Glee Showmance Review

This is either a show you go with or you don't, that's for sure. There's no doubt Glee has plenty of corny, sentimental moments – but it's also incredibly fun and filled with a lot of very clever humor, much of which is filled with self-deprecation.

It's obvious that Ryan Murphy and his collaborators are well aware of all those who would dismiss this show on sight and call it "gay" – and Murphy basically beats everyone to the punch, by using the term himself more than once, most amusingly when the incredibly effeminate Kurt (Chris Colfer) snarks "It's really gay" without a hint of irony, when Will (Matthew Morrison) makes the Glee club perform a disco song.

Second best use of the word? Will's wife Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) showing him an ultra-femme child's bedroom, while announcing, "This is where our daughter or gay son will sleep." This is funny stuff.

So far, Terri is a fairly hateable character – it's never been so easy to want a TV character to want to dump his wife when you have her being so awful, while the sweet Emma (Jayma Mays) pines for him.

I really appreciated how fast the story moved in this second episode – letting storylines evolve much faster than expected for TV. So much so that when Rachel (Lea Michele) and Finn (Cory Monteith) kissed, I half expected it to be a dream. But not only was it not a dream, but the scene involved a call back to another great joke in the episode – Finn's premature ejaculation issue (cue "Jizz in My Pants") and the hysterical reveal of how he tries to stop it, by thinking about the traumatic experience of once smashing his car into a guy while his mom was giving him a driving lesson.



My fellow IGN TV editor Matt Fowler can't get into Glee, saying he "doesn't care about people who have music in their heart." But what I appreciate about the show so far is how it's able to have its cake and eat it too by clearly sympathizing with the Glee club members, yet giving those who mock them some of the best lines and moments in the show. Clearly that's the case for the ever-great Jane Lynch, who kills both with her character Sue's insults and also her bizarre tangents, whether it be saying she finds it "offensive" when Will says she's used to being the "cock of the walk" or responding to Will saying "hold on" by going into a diatribe about not being treated like a second class citizen due to her gender. Lynch's funniest bit in this episode though was a simple reaction shot, as Sue squirmed uncomfortably after the principal warned that there would be zero tolerance for anyone soiling the school grounds while the bathrooms were out of order.

As for the songs, the highlight was definitely "Gold Digger." Sure, it's funny and cheesy seeing these dorky kids and their white teacher perform this song, but it's also kind of great and given a very fun rendition here – even if you can definitely tell it was pre-recorded and produced, rather than being sung live as it shown to be. "Push It" meanwhile was intentionally played for laughs, as the kids went over the top with the sexual moves, and garnered plenty of laughs. The one odd musical moment here was Rachel's big romantic song that ended the episode, simply because it somewhat broke the rules of the show so far – we actually see Rachel singing to Finn and Quinn (hey, rhyming names!) in the hall, and no one notices, making it more of a genuine musical rather than the songs justified by the Glee Club situations we've seen prior to this. It will be interesting to see how much this show bends these rules going forward.

SOURCE: http://tv.ign.com/articles/102/1023245p1.html
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