Glee

So my wife and I have been watching the new Fox show Glee. This is a show about McKinley high school's Glee Club and it's zany members, ...and of course hilarity ensues. Each week you can expect a glitzy and over the top musical number wrapped around a high school student's woes. I believe we are about four episodes in and so far I can't say that the show's doing too well. Not surprisingly, all the main characters are some flavor of misfit:

Token nerdy girl (she doesn't know that she's hot),

Token nice jock (very Chris Klein),

Token mean jock (notice the mohawk, it means he is mean),

Token cool Asian (notice the cool blue hair tips),

Token voluptuous black girl (comes with a matching token voluptuous black girl voice),

Token gay (almost an offensive amount of gay),

Token wheelchair guy (overcoming diversity).

I think the cast comes off as satirical. It reminds me of those annoying corporate stock photos showing diverse businessmen. 

So kudos on whoever crafted a show which pokes fun at intentionally diverse groups of people.

I signed myself on to watch this show cause I'm as gay as a heterosexual man can be. I love singing and dancing, and I even own my own copy of Mamma Mia on blu-ray so I know what I'm talking about. I watch this particular show for the musical segments. Each episode the show takes a song from popular culture and cheeses it up and adds some flashy choreography.

Almost all of the singing from this show is pre-recorded. I find this rather frustrating because the audio for the narrative portions of the show sounds completely different then the audio during musical portions. It's like once someone opens their mouth to sing, a switch is flipped. Their voices become ridiculously loud and clear, it takes me out it a bit. This isn't  a deal breaker, but it's annoying.

Typically each episode has about two and a half minutes of musical grandeur mixed with about fourty two minutes of barely adequate comedy and drama. The show is just not that funny. With the most stereotypical cast ever complied together for TV, one might expect some more solid laughs. The storylines are often bizarre, confusing and without focus, I find myself pausing the show often to ask the wife to explain what's going on to me. I don't appreciate a show about singing making me feel narratively incompetent.  I think to myself, "Enough is enough already, isn't it time for that pretty girl to sing again?"

I re-watched the Glee trailer and I was reminded of why I really want this show to be good. It's seems like an extremely ambitious project but sadly so far the actual show hasn't matched the nostalgia, grandeur, and heart that the trailer promised.

However, despite all the annoying lip-syncing, lack of laughs, and bizarre plots, I'm going to keep watching. I want it to be a better show, I hope someday will be. Until then, I'll just deal with it.