Glee

[Reed John]

Glee

That line was the best moment, but it was a good episode overall although I fear it's going to spark a Lionel Richie revival, which I could do without.

I discovered that the actress who plays the director of the rival team was the co-lead in the hit broadway musical Wicked along with Kristen Chezowith, who has already been on the show.

[WOM]

Glee

"No, she's dead. This is her son."

Excellent first episode. The startling difference between talking voice/singing voice of the some of the actors is a bit annoying, but I'm willing to overlook it.

[Ray de Galles]

Glee

It is the actor's actually singing though, even if a couple of them seem auto-tuned.

[Reed John]

Glee

Yeah, they all got the parts based on their singing plus acting. They all have musical theater backgrounds. There may be some autotuning anyway, or maybe it's just that they record the songs in a studio and the rest of it is mostly the real audio from the set.

[WOM]

Glee

That's more of what I meant, I think. Either way, the contrast is pretty acute. To the point where you'd think they were two different voices. The singing is studio-perfect. A little too much so.

[Reed John]

Glee

I think that's very intentional. Of course no real group of a dozen kids from a regular public school in Ohio would sound that good. It's sort of gently poking fun at musicals in general, I think, and High School Musical in particular.

[G-Man]

Glee

I've just got into Glee. I'm sold on it. Some really good one-liners.

Harry Truscott may be disconcerted by it, but he and I are on the same page on this (except the bit about daughters):

I am catching up on 'Glee' late and am totally in love with the show. Much to the mockery of my wife who thinks I have had my tastes skewed through osmosing the amount of 'High School Musical' my daughters blast out of the TV and car stereo.

[WOM]

Glee

Excellent episode last night. Guest director was Joss Whedon, guest starring Neil Patrick Harris. Brilliant dance segment featuring the kid in the wheelchair, to The Safety Dance, done as a flash mob in a mall, including bits filmed on mobile phones to 'up' the authenticity factor.

I like that they're bringing the b-list into the story lines a bit more lately, including 'overweight black chick whose name I can't remember' [sic].

[Reed John]

Glee

It was one of the better ones lately. Brought back memories of my marching band days because I recall that we did "I Dreamed a Dream" as the big finale to one of our halftime shows.

[WOM]

Glee

I thought Whedon's involvement was a complete non-event except for the mall segment.

[Reed John]

Glee

The season finale is the best episode ever and stands out even more because last week's episode, supposedly about funk, wasn't all that great (aside from Beck's "Loser" in the Linens & Things).

I can't recall ever seeing a bit of TV (other than sports) that instantly made me more positive about life. But this did. Briefly.

Then I watched Justified, which put my feelings for humanity back into the proper perspective. Justified is great, btw.

****spoiler*****
They do three Journey songs at the big competition. Really great. The Glee cast does a better job with Journey than Journey does. Their songs just lend themselves to going BIG with big harmonies that one singer, even as good as Steve Perry, just can't do. Their versions are absolutely gorgeous. I'm shocked at how much I loved it given that I've never been a big Journey fan. I generally like my music somewhat miserable and only suitable for dancing if the dancing is done in the dark at 3 am in one's bedroom while staring at one's sneakers.. Maybe I'm hormonal or something.

But it also made me a little sad and wistful to think that I have never felt the high that must come from doing a fantastic performance and knowing that you have just blown the roof off the motherfucker. I played baritone in marching band and symphonic band and I enjoyed the process of putting the show together, because I had a lot of good friends in the band (including some who actually were good musicians), but I wasn't all that good at it and I never liked the music itself very much. I didn't have the slightest interest in continuing with it after high school. I've tried to play the guitar, but I'm shit at it and I think I will always be shit. I'm good enough to play for sing along with kids, but that's about it.

Someday I'd like to feel like that. I hope it's not too late to find that kind of joy in something in life.

People who can sing, act and dance that well are are a marvel to behold. It's like seeing an eagle flying in the wild - one is just amazed that such a creature can exist in a world of entropy and decay and shit. Like the eagle, they make it look so much easier than it actually is.

Vocal Adrenaline does Bohemian Rhapsody, which may seem like a shitty idea, but it works extremely well in context. Again, arguably better than Queen's version.

Olivia Newton John is delightfully bitchy in her second cameo and has the best line "Brunettes have no place in show biz."

I won't tell who wins or how it ends, but it's satisfying and effectively sets up the next season.

Oddly, it seems like none of the kids in the group are seniors. There's been no storylines at all about anyone graduating. Always a problem with TV shows about high school. If Fox runs with it for a few seasons they're going to have to come up with one of those highly implausible plots where the teacher gets a job at a local college and all of the students decide to study there.

[G-Man]

Glee

The season higlight for me was Kristen Chinoweth and the teacher dude singing "One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is No A Home". It's very closely modelled on Streisand's 1972 medley, but I reckon Chinoweth tops that.

Before that, Kurt and the jock do "A House Is Not A Home", which is also very good. That Kurt guy has a fantastic voice.

And Sue Sylvester is one of the most compelling baddies in TV history.

[Reed John]

Glee

I wasn't such a fan of those songs, perhaps because I'd never heard them before.

The final two episodes of this season develop Sue Sylvester even more. She's more than just a comedy psycho baddy.

The only thing missing in the last episode is another so-dumb-its-brilliant one-liner from Brittany - the daft blonde cheerleader who is inseparable from Santana, the other cheeleader/siren.

That actress has an unusual backstory. I saw an interview with her. Her name is Heather Morris and she's really a professional dancer. She was one of Beyonce's back-up dancers on tour and awards show performances, so somehow she got asked to teach the Glee cast how to do the same "Single Ladies" dance for that episode where Kurt becomes the placekicker on the football team. At that time, they needed to fill out the dance talent in the cast so they asked her if she wanted to hang around a while and then somebody noticed that she was funny and could sing so they gave her a permanent role. Now she's taking acting lessons, but the director is afraid of that because she's so hilarious as is. Also, the whole weird are-they-gay? thing she has going with Santana was apparently created based on real life after the two actresses became instant best friends. And the kid who plays Kurt originally auditioned for Artie, but they decided to make a new role for him. So they seem to be doing a great job of writing the show around the people they have, instead of the other way around. Like coaching a football team, I guess.

[G-Man]

Glee

The final two episodes of this season develop Sue Sylvester even more. She's more than just a comedy psycho baddy.

And that's how Wrieghd sees it.

[G-Man]

Glee

Glee's One Less Bell To Answer (video)

Streisand duetting with herself (MP3/Stream)

[Reed John]

Glee

"And that's how Wrieghd sees it."

It is. Am I missing a joke there?

That was a great scene. I imagine she'll be on the show again, but part of the fun of it is to find out who is going to guest star next and who they're going to cover next. Off the top of my head I can think of about a dozen ideas they could or probably will do for episodes.

That also gives it some good gambling potential. I'd give 12/1 odds that Morrissey makes an appearance. 10/1 on Robert Smith. 20/1 Neil Diamond. 7/1 Nathan Lane. 5/1 Debbie Gibson. Etc.

[WOM]

Glee

I agree: the finale was excellent. The previously Glee-curmudgeonly Mrs WOM is now hooked as well. And to prove that, indeed, I am a 14 year old girl at heart, I downloaded my first Glee song from iTunes this week. The excellent rendition of To Sir With Love. Mainly due to my inexplicable penchant for songs that have strings, horn and vocal stylings in the 5th Dimension / Mamas & Papas / California soul vein.

I think the Safety Dance in the mall stands out as a real high point of the season for me, though.

[Reed John]

Glee

I've downloaded a bunch of them, but I've stopped downloading all of them at once because some of the smooth R&B or croonier ones don't do anything for me out of the context of the storyline.

"To Sir With Love" made me a little verklempt. I assume that's from the film, which I haven't seen.

It's hard to pick a favorite song moment, but I think I liked the aforementioned "Loser" the best, because its such a catchy song and that whole situation resonated with my memories of youth, working shitty jobs as well as some good days my junior year in college - the only really good days of my college years - where the guy who lived across the hall played Beck's first EP, and that song especially, about 50 times a day.

"Did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?" is in a tight race with "for me trophies are like herpies..." for the best lines. But it's a very strong field.

[Wyatt Earp]

Glee

So: I've decided I hate Glee, on the grounds that it's smug up-it's-own-arse bollocks that inevitably either (a) murders great music or (b) rehashes duff music to no end. Who's with me?

[G-Man]

Glee

So very wrong...

Reed:

[Purves Grundy]

Glee

I saw a few minutes of it, and it seemed to me like a mixture of High School Musical and those musical interludes on Crackerjack when Don Mclean and Peter Glaze would offer a dance interpretation one of the popular hits of the day.

I fear that I am probably not a representative of their target audience, but I expect that people who like this sort of thing will find it to be the sort of thing they like.

[Bruno]

Glee

Braai on Earth... wrote:

So: I've decided I hate Glee, on the grounds that it's smug up-it's-own-arse bollocks that inevitably either (a) murders great music or (b) rehashes duff music to no end. Who's with me?

I'd literally never heard of Glee before noticing this thread just now, not even a little bit, and I'm trying to figure out why that is. It's not like I'm not on the internet every day, though I don't watch much (any) television besides football. I feel I would be highly qualified to have an opinion, though, because I played drums for the show choir in high school (actually singing in it would have been too gay) and I've been to show choir competitions and seen the best of the best. Plus I was surrounded by music theater types in college (it being one the top theater schools in ze vorld).

I'm going to go on a limb, before having watched it, and say Wyatt's probably right. (Is there somewhere I can watch a rerun online?)

[Wyatt Earp]

Glee

Purves Grundy wrote:

I saw a few minutes of it, and it seemed to me like a mixture of High School Musical and those musical interludes on Crackerjack...

CRAAAC-KER-JAAACK!

Purves Grundy wrote:

...when Don Mclean and Peter Glaze would offer a dance interpretation one of the popular hits of the day.

I fear that I am probably not a representative of their target audience, but I expect that people who like this sort of thing will find it to be the sort of thing they like.

[Purves Grundy]

Glee

[Reed John]

Glee

Hulu has the last five episodes. Fox is showing them all from the beginning over the summer.

I didn't know Show Choir was a real thing.

When I was in school, we had had theater and they did some musicals, but old shit like Oklahoma. The choir just sang the usual Songs of Praise-type shit, although not that religious. The notion that music education should be about helping kids learn how to express themselves was (and probably still is) totally foreign to the music faculty, I think. Music education for us was about learning the fundamentals of musicianship, how to rehearse productively and how to sight read, which are great skills to have and they translate outside of music, but maybe I would have stuck with it if I got to play stuff I actually liked.

I would have thought it would take an extremely miserable and negative person to have WE's opinion. You probably hate Annie and West Side Story too.

I don't see anything smug or up-it's-ass about it and I'm usually good at spotting smug and up-its-ass. Perhaps in these times we just have a hard time understanding anything that is positive and uncynical. I find most teenagers to be smug and up-their-ass, but Glee seems to be about the opposite - taking pop songs sincerely and belting them out without any of the "look aren't we clever and ironic doing the 80's" that you get from, for example, real-life college acappella groups.

Not all of their songs stand alone as great cover songs, but based on the comments I've seen on the internet, accidentally, it appears that the people who seem to think they "butcher" songs seem to usually be too precious about the originals and are predisposed to whine about any cover version of something they loved in their pot-hazed youth.