Count me in as a fan so far. Very funny in a slightly-twisted-but-cheerful way.
I was so shocked by the following line that I nearly fell out of my chair laughing…
Will’s sister-in-law: “You’re not giving up your craft room, Terri. A mother needs her respite. That craft room is the only thing that’s going to keep you from going all Susan Smith on that little angel. (makes stabbing motion with dinner knife)”
And this exchange from the beginning also cracked me up, just because it’s so weird…
cheer coach: “Iron tablet? Keeps your strength up when you’re menstruating.”
Will: “I don’t menstruate.”
cheer coach: “Yeah? Neither do I.”
And as a bonus, there is some really nice eye-candy on this show.
Just rewatched the premiere and followed up with the second episode. I have a couple observations.
The first episode was painful to watch. The characters were cartoony. The picking on the kids was too extreme (I never witnessed deliberate drink throwing like they’ve done to the one girl multiple times - either school has radically changed in 20 years or I was just “lucky”). And the drama with the wife is painful to watch. (“I’m on my feet 4 hours a day, three days a week, and I have to go home and make myself dinner?” to her husband who works 8 hours teaching plus 30 mins detention and then staying on for Glee Club, and she is whining?) The loudmouth girl was so pushy I can see why no one likes her. The saving grace was the turn at the end for the jock and their final song. That gave me enough hope to give it a second try. Rewatching was just as painful up to that point.
The second episode, unfortunately, wasn’t much better. Sure, there’s some good humor (I died on the line about the gag reflex), and some good elements, but the “Cheerios” coach is dreadful, I can’t tolerate the wife, and I really don’t care for the counselor being all lovey for the married guy.
But I did have an observation: this show seems to me to be the next “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer”. Not only because it deals with teenagers and teenage problems and angst, but because it tackles them in a different metaphor that makes them new. I can see the humor and heart of the show making this a breakout hit. I can see it getting a following, if Fox doesn’t kill it first.
But the thing is, I won’t be watching it. The bad sucks the life out of me too much for the good. I want to enjoy the show. The musical numbers have been fun so far (Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat sung by the guy in the wheelchair was primo). I wasn’t in chior, nevermind glee club, but I can appreciate the feeling of connecting with the music, of feeling it. I just do mine in the car to the radio.
justagirl33 said:
Yes, that one did sound too much like they hadn’t performed it themselves. One of the bright spots is the kids themselves performing the songs (even if they are lipsynching for the TV show). Having produced works like that is counter to the whole intent of the show.
My other observation on the second show. They are prepping for the assembly and they are doing the disco song, and they aren’t doing it well. Argue argue argue, so the teacher brings in Golddigger and they demo that one, with the teacher singing lead to show how it’s done. They were already better at that song than they were doing with the disco one, so I can’t see why he was so hung up that they had to do the disco one, they weren’t prepared on the other one. But I can buy he was caught up in his own nostalgia and not really seeing what was going on.
I’m with Irishman on this. While I liked some of the things they do, I found myself continually thinking that things sure have changed since I was in high school (admittedly that was thirty years ago, but still…). The jocks tossing people into the dumpsters, the drinks being thrown in Rachel’s face…none of that stuff would be tolerated. And the Cheerios coach is so over-the-top with her vendetta against the Glee group. The wife is so self-centered and whiny I kept wanting to slap her, when I wasn’t yelling at her husband to grow a pair and stop letting her try to run his life.
I like the show, but agree that the whiney wife is annoying the crap out of me. Why would he marry her? And the Cheerios coach is working my last nerve, too. Yeah, I get it. She hates Glee Club and she’s evil. But she’s so harpy that I can’t take it.
But I love the rest of it so much, I’m willing to look past it. Plus, it’s on after SYTYCD… my other favorite show on TV.
I don’t have a problem with the lack of realism – the over-the-topness is what makes it fun. Thinking about it, I’m having a hard time coming up with any elements that aren’t exaggerated or completely made up. Luckily, I don’t care – I think it’s funny and I love the songs and dances. Comedies and musicals, those are my genres – thanks, Glee, for mixing them in one show!
Things HAVE changed since we were in High School. Kids shoot and knife each other now. At the HS up the street from our house they found a newborn in the dumpster and the next county over a campus had to be evacuated because a dropout showed up flinging homemade pipe bombs. Slurpee assults are probably low on the list of priorities. If anything I think this show presents a very SANITIZED version of a current high school.
That just means it’s a cover done by the people behind the show, not that it was done by those specific actors.
I don’t know… it doesn’t explicitly say that. It does say that the teacher guy ‘brings it’ but that could refer to his dancing motions and syncing abilities. It does imply that he’s good at rapping, but that could be a behind the scenes thing and not his actual performance.
But watch the scene again. I believe the black girl, and most of the kids, but the teacher does not sound like the actor at all and the wheelchair kid sounds way different, his voice is deep and ‘black’ sounding, not like a white teenager who hasn’t quite made it through puberty yet. I just really have trouble believing that kid has that singing voice. Both the wheelchair kid and the teacher sound like they got black singers to sub for them, not just in the style, but in the voice quality. It’s not that white people can’t rap, they can, it’s just that their voices sound distinctly different.
But even if it really was the cast, they should make more of an effort to make it sound like them. If it really was them, then there was too much production involved, it was too polished, ruining the feeling of verity for a scene of people jamming in a classroom. And that wasn’t the only scene this episode like that, it was just the worst offender. And it’s especially bad because they did it the right way in the first episode.
FOX is repeating the premiere tonight (Friday). I’m gonna give it another try, thanks to you guys with all the comments about how funny it is. Grumble grumble.
re: the wife - I give her another two episodes, tops. Either teach is going to figure out what a raw deal he’s been getting or she’s going to meet an untimely (yet hilarious) demise, a la Maude Flanders.
Oh, I hope so. The wife reminded me too much of those women on Bridezillas and the Real Housewives franchise – it’s so hard to laugh at clueless grasping selfishness when it’s so realistic (if reality TV can be said to be realistic).
As far as I know, you’re the only Doper with an eponymous TV show. (Did I use that word right?)
Anyway, I feel better about the wife after watching the whole episode. The woman just wants a baby. Is the glee club director the only character whose personality isn’t in the DMX, or DSM, or whatever that manual of psychological disorders is called?
DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
I dunno, the supporting gleeks seem reasonably normal so far. Outsiders & nerds, but not necessarily pathological.
“Gold Digger” sounded to me like the cast did it but the sound was recorded separately. They did this on the pilot, too, but the pilot took more time. So it’s the rushed work & bad editing that creates that problem.
Depends on the school. Some are so locked down and “zero tolerance” about everything that you’d think they were a literal prison instead of a figurative one kids complain about them being. No way a slurpee toss would be allowed – some would probably not allow the slurpee to be on school grounds at all.
True…at our school we weren’t allowed to wear hats except on special “spirit days” and the cheerleaders weren’t allowed to wear their uniforms to class.
Oddly enough though, I was watching a documentary on Showtime today about High School musical theater productions (“Guys & Divas - Battle of the High School Musicals”) and one of the “out” gay kids was talking about how people would throw stuff at him all the time, and once a guy in the lunch room threw his whole lunch on him, and he had to go home because his hair was full of lasagna.
Uh, seriously? So you thought the shock about how he could bring it was in reference to his dancing? You’d think that people wouldn’t be shocked that a Broadway actor could dance.
The “wheelchair kid” has had the same voice for every single song. And why exactly would they hire a singer (he’s apparently in the boy band NLT) for the role if they just wanted an actor who could lip sync? Why hire a Broadway actor for the role of the teacher if they were just going to dub his voice?
That makes no sense.
It’s a Musical. Musicals tend to have very polished songs. There is a reason ‘showtunes’ has the reputation it has.
