Reasons to be Gleeful

Please welcome our newest Culchie, Colm. I loved Glee - it was a refreshing change to the TV landscape. Unashamedly cheesy and wonderfully fun, I was excited about each week’s new episode and it’s a programme that I can watch over and over again. Here’s Colm’s look over the first season of the show.

- Darren

So a week on from the season finale of Glee seems a perfect time to look back at the first season and remind ourselves what made us fall in love with this show in the first place. Overall it was a bit of a mixed bag. When they got it right it was brilliant, maybe even groundbreaking in certain ways, but when they got it wrong it was contrived and cliché in the absolute worst way. So here, in no particular order, are some of my highlights and lowlights of the first year of Glee!

Rachel
Yes she’s annoying. But come on, what a wonderful creation this character is. Just throw your mind back to the first episode, and her introductory monologue – ‘Nowadays being anonymous is worse than being poor, fame is the most important thing in our culture now’. Sure maybe she’s a little one dimensional (most of the characters are in this show), but there’s still something innately likeable about her, and her heart is always in the right place. I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t a huge Lea Michele fan before this show, but there’s no denying that the girl can sing and act. Now that they’ve got all that mother stuff out of the way, I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with her next year. Would somebody tell her that she can do much better than Finn though? Please?

The show wasn’t afraid to get sexy
This is something that really surprised me about the show. I remember Popular, Ryan Murphy’s last teen show and I don’t remember it being quite so racy and explicit at times. But Glee actually discussed teen sexuality in a head on, no holds barred way that isn’t seen in a lot of teen shows. From horned up members of celibacy club, to Finn’s premature ejaculation, to the not quite indirect reference to the fact that Santana and Brittany had occasional lesbian trifts to arouse the boys, Glee went there. Look no further than Rachels announcement in the second episode ‘Girls want sex just as much as guys do!’ And of course, there was also the ‘Like A Virgin’ sequence in the Madonna episode which was either inspired or a complete cringefest depending on your taste. The best thing about all of this however is that the show doesn’t preach to kids. It shows us that these characters are sexually active, some more responsible than others, and lets you make up your own mind. That more than anything is what makes Glee different to other American teen shows in this regard.

The way it dealt with gay issues
Ok this is a mixed one. Lets talk about Kurt first of all. Its clear that he’s a walking stereotype and it was obvious to everyone from the moment he appeared on screen in the pilot that he was going to be ‘the gay one’. But the writers managed to achieve something really wonderful with Kurt that set him apart from the token gay kid that you get in lots of teen dramas nowadays (most of whom appear for an episode or two and then fade into obscurity). The scenes between Kurt and his Dad were genuinely heartfelt and the end result was something natural and real. Kurt ended up being one of the more rounded characters in the show as a result, which is of course ironic given what a stereotype he actually is. Of course there was also his creepy boy crush on Finn, fueling the fires of the ignorance of certain straight men everywhere who believe that all gay men are predators out to seduce them. And then there was the old Glee club leader Sandy, who seemed to be a recognised Paedophile in the show and yet flounced around in Sheets and Things, with his limp wrist and knitted sweater vests, clearly written as more ‘gay’ than anything else, again enforcing negative stereotypes that all gay men are after your young boys. Not that the show doesn’t pander to all types of stereotypes – just ask Aretha. Em, I mean Mercedes. Yes.

Kristin Chenoweth
Very little to say about this one. For those of you who don’t know (shame on you) Kristin Chenoweth is a huge star of the stage in the States. Her two episodes were quite simply not enough, and every time she was on screen was pure heaven to watch. And of course there’s that voice of hers. More please!

Artie & Tina
In my opinion, the best relationship on the show. Perfectly written on both sides (when they got around to writing it that is). There was something so sweet and sincere about this relationship. To me it was the innocence of a first love and the excitement and nervousness that comes with it. Not nearly enough attention is being paid to either of these characters, which is a shame, because they have a lot of potential and both have a very strong voice.

The commercialism
This is one of the things that you just can’t escape with Glee. At the end of the first season we have no less than 5 soundtrack CDs to purchase (and even at that not every song featured on the show is included). There’s also the assertion by many that the producers seem to be heavily favouring songs the rights of which are owned by Fox’s parent company Newscorp. Oh and there’s the national tour currently taking place in the States. Hell, look no further than Rachel’s intro in the pilot – ‘You might think that all the boys in school would totally wanna tap this, but my Myspace schedule keeps me way too busy to date’. Myspace? Isn’t that like the ghetto of the internet these days?

Sue Sylvester
A year on, I still haven’t decided if I actually like this character or not. Sue took a few episodes to get going for me, at the start I just felt it was too contrived and a little too self aware, like the writers were trying so hard to have this cutting, sarky rival for Will. I did eventually warm to her, and there’s no denying that she had some cutting one-liners (my all time favourite - Hey William, I thought I smelled cookies wafting from the ovens of the little elves who live in your hair). But I felt the character was being constantly degraded by coming up with more and more ridiculous excuses to bring about a conflict between her and Will (co-leader of Glee club, taking over the auditorium, commandeering the choir room to expand her trophy cabinet!). And then there was that awful, awful scene where Will tried to seduce her with possibly the unsexiest song that has ever been written. And yet – it worked! I almost gave up on Sue at that point. The dejected, beaten and humiliated Sue in that episode was not the Sue we had come to love. Sue wouldn’t take that from Will, she’d be out for revenge the instant she discovered she’d been had. In many ways her character seemed the most inconsistent on the show, which is ironic given her sole purpose as that of antagonist. Of course we did see a different side of her in some perfectly pitched scenes with her sister, which brought her slightly out of the hammy territory, if only temporarily. Hopefully next year they’ll manage to get the balance right again.

Bringing Broadway to the masses
Before the show began this is actually what excited me about it more than anything else. With Broadway vets like Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele on board (as well as the lesser known Jenna Ushkowitz/Tina) and cameos from such Broadway stars as Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel and Neil Patrick Harris, finally there was a show on TV giving a platform to truly talented stars and performers who otherwise go widely unknown outside of the theatre community. I would give Glee a big A+ in this regard and hope it continues long into its run.

I could go on and on. What were your highlights of Season 1 and what are you looking forward to from Season 2?