In Tune with the Kids
Glee (7.30pm Thursdays on Channel Ten), from Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy, is a bright, fast and surprisingly funny show about an optimistic young teacher who attempts, using a group of misfits, to save McKinley High’s Glee Club from obscurity. It owes much to the High School Musical phenomenon, but has better jokes and a more mature outlook when it deals with teenage issues.
I’ve never been a fan of the musical, as the songs put the brakes on the storyline and the music in them has always been of the Broadway variety (give me The Who’s Live At Leeds any day). Show tunes have as much relevance to the kids of today as does a Walkman, so Glee cannily uses modern songs, which become part of the storyline as the kids endlessly rehearse and emote to a Top 40 soundtrack.
The kids divide into the usual camps of jocks and cheerleaders ruling the school, the nerds below them and the Glee Club members being the bottom feeders. In true Dirty Dozen fashion, the Glee Club assembles a motley crew of nationalities and outcasts to reach their goal of competing in the national titles and becoming cool. Not since Heroes has there been such a wide racial mix and diversity of sexual orientation of television characters, making Glee feel like a show set in the twenty-first century; there’s an Indian headmaster, a Native American football coach, homosexual students and teachers, and a lead female character who has two dads. The diversity, thankfully, also extends to the music, which features rock, hip hop, soul and reggae.
Matthew Morrison, who looks like Justin Timberlake’s older brother, is charming and believable, with his wide-eyed enthusiasm, as Will Schuester, the Glee Club teacher. Jayma Mays as Emma Pillsbury, the guidance counsellor with mysophobia, is constantly cleaning and, with the married Will, providing a sexual tension unusual in such a mainstream show. The students are bouncy and talented; there’s the singing quarterback; a feisty, soulful black girl; an effeminate homosexual; a wannabe star; cheerleaders; and even a kid in a wheelchair. Jane Lynch (hilarious in The 40-Year-Old Virgin), as Sue Sylvester, the cheerleaders’ coach, steals every scene. With her cynical intensity and cutting remarks, she takes the usual hard-nosed coach character to extremes, making every other character cower and the viewer guffaw.
Glee succeeds because of its fast pace, avoidance of clichéd characters, and because it produces some genuinely funny jokes and lines (‘Time for some girl talk, man hands’). The show’s biting humour and use of modern songs stop it overloading on syrupy storylines. At times, watching it can be like watching an endless Australian Idol audition, but at least they stay well away from ‘Send in The Clowns’... so far. Glee is the perfect program for parents to watch with their teenagers; it has enough comedy for both, and thematically revels in the joy and courage of pursuing your passions against the odds, even if the characters do break into song about it.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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