Glee

Jenny and I have been watching the new show Glee, which is about a high school show choir, and therefore it has a lot of music in it. They sing at least two or three songs an episode. This is the show's first season, but the pilot aired back in May as kind of an advertisement to generate interest over the summer. When I originally heard about it, I was very interested for several reasons - first of all, it has a lot of singing in it, which I like. Second, there's a couple of people who interest me in the cast - Lea Michele, who was one of the original stars of Spring Awakening on Broadway, and has an absolutely amazing voice, as well as Jane Lynch, who's been really funny in various movies and on the show Party Down. And finally, I heard about the show through a video posted on YouTube which showed the cast singing Journey's "Don't Stop Believing", which is one of the most irresistible songs of all time.

I'm still not really sure how I feel about the show yet. I like the music and the fact that they try to incorporate a lot of different styles - from stuff you hear on the radio to hits from the '80s to showtunes. And there are some really good singers in the cast, partially because a lot of them have backgrounds in musical theater. On the other hand, most of the characters are very one-dimensional and uninteresting (the dumb jock, the bitchy cheerleader, the idealistic teacher), and some of the storylines are pretty stupid. For example, in one episode, the closeted gay kid tells his dad he's practicing for football when he's really practicing dance routines, then goes on to actually join the football team and help them win a game by teaching the whole team the dance to Beyonce's "Single Ladies". Maybe it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but the complete lack of subtlety and the abundant tearjerker-ish moments that are mixed in suggest that the show is trying to be more than just a satire.

My other major problem with the show aside from the relatively lame storylines and characters is the way the musical numbers look. The problem is that the songs are all pre-recorded, and for some reason, it is VERY obvious that the actors are lip-syncing. I don't know if this show does something differently from other modern film musicals in the way it films its musical numbers, because I think lip-syncing along to pre-recorded tracks is very common when filming a musical. But on Glee, at least for me, the fact that the actors are lip-syncing is so obvious it's distracting. I know for a fact that all of the actors do their own singing, so I'm not sure what exactly the problem is, but on nine out of ten of the musical numbers the voices that are heard do not even remotely appear to be coming out of the mouths of the actors onscreen.

But there are also good aspects to the show. Several of the actors really stand out - Jayma Mays is very lovable as Emma Pillsbury, the guidance counselor with OCD who is secretly in love with Will Schuester (the Spanish teacher/leader of the Glee Club, played by Matthew Morrison, who is the main character and sadly, one of the most boring ones). And several other members of the cast, including Chris Colfer as Kurt Hummel, Lea Michele as Rachel Berry, and Mark Salling as Noah "Puck" Puckerman, manage to outshine the mediocre roles written for them. But for me, the best part about Glee is being introduced to music which I'm not familiar with. Since the songs are drawn from so many different genres, I come across a lot that I don't know. Of course, some of them are pretty bad, but on occasion there's a song I really like which I've never heard before. For example, last week's episode featured "Defying Gravity" from the musical Wicked. I had never heard any of the music from Wicked before, but I absolutely loved this song and ended up downloading the rest of the Wicked soundtrack.

Ultimately, Glee is a mixed bag. I'm not sure if it could hold my interest if it weren't for the music, but even though the show isn't one of my favorites, there's at least enough good about it to make me want to keep watching.