I really love Glee - hey, different strokes for different folks - but I had to share my husband's comment when I saw this article. I was surprised to see it, and as I've been making my husband watch it with me (he swears he likes it!), his response was...
"But doesn't Jezebel know that Josh Fucking Groban was on it?"
The reference just killed me, and I had (for some reason) to come share it. (It's late. I blame sleep deprivation if this is funny to no one else. lol)
I really love this show and have one chief complaint: that the voices are so, so over-Autotuned. Glee builds up to great musical numbers and then Rachel or Finn or even Mercedes open their mouths and Robot Voices come out! Can't. Stand. Autotune.
I agree with a fair number of your points, but I don't think the teacher is a saint -- he hasn't noticed his wife's fake pregnancy or that all his students were hyping themselves up with amphetamines, and he abandoned the club after one of his students insulted his choreography to pursue his own dreams of stardom. He's a flake (a hot flake, but a flake). And the quarterback is so dumb that he believes his girlfriend's lie that she got pregnant from sperm floating in a hot tub; plus, he pimped himself out to lure Tracy-Flick-With-A-Voice back to the glee club. Oh, and there's Mr. "I have a mohawk and joined glee club to pick up MILFs." It's not a deep show by any means, but I kind of enjoy the fact that everyone, male and female, is pretty f*cked up.
@kentuckienne: Not only that, but people keep forgetting that in the very first episode he planted marijuana on Finn, then blackmailed him into joining Glee club. Seriously, it's a Ryan Murphy show. Nobody's a saint. That's the point.
@kentuckienne:
This show is a fun, broad satire. I can't imagine that anyone takes any of these characters seriously. I just get a good laugh at some of the zinging lines, especially Jane Lynch and Iqbal Theba (the principal).
But the lipsyncing is irritating.
@kentuckienne: I agree. The teacher is not a saint. He is a little immature and flakes on the kids and introduces bad influences on them. The males on the show do not go unscathed and are not all saints (as others have pointed out). They are portrayed as kind of dumb really. Finn is dumb, but also manipulative. He manipulated the girl to join Glee by pretending to like her and used to be mean to the outcasts. The mohawk guy is exaggerated as a guy that only cares about sex with MILFs. Kurt is fairly harmless as an exaggeration, though others have disagreed. The football coach is hilariously horrible. His "romantic" speeches are not really romantic, yet he comes off as kind of sweet (or at least earnest).
I enjoy the show because everything is so outrageous, it's funny. And the article was still refreshing to read.
@kentuckienne: Agreed. What about Ken Tanaka, who by FAR gets the most jokes about his less-than-perfect physical appearance?
Or QB's best buddy who screws around with his girlfriend and is an unmitigated dick?
Or the principal who's a pushover?
Honestly, I wanted to hate Glee, but every once in a while there really is nothing wrong with a campy good time. And I really, really fail to see more negativity leveled at the women than the men. Everyone gives and takes shit evenly. #glee
Blargh. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it sucks. Different strokes for different folks.
Also, I'm not entirely sure the show is meant to be taken seriously. I mean in what world would a school hire someone with previous job experience at a bathroom store as a school nurse? And also where that nurse would pass out extra doses of the base for crystal meth to help the kids focus and NOT get fired. It's really not that serious of a show. Fun, frothy and kickass covers of songs.
I am SO GLAD someone else objects to this show! I want to like it, I really want to, but I just can't. My love of musicals and experience in HS theatre and band will just not let me get past the unending theme of man-trapping, emasculating women that the show's writers seem to so enjoy. First the wife and now the girlfriend? How many more female characters will be asked to surround the alter of the victim male?!
@ThenSheRanted: Yes! This, right there, is why I have a problem on the show. Yes yes, the men and the women are over-the-top and flawed, it's true. But the level of the screwed-up-ness is different; the fact that there are TWO evil manipulative blonds playing with their reproductive rights and the other, nicer women in their men's lives in order to trap them fooooreeeevvvverrrrrr is too much, too much. One character would have sufficed. #glee
@NoelleBlue: Don't forget the sister/sister-in-law who has, as her few scenes have made clear, utterly destroyed her husband's soul and spirit! All I can assume is that the producer or head writer of Glee is working out some serious marital difficulties through their craft. Eesh! #glee
I think we need to qualify the difference between "I don't like this show" and "This show sucks."
It's entirely possible for something to be good and for someone to nevertheless not like it. I noticed the same thing the other day on the post where people were confessing things they didn't like that were otherwise generally popular. The early posts started out with "I don't like..." and then it devolved into "____ sucks and I dont' understand why everyone else is to stupid/uncool to agree with me."
Glee hasn't lived up to the expectations I originally had for it. That said, I don't think that makes it a terrible show. We need a little boost from the writers in the coming weeks if this show is going to hold onto it's popularity. We can't have the same old stories of Main Guys being duped by Pregnant Chicks over and over again, peppered with Nerd Girl quits the glee club every time she's upset. I'm hoping they infuse it with a bit more than that.
Still, it's a happy show and people like to see comedy and satire with a bit of musical theater thrown in. So it does have good qualities and I hope that it continues to build on that.
Although I agree the show started with really huge cliches, I think as the characters are developing we are seeing complexity. Finn is more than a dumb jock and wants more out of life, he goes through the same self-doubt and other issues as anyone else. Same to be said with his friend with the mohawk and his girlfriend. There is a complexity growing in it, much like meeting someone the first time, one thing sticks out; but as you get to know them more is revealed to you. Maybe they aren't sticking with these character changes episode to episode, but it is a once a week show, and even Freaks and Geeks never kept character changes from week to week.
I was the dorky choir girl and the girl who was in musicals. No guys ever liked me but unlike Rachel, I was well liked. But i was ambitious enough to dismiss the whole guy thing and concentrate on music.
I know the commraderie the Glee characters portray. In your groups you stick together. So I'mma let you finish but Glee is a better show than most crap out there.
@Treeless: yeah mercedes is the one character that irks me a little with the head-bobbing, finger-snapping sassy black girl stereotypes. esp since imho she's clearly a better singer than the lead girl so i always roll my eyes when they say that rachel is soooooo much better than all of them.
however, she is kind of neurotic and did have an unrequited crush on kurt.
@browngirlinthering: Yeah, seriously. Every time she starts to sing I'm like, "And she's not the lead singer because...?" It's irritating me enough that I don't know if I want to keep watching.
However, Glee only pretends to subvert stereotypes. It really doesn't.
Not that I'd expect anything else from Fox.
"The super-produced aesthetic and the overtime Fox-hype-machine have always struck me as a cynical contrast to its alleged support of the Aw-Shucks Other."
Oh, Sadie. *shakes head sadly*
Bribe me well, and I won't tell Roger Ailes.
@Trulymadlyme: I'm afraid I did not. I'm a little scared of getting stuck in the hype machine.
Why? What happened? :-)
(Also, I'm sorry I'm just replying to you today. The re-design learning curve is steep, and I stride slowly up its side. This is worse than climbing the pyramids outside Mexico City.)
@Rooo sez BISH PLZ: Totally understandable. Popular was Ryan Murphy's last high school vehicle. It started off so cheesy. I mean, the queen bee blond and the "Alternative" brunette's parent's get married and the two move in together. It goes from Brady bunch to utter cray cray. Then it was abruptly canceled at the end of its second season. It has a cult following of sorts. I'd netflix it.
I adore Glee, but I find it amusing that people think Finn and Will are perfect. Finn, while good-hearted, is obviously really, really stupid.
And Will...Will. This is a guy who is stuck in his high school days. He's as sad as guys who played football in high school and never left that behind. He married his high school sweetheart and is satisfied maintaining an unhealthy relationship with her, despite the fact that regular instinct should tell him something is up. He refuses to have any kind of adult conversation with his wife. He's emotionally unfaithful and rather clueless about women in general. He's psyched to be having sex once a week, thinking that's a lot. He allows people to push him around without a second thought or a word in his own defense - his wife, Sue, the principal. "Acafellas" showed us that he left his dreams far behind. He's so wrapped up in Glee and winning that he's stepping on the very students he's supposed to be helping. Everything wrong with Will's life can be traced, at least in part, back to Will.
The nerd/cool kid stereotypes don't bother me for two reasons. First, they are, at least in part, true. At my high school, it was the band and the science team that were the nerds, but the division was clear. And second, the show is obviously headed in the direction of dismantling those stereotypes - Kurt saves the football team, Quinn finds Rachel to be a faithful friend, etc.
@vulcanized: I love love love how stupid Finn is. I think it's both infuriating and endearing.
And both he and Will have a major "savior" complex going on, which ultimately is going to make things WAY more difficult down the line.
They're pretty similar characters, in that sense, and also in that they're both so naive.
I do think the show, maybe in its attempts to be squeaky clean, is oddly anti-sex. All the main characters aren't having it, and the teen who did ends up pregnant and unhappy.
@sequined: I do think the show, maybe in its attempts to be squeaky clean, is oddly anti-sex. All the main characters aren't having it, and the teen who did ends up pregnant and unhappy.
The lack of sex feels refreshingly realistic to me. Somewhat socially awkward teenagers, several of whom are underclassmen and most of whom are not in relationships? It makes sense that they're not having sex. It's the flip side to the "But EVERYBODY in high school has sex" argument. Everybody in high school thinks about sex, but it's nice to see people who just aren't there yet.
@FrankiTheB: I think the show is against the sort of twisted misconceptions about sex that high schoolers have, but not against sex in general. The "celibacy club" scene is evidence of this; Rachel defends the idea of contraception and female sex drive against Quinn and her friends, and is portrayed as the big hero. By contrast, when Quinn has the sex with Puck that gets her pregnant, it's because he "got [her] drunk on wine coolers and [she] felt fat that day." The point is about being in control of and proud of sexuality.
I am happy too, though, that a lot of the students are virgins, though, because I think that is more realistic. People are talking about sex, but not necessarily having it. It wasn't until college that I actually started to feel insecure about my virginity.
10/15/09
10/15/09
"But doesn't Jezebel know that Josh Fucking Groban was on it?"
The reference just killed me, and I had (for some reason) to come share it. (It's late. I blame sleep deprivation if this is funny to no one else. lol)
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
This show is a fun, broad satire. I can't imagine that anyone takes any of these characters seriously. I just get a good laugh at some of the zinging lines, especially Jane Lynch and Iqbal Theba (the principal).
But the lipsyncing is irritating.
10/15/09
I enjoy the show because everything is so outrageous, it's funny. And the article was still refreshing to read.
10/15/09
Or QB's best buddy who screws around with his girlfriend and is an unmitigated dick?
Or the principal who's a pushover?
Honestly, I wanted to hate Glee, but every once in a while there really is nothing wrong with a campy good time. And I really, really fail to see more negativity leveled at the women than the men. Everyone gives and takes shit evenly. #glee
10/14/09
Also, I'm not entirely sure the show is meant to be taken seriously. I mean in what world would a school hire someone with previous job experience at a bathroom store as a school nurse? And also where that nurse would pass out extra doses of the base for crystal meth to help the kids focus and NOT get fired. It's really not that serious of a show. Fun, frothy and kickass covers of songs.
10/14/09
And now, I will scuttle back beneath my rock.
10/14/09
10/15/09
10/18/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
Fabulous! But Dionne Warwick did it much better back in the '60s.
10/14/09
It's entirely possible for something to be good and for someone to nevertheless not like it. I noticed the same thing the other day on the post where people were confessing things they didn't like that were otherwise generally popular. The early posts started out with "I don't like..." and then it devolved into "____ sucks and I dont' understand why everyone else is to stupid/uncool to agree with me."
Glee hasn't lived up to the expectations I originally had for it. That said, I don't think that makes it a terrible show. We need a little boost from the writers in the coming weeks if this show is going to hold onto it's popularity. We can't have the same old stories of Main Guys being duped by Pregnant Chicks over and over again, peppered with Nerd Girl quits the glee club every time she's upset. I'm hoping they infuse it with a bit more than that.
Still, it's a happy show and people like to see comedy and satire with a bit of musical theater thrown in. So it does have good qualities and I hope that it continues to build on that.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
Can't hear you. I love Glee.
I was the dorky choir girl and the girl who was in musicals. No guys ever liked me but unlike Rachel, I was well liked. But i was ambitious enough to dismiss the whole guy thing and concentrate on music.
I know the commraderie the Glee characters portray. In your groups you stick together. So I'mma let you finish but Glee is a better show than most crap out there.
10/14/09
10/14/09
however, she is kind of neurotic and did have an unrequited crush on kurt.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
But still, Jane Lynch comes, and she brings it. So I watch for any glimpse of her.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/15/09
Also, hey you!
10/14/09
However, Glee only pretends to subvert stereotypes. It really doesn't.
Not that I'd expect anything else from Fox.
"The super-produced aesthetic and the overtime Fox-hype-machine have always struck me as a cynical contrast to its alleged support of the Aw-Shucks Other."
Oh, Sadie. *shakes head sadly*
Bribe me well, and I won't tell Roger Ailes.
10/14/09
10/16/09
Why? What happened? :-)
(Also, I'm sorry I'm just replying to you today. The re-design learning curve is steep, and I stride slowly up its side. This is worse than climbing the pyramids outside Mexico City.)
10/16/09
Check out this review. She kind of nails it's awesomeness. [www.popgurls.com] #glee
10/14/09
And Will...Will. This is a guy who is stuck in his high school days. He's as sad as guys who played football in high school and never left that behind. He married his high school sweetheart and is satisfied maintaining an unhealthy relationship with her, despite the fact that regular instinct should tell him something is up. He refuses to have any kind of adult conversation with his wife. He's emotionally unfaithful and rather clueless about women in general. He's psyched to be having sex once a week, thinking that's a lot. He allows people to push him around without a second thought or a word in his own defense - his wife, Sue, the principal. "Acafellas" showed us that he left his dreams far behind. He's so wrapped up in Glee and winning that he's stepping on the very students he's supposed to be helping. Everything wrong with Will's life can be traced, at least in part, back to Will.
The nerd/cool kid stereotypes don't bother me for two reasons. First, they are, at least in part, true. At my high school, it was the band and the science team that were the nerds, but the division was clear. And second, the show is obviously headed in the direction of dismantling those stereotypes - Kurt saves the football team, Quinn finds Rachel to be a faithful friend, etc.
10/14/09
And both he and Will have a major "savior" complex going on, which ultimately is going to make things WAY more difficult down the line.
They're pretty similar characters, in that sense, and also in that they're both so naive.
I do think the show, maybe in its attempts to be squeaky clean, is oddly anti-sex. All the main characters aren't having it, and the teen who did ends up pregnant and unhappy.
10/14/09
The lack of sex feels refreshingly realistic to me. Somewhat socially awkward teenagers, several of whom are underclassmen and most of whom are not in relationships? It makes sense that they're not having sex. It's the flip side to the "But EVERYBODY in high school has sex" argument. Everybody in high school thinks about sex, but it's nice to see people who just aren't there yet.
10/14/09
I am happy too, though, that a lot of the students are virgins, though, because I think that is more realistic. People are talking about sex, but not necessarily having it. It wasn't until college that I actually started to feel insecure about my virginity.