Glee Clears Its Throat

If you missed the premiere of Glee, Ryan Murphy’s new Fox offering set to return Sept. 16, you can see it on the Fox Web site or on Hulu, and you really should, despite its confusing and empty first ten minutes. It’s often risky to judge an hour-long serial too much by its pilot episode, because a show often needs several episodes or more to find its dramatic rhythm, a sense of its characters, and a coherent style and tone. Yet I think we can dispense with much of that caution in this case, for Glee is both a comedy and a musical, and it’s clear already that it succeeds abundantly in both genres. Despite some underdeveloped characters and an odd focus, it seems likely to feature enough humor and exuberance to make it a pleasure even if we are forced to enjoy its episodes as stand-alone pieces more than as increments in semi-serious character arcs. (Every show about adolescents should try to achieve at least a little seriousness, or poignancy, or something of the sort; the subject demands it.)


A show with an intense, quirky ensemble cast set in a high school will inevitably have its soapy elements, of course, yet if these transcend cliché, I’ll be surprised (and thrilled). For starters, the kids seem like stock characters. Consider born-to-sing Rachel (Lea Michele) — obsessive and demanding about the glee club, ostensibly an outsider — who seems troubled by her ostracized-artist status for all of a minute. Given her conventionally gorgeous looks and considerable talent, it seems unclear why she would be unpopular in the first place, except for her frantic need to prove herself, which itself, alas seems inexplicable. While teenagers with popularity, beauty, and talent to burn have their share of insecurities, we aren’t shown the context for hers, which leaves them seeming like comedic devices rather than humanizing qualities. Her peers on the team haven’t emerged enough as individuals yet to comment on, except for Finn (Cory Hudson), who is given the delightful dual role of being simultaneously a star football player and a newly discovered singing talent. His clueless jock observations, equally earnest and oblivious (dad “died in Iraq when we were fighting Osama bin Laden the first time”), are funny but make him more than a little ridiculous.


Then there’s the fact that these troubled kids — variously described or describing themselves as invisible, anonymous, hated — are scarcely shown in the rest of their allegedly difficult lives, only onstage. Oddly, the adult stories have more texture — Jayma Mays is a standout as a fellow teacher infatuated with Will (Matthew Morrison), the earnest coach. These subplots are great, but a show about high school probably needs to have successful portrayals of its students to feel fully realized.


So — it seems like it will be hard to invest emotionally in the struggles of the young singers. But with comedic lines (“I reek of management potential,” “Dr. Phil said that people could change”) and joyous performances of a wide and weird amalgam of songs (“Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Rehab,” etc.) following in quick succession, we will be happy viewers anyway. Then there’s the fact that the very appearance of a musical on network TV is such a change from the melodramatic formulas that typify coming-of-age series, and Glee deserves a healthy chance for this reason alone.

Note: lightly edited May 31 for clarity, syntax, and emphasis.