I was so set to like Glee. Just like I was so set to like Mamma Mia and Rock of Ages. But they all suffered from the same problem: You can't be ironic and genuine at the same time. And when you try to convince your audience to like something un-ironically that everyone knows is, for all intents and purposes, terrible, you just end up forcing people to sit through crap.
Glee wants to be a lot of things: dark comedy like Weeds, commercially appealing like High School Musical, campy like John Waters, and a heartfelt embrace of the outsider like Ugly Betty. But in trying to appeal to teenyboppers, they lost any comedic edge they had going for them. The pilot felt more like Bring it On than Election. Is it really possible to be both?
What Glee should be is the original John Waters Hairspray. A good compromise that's network friendly but still hilarious would be the Harvey Feirstein Broadway update. But what it ends up being is the overproduced Zac Efron-vehicle devoid of any element of camp or irony. The problem is that over-the-top farcical comedy always has to make a choice between real, human moments and subverting those moments for comedic effect. Take Arrested Development. Any time it allowed you to feel for its characters, it quickly yanked the rug out from under you by reminding you that that kiss you wanted to happen was between cousins or between a man and a retarded woman. That's what makes it funny.
Maybe Glee will be the surprise hit of the fall. I'm willing to give it a shot, especially to see Kristin Chenoweth stop by in episode 4. But I'm hoping that they ditch some of the gloss in favor of the black comedy. Those moments were where I liked the pilot best and I'd be thrilled to see them pull this off.
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I had a dream last night that you got a major part in a movie. You were talking to the actors in character and I felt like you were a different person.
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