. However, I've watched the first 7 episodes now, and here's the thing: This show is good. It's really good.

I knew going in that the show would have good music. [random sidebar] Actually, more accurately I knew the show would have music I liked. I have terrible taste in music, so I'm hardly qualified to say whether the show's music is objectively good or not [/random sidebar]. What I did not expect was for the show to be as funny or fantastically zany as it is. Rather than trying to be a realistic little underdog story about a group of lovable misfits, Glee wisely chooses to embrace the absurdity of its concept, and the show is much better off for it. Characters break out into perfectly choreographed musical numbers, and every performance has a bit of a dreamlike quality to it. The whole football team can break out into the "Single Ladies" dance, and there isn't an ironic wink to the camera, it just is what it is (though, about those football scenes. If you're going to cast someone as a quarterback, maybe he should look like he has at least attempted to throw a football before). For my money, the best comedies are the ones that are able to throw reality out the window and embrace the zaniness (Community, 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother are great examples of this. The best example is, of course, Arrested Development). Glee does that, and doesn't get too caught up in weighty issues or drama. In fact, the worst parts of the shows to this point has been the drama that has been rather clumsily handled (Quinn's baby, Will's incredibly unlikable wife). On the whole though, the show is pure fun and energy, and that's a great thing.

The cast is mostly great, though the younger actors have their moments of, well...not being very good. The adults are pretty excellent though. Two characters, though, stand out in particular. Jane Lynch has earned well-deserved accolades for her Sue Sylvester, the wickedly funny cheerleading coach. It's hard to describe just how fantastic she is in this role. Lynch steals basically every scene she's in, and much like Neil Patrick Harris's Barney in How I Met Your Mother, elevates the entire show. If you haven't seen the show, let me present you with a selection of quotes from Ms. Sylvester:

"I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat; and then on some dark cold night, I will steal away into your home, and punch you in the face."

"This is what we call a total disaster ladies. I'm going to ask you to smell your armpits. That's the smell of failure and it's stinking up my office."

“So you like show tunes. It doesn’t mean you’re gay. It just means you’re awful.”

"You think this is hard? I'm living with Hepatitis, *that's* hard!"

"I'll often yell at homeless people: 'Hey, how is that homelessness working out for you? Try not being homeless for once.' "

"I hear people say, "That's not how I define marriage". Well, to them I say, "Love knows no bounds." Why can't people marry dogs? I'm certainly not advocating intimacy with your pets. I, for one, think intimacy is no place in marriage. Walked in on my parents once, and it was like seeing two walruses wrestling. So, WOOF! on Prop 15, Ohio. "

Yeah, fantastic. The other character who I really love on the show is the other real breakout star, and that's Lea Michele as Rachel. The reason I love the character, besides the fact that she has a heck of a voice, is because she isn't just one of the misfits. She isn't unpopular because she isn't pretty or isn't talented, she's unpopular because really, she's a pretty insufferable egomaniac. She isn't simply misunderstood or a diamond in the rough or whatever, she's a really flawed character who often is the cause of her own misfortune. In a show that (so far) is populated by a lot of broad stereotypes, Rachel is a refreshingly complex character.

I'm surprised by how consistently funny the show is, and at their willingness to go to weird places to mine that humor. It certainly doesn't feel like a mainstream, super-popular show. But hey, sometimes you just catch the zeitgeist. The humor is sharp and zany. Some of the inner monologues are fantastic (particularly Puck), and the recurring joke with Finn's memory of running into a mailman is really well used. They mine humor out of pretty much every character, no matter how small a role ("Howard, if you cannot fold a fitted sheet, you cannot work at Sheets 'N' Things!"). The moment that killed me more than any other though, the moment where I knew this show was capable of awesome things, was in the 4th episode, when Stephen Toblowsky's Sandy Ryerson (I see what you did there Glee) has this exchange with another character.

"Who is Josh Groban?"

Sandy: "'Who is Josh Groban?!?' Kill Yourself!...He is an angel sent from heaven to deliver platinum records unto us, and if he were here right now, I would club you to death with his critic's choice award."

That right there is great comedy folks.

So, is Glee my new favorite show? Not even close. It's a lot of fun, and the music is usually very good, but it struggles to find its feet sometimes and the tone can swing wildly from episode to episode. It isn't capable of being non-stop, laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end like Community or 30 Rock can do on their best of days. However, Glee is its own unique little animal, and it has certainly showed enough promise so far that I'll keep watching and try to catch up with the current episodes. It's a lot of fun, and as long as it doesn't veer to far into dramatic territory in the future (which would be terrible, terrible, terrible), I'll gladly spend time in the zany little universe Glee has created.

So, there it is, my thoughts on Glee. If you cared (I know you didn't, humor me). If you're still reading, congrats to you, you stubborn completist. If you aren't reading this and instead stopped after the first paragraph to avoid my nonsensical rambling, then good for you. Give yourself a gold star.