Glee!

Clearly, everyone must now watch Glee. I say this because I’m enjoying it, despite

(A) jumping in at episode 3 and missing bits,
(B) almost every major character doing something reprehensible in the first episode, and
(C) the show being a musical
(D) the show being a musical about making a musical
(E) the protagonists being nerds trying to gain acceptance among the cool kids

That list is a recipe for a disaster. Glee is so extraordinarily far from being my kind of thing that my enjoyment could only mean that it’s either far too screwed up a musical to win any other fans or that it’s a spectacularly awesome show. Since the show is getting rave reviews and high Nielsen ratings, it can only be the latter.

I can point to a few ways that Glee isn’t quite the epitome of all I hate. Though it’s a musical, the musical numbers are mercifully brief, more often a single chorus of a well-known song than an entire performance, so the action doesn’t come to a dead stop for minutes at a time while someone whinges on about their one-dimensional motivation. Nor does it get sappy—unless as a set-up to a darkly comic twist of fate. Nor is there some hapless heroine who perseveres through continually being unfairly dumped on to her happy ending, which is supposed to be a tear-jerker, but isn’t. The characters who get dumped on are either selfish enough to do a fair bit of dumping themselves, or eschew the self-pity I despise in so many musicals. And though it seems everyone except, perhaps, the germophobic redhead is a selfish creep, I was able to get invested before discovering this, by virtue of joining late.

Yet all these observations may be beside the point. I think I’m enjoying the show despite its format, rather than because of it. It’s well written and cuttingly satirical, and clever enough not to tread the weary old grooves of musical theater. That’s good no matter what you look for in a show. So find the back episodes and get caught up. Or even jump in the middle, as I did.