Glee - Season 1a (Review)

FOX extended this season by nine episodes that will air in the spring, but it's clear from the mid-season finale that these past 13 episodes were envisioned and written as a full season on it's own so I'll talk about this first part of the season as such. I really hadn't planned on watching this show at first, but the previews and the catchy songs they played during them got me interested enough to check it out. The show details Spanish teacher Will Schuester's attempt at forming a Glee club at his high school and that club's attempt to win at the sectionals competition, while cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester tries to disband or just outright destroy the club. Meanwhile all the students and even some of the teachers have to deal with their own problems; mainly multiple love triangles and multiple pregnancies. Oh...and all of this is a musical in the sense that we watch the glee club's performances and some of the characters have fantasy musical numbers (all pop-culture songs by-the-way).

Anyway, after the fairly ingenious pilot episode, the show kinda spends a few episodes trying to set an identity for itself. The show initially presented itself as a musical comedy, but at first it steered a bit too far into a musical drama with some fairly crazy storylines. The songs chosen to be preformed were odd (though preformed well) as most seemed to be done more for weak laughs than narrative progression. Luckily, the show finds its feet and plays to its strengths. The storylines becomes tighter and even the odd story arcs become interesting if just to see where they're going with them. The songs become stronger and fit into the various storylines much better and the characters have also developed a complexity rarely seen in high school series.

The characters are more likable than I initially expected. The pretty attractive Matthew Morrison makes the lead character Will Schuester loveable and relateable, while villainous Sue Sylvester is played to near perfection by the always hilarious Jane Lynch. Just as attractive and talented is Cory Monteith and Lea Michele as the student leads Finn and Rachel and Michele in particular shows considerable singing talents (taken from her years on Broadway). The rest of the cast all have their moments to shine (gay guy Kurt and wheelchair bound Artie are probably my favorites) and can all carry a tune pretty well. The show features some pretty good songs and performances from show-tunes to more recent popular music. The only real problem with the performances is the over abundance of auto-tune and at times flat-out piss poor lip syncing. That aside, Glee is pretty good and I'm curious to see where the remaining 9 episodes that will air in April will take the series.