Our review of the TV Show Glee [5 Episodes in]

While I have been hyping up Flash Forward, Glee has been the smash hit of the early fall season... and it has little to do with the actual merits of the show. A long long time ago, an ABC executive noticed the passionate following of the show Survivor. The story goes he came up with the concept of a TV drama based loosely on the Survivor concept. After many writes and rewrites... ABC hit one out of the park with Lost.

Now Glee is no Lost. Far from it. But what Glee is, is an American Idol drama series. High schoolers trying to make it into the big time, a theoretical all odds against them type of show... However this is just one of the many problems of Glee... You see Glee also has another market to consider besides just its TV audience - the coveted ITunes and Amazon MP3 market. So the story line is busy telling you there needs to be vocal growth and that these bad news bears just don't have what it takes to win the Glee Club Nationals... yet on the other hand everything they are signing is album quality [and after each show airs... the songs are on Amazon MP3, downloadable for about a buck].

The underlying feeling of this show, is it's trying to do too much: Comedy, Musical, Drama, Feel Good TV,  A top seller on ITunes and Amazon MP3, etc, etc, etc.

The demands of a lengthy TV season (26 episodes) essentially makes it implausible for the show to do it all well - heck the drop in quality after the first two episodes has been severe. They'll focus on the music however, because they have discovered a gold mine (well over a million downloads in their first 5 weeks on Itunes alone), and continually suffer in all other aspects vital in great television shows. This show will be around for the long haul, and have a massive audience... but I won't be one of them. My wife on the other hand.....

If you would like to see an example of characters pretending they are behind and need to practice, just before they belt out something better then 90% of the stuff MTV plays on the regular... enjoy:

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