Season Premier: Glee (kinda)

So, now that just about everything we watch has season finaled, Em and I were pretty excited to see an ad for a new show called Glee on Fox that premiered after American Idol last night. Well, we tuned in, but it turns out it wasn't really a season premiere.

Well, I guess technically it was because it's the first episode of a season, but the actual weekly show doesn't start until the fall. I can understand wanting to get as many of those American Idol viewers as you can, but is it wise to show this thing and then wait for three months? Will people even remember it? I dunno.

I liked a good deal of the show. The premise is this teacher who used to be in the glee club starts it back up or takes it over or something, getting a rag tag group of outcasts together who sing like champs (even though they look different!). He's also married to a character I hated by her second scene and has Charlie the Waitress from Heroes (hey, I used to like the show before I hated it) who is super cute and obviously a better choice for him as a mate.

Here's the problem with the show. I'm bored with the above premise of the cool guy being with a crappy girl while there's a much cooler girl right there. It's one thing if it's in a movie where you know things will get better (or not) within an hour or two, but here you have no idea how long it'll last. Will it be a Niles and Daphne situation? A Ross and Rachel? I'm good on that, thanks.

I also wasn't very impressed with the background characters, especially the d-bag football players. There's one dude on the team who's also in the glee club and, of COURSE, his teammates (who also pick on the other geeks in the glee club) give him a hard time about it. The thing is, these guys just come off as one dimensional, overly-threatening menaces. I'm not sure what it was, but these guys felt like actual bad dudes because they never did anything okay.

Now, I know it's maybe not fair to judge an entire show based on one hour of television, but that's what they want us to do right? That's the whole point of this early, early viewing. That's another problem, the show should be (and hopefully will be) just a half hour.

All that being said, it did have it's good parts. I liked all of the main cast, including the glee club weirdos, Jane Lynch and Stephen Tobolowsky. And, of course, the song numbers were pretty sick. I liked the rival team's rendition of "Rehab" and then, of course, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" at the end was rad. It was good enough to get me to come back in the fall (if I remember AND it's not opposite something we regularly watch).

Haha, oh, that reminds me of one other thing that left me scratching my head. They did a "next time on Glee" kind of thing the previews the season or whatever where they completely SPOILED what seems like a major plot point. SPOILER. One of the problems in the pilot is that the main guy's wife (who, remember, I hate as a character) is pregnant. Well, she's a shady lady so I figured something was up. Well, if you saw the "next time" thing, you know that she's not really pregnant, but having a Hysterical pregnancy. I kind of think they threw it in to be like "Hey, he might not be with her forever!" Eh.

OH! It also takes place in Ohio, so it gets points for that. I can't quite place where they are, though they say that Arkon is south and they're near Carmel. I think that's near Cleveland? I dunno, until proven otherwise, I'm gonna say it's Toledo. Yeah Toledo!