Follow Up – Glee

Glee – FOX – 9:30/8:30pm Wednesday – USA / Channel 10 – 7:30pm Thursday – AUS

If we cast our mind back to the fall TV season of 2007 we may remember Viva Laughlin, a poor attempt by CBS to revive the virtually nonexistent genre of the television musical.  Met with wave after wave of awful reviews Viva Laughlin was laughed off our television screens after only two episodes. “The musical is dead!” Everybody cried. “How could you possibly think a TV musical could work?! They never have worked, they never will work!”

Well, Glee is here to prove “them” wrong. FOX previewed the pilot back in back May to glowing reviews (like this one, from me) and its first season has officially just kicked off. The good news is Glee’s still awesome.

This second episode finds the glee club in trouble once again; the cheerleading coach Sue wants to shut them down unless they can recruit the full twelve members needed to compete at the regional finals. Elsewhere the glee club teacher Will and his semi mental wife Terri are out hunting for a new house because there’s a baby on the way. They can’t really afford it though and Will is forced to take a second job as a janitor, but here’s the kicker: his wife may not be pregnant at all.

As depressing as all that sounds it does highlight the biggest problem with Glee. Will’s home life really is awful, and as much as we’re supposed to hate the extra shrill Terri so we can root for Will to get with germaphobe Emma, she’s still a painful character to watch. Luckily for us, most of the show revolves around high school based antics. Just like on creator Ryan Murphy’s other high school based show Popular the kids of Glee are all stereotypes, and while on Popular that lead to some less than inspired character developments for some reason here it works.

The only other misstep in the second episode was the weird Kanye West musical number that popped up halfway through. Was it supposed to be Will singing? We couldn’t really tell, it was just kind of out of place and awkward. The other musical numbers in the episode were firing on all cylinders though, just like in the pilot.

Glee is a real love it or hate it sort of show, obviously a big broad colourful musical set in a high school is never going to appeal to everybody. For my mind Glee delivers sharp witted dialogue and some top performances, especially from Jane Lynch who is absolutely hilarious as the cheerleading coach Sue.

Is Glee the best new show of the fall? Well, compared to the only other show to have debuted so far, Melrose Place, I think we can safely say, yeah, it’s easily the best. Still, no matter what other shows come along Glee will still be very funny, very clever and very much worth your time.