High School Musical. A tedious phenomenon. With Barbie and Ken singing their hearts out for love, friendship and the good American way. The first one was slightly original and cheery, a breath of fresh air in all the "edgy" darkness that surrounds TV these day. Until they were released in the cinema (the what?) and became repetitive and bland. Inevitably, people saw this success and tried to suck off the proverbial tit and came up with more crap, such as Britannia High, which is a disgrace to at least three senses.
The next series bouncing off its' success and trying to break free is Glee (E4). Set in an American High School, where else, we follow the Glee Club, the subterranean level of social status, as they try to make the nationals. They sing and dance their way through covers of popular songs. And that is where their success lies, the cover songs. They don't need to try and make a rubbish, catchy song as they can just pick one from over 50 years of popular music. Despite it being the most cliche thing since dull dishwater, it actually is quite pleasing to watch.
The cast is filled with likeable characters, who stay likeable even when metaphorically fucking each other up the arse. The most entertaining being Jane Lynch, playing the coach of the cheerleaders wanting to shut Glee Club down so she can actually have a budget. The rest are the usual American, clean faced pricks we've become accustomed to, not bad, just fairly generic.
Good thing the cast is there, because the songs are nothing to write home about. Apart from the first episode's outstanding rendition of Don't Stop Believin', the rest sounds either too close to the original to be of any value or just awful. Only three episodes in, I don't see the songs being the show's saving grace. Then what is it?
Perhaps, the show's quota of hate and decption. There is a lot in there for something called Glee. Nearly everybody hates each other or has a reason to be angry with one another. Quite surprising.
Fuck, I'm addicted. Will it last?
If nude photos of the female cast land on the internet, I'm sure it will.
I can't stand Glee.
ReplyDeleteIt's too musical, too cringeworthy.
And the typical leading black female pisses me off every time she goes "oh helllll no" and soon.
Lame.
Glee is essentially the embodiment of current youth culture. We love doing covers of songs since a lot of current 'popular music' is bad. So we retreat to places like Rockband to sing the songs we actually like. Glee is also that. We can watch people "our age" doing what we like in the most fantastic way possible.
ReplyDeleteI've seen every episode of Glee because it is so representative of the era that I am aging in and is literally about people I know. Although we're not as extremely bi-polar at times the show catches us.