Let's Take Some Glee

Seeing as how we were all hooked on Glee last May, I count it as a returning show, separate from that list of pilots I feel like I should check out but will actually delete from my DVR unwatched 2 months from now. Still, we all know a good (even great) pilot is not the same thing as a good show, so now that I've seen 2 more episodes of Glee it's time to see how it holds up.

The answer? Pretty awesomely. If anything, these past two episodes have brought out what we all liked in the pilot even more. If the pilot was Election meets High School Musical, then since then it's been shifting more towards a musical Election - more comedy, less cute. Credit some of that to scene stealer Jane Lynch, who always has any episode's best lines. But even when she's offscreen I'm finding myself laughing more than I'd expect to.

Last week's episode served a duel purpose - it had to be simultaneously a "premiere" and a second episode, the downfall to having the first episode air months earlier. And it felt like both, taking the glee club's existence for granted while giving them a whole other set of challenges, like getting enough people to be eligible for regionals. Not to mention a list of acceptable songs. Let's just hope that doesn't last, or the musical numbers might lose some of their fun.

Speaking of the songs, there's some good and some bad on that front. The good is that this won't be a show that does one obligatory song an episode; this is a full-out musical. Not a musical so much in the breaking into song mid-sentence way (though we did say that kind of non-Glee Club singing this week), but in that they're throwing in a bunch of songs each week. So if you like musicals (which, if you're watching the show I presume you do), you've got quite a lot to enjoy here.

On the other hand, they still need to work on making the songs feel more natural. Last week in particular all of the songs sounded incredibly canned. The second their mouths opened a studio-perfected song would magically come out. As great as "Gold Digger" was, you didn't for a second believe he was really singing it. Worse was the cheerleaders' audition song. I questioned if they were even doing their own singing, since it didn't really sound like them. This week struck me as an improvement, but let's hope they work on the lipsynching, pre-recordings, or whatever it is that isn't working.

Also, as funny as Ryan Murphy's writing often is, there's always the danger that he'll just go too over the top. The last thing anyone wants is for Glee to turn into Nip/Tuck. So while tonight's episode was as entertaining as the rest, it does trouble me that there's already a celebrity guest appearance in the third episode (though Josh Groban was funny, and I'm sure it was intended to self-reflexively bring up that very point). And an episode about Will losing interest in Glee seems like it should be midseason, not right away.

Until someone starts humping a couch or cutting their breast off with a chainsaw in a doctor's waiting room (both things that have actually happened on Nip/Tuck in JUST THE LAST YEAR), I think it's safe to say that Glee has earned its season pass on my DVR. As a musical comedy that's equally successful at both, Glee is a big bright spot on the fall line-up.