When Glee was near the end of it's second season, my college buddy Guy Klose recommended it to me. He said it was really funny.
I caught a few episodes, and was mortified by the "loser" logo, and by Sue Sylvester's (Jane Lynch) treatment of the students. "This is funny?" I wondered. Guy must be half-baked.
But I trust Guy. I've known him a long time, and we like a lot of the same things. If he likes it, I must be missing something. So I took the time* to dig around a little more, and found old episodes of Glee on the web. I watched, but my thoughts hadn't changed.
And then I saw "Preggers." This is when the only male gay student (Kurt) joins the football team with his half-brother (Finn), and the team breaks out mid-game when they are losing to perform "Single Ladies," complete with Beyonce choreography.
I laughed so hard I almost cried. Guy, you were right.*
Recently they ran 2 hours of season two Glee episodes as filler before Simon Cowell's new show started. I caught the end of Glee's Rocky Horror Picture Show and Silly Love Songs. Both of these were aired before Guy told me about the show. And I to see the whole Rocky Horror episode. I watched the movie many, many times during college. Midnight showings, Race & 6th, Cincinnati.
Let's do the time warp again!
Am I a Gleek? Are you?
* That is the Power of Influence.
I'd forgotten about this -- I do remember, years ago, you telling me that you didn't like television shows that highlighted dysfunction (as I recall, Roseanne, at the time) --
ReplyDeleteIn any case, we still do watch Glee -- pretty much every episode with have at least one chuckle, and at least one musical arrangement that I find surprising, or especially creative. Case in point -- the recent excerpting of West Side Story, over several episodes.
On the other hand, my local paper pretty much pans the show, for reasons that I tend to agree with. The cleverness of the first season only appears at time, all in all making for a rather uneven series. Jane Lynch's character, Sue Sylvester, is at time one of the funniest characters, but at other times comes across as just plain mean. Chris Colfer's character, Kurt, has apparently just blended into the background, whereas in prior seasons he has had some really great musical moments.
But there are still moments -- there were hints of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas last year that were clever and funny. And the recent romance brewing with Coach Biest and the Ohio State recruiter were funny too. Or last season's takeoff of the Garland-Striesand duet with Kurt and Rachael, which at least for me was an epiphany of their two characters.
I just wish it were less uneven overall. I'll still watch it until it runs its course, though.