How friggin’ brilliant is Glee?! Of course, it wasn’t exactly difficult for this one to win me over — anything which features uptempo singing and dancing on a regular basis already has me drawn in.
It’s just so… upbeat. I always seem to end each episode with a warm fuzzy feeling in various parts of my body. I don’t know what it is: even when bad things are happening on-screen, there is an overall positive vibe which permeates the show and leaves me feeling happy.
Comparisons with High School Musical are inevitable, but Glee contains just enough sharp comedy to balance out the syrupy sweetness.
I suppose my one criticism is that most of the characters are generic American high-school stereotypes (dumb jock, cheerleaders, a bully, sassy black girl, gay kid, etc) but by episode 10 they’ve started to flesh out the characters a bit and made them seem a bit more 3-dimensional. It is good to see a successful US show set in a high school which focuses on the misfits rather than the super-popular kids.
Right at the centre of the show is someone who could be the greatest villain in the history of television: Sue Sylvester (played with relish by Jane Lynch), who steals every scene she appears in with rants about curly hair and kitty-cat related threats. Marvellous stuff.
There’s always a danger that Glee will be unable to sustain this momentum long term and struggle to keep going past the second season. For now though, it’s an amazing show fully deserving of the praise and awards that have been heaped on it.
If you’ve missed the first few episodes, E4 are repeating them all on weekday afternoons starting next Monday. You won’t be disappointed. And that’s how Sue C’s it.