Glee

I guess I qualify as a gleek. The premise of Glee is so simple, high school nerds and geeks find fulfillment in the glee club. And they sing and dance like no high school glee club ever sang and danced, with musical accompaniment like no glee club ever had. And they just knock my socks off. I guess they must knock a bunch of socks off a bunch of people around the country because they’ve become the surprise hit this year. The plots involve the duels between Will Schuster, the Spanish teaching head of the glee club, and Sue Sylvester, the perfectly awful, self-centered head of the Cherrios, the cheer leading club. And high school satire abounds. The plot elements are so outlandish they’re funny, and the writers must have a ball thumbing their noses gleefully at ever cliché and redneck attitude they can find. But it’s the musical numbers that really make the show: Kurt singing “A House Is Not a Home” as he gazes longingly at Finn; Rachel and her mother singing “I Dreamed a Dream” just after Rachel has discovered the head of their rival glee club is the mother who gave her away at birth; Will and Brian Ryan (Neil Patrick Harris) dueling for the lead in a local production of Les Miserables as they sing “Dream On”; Will and April (Kristin Chenoweth) singing “One Less Bell to Answer/A House Is Not a Home”; Rachel banging out “Don’t Rain on My Parade” nearly as well as her idol Barbra; and too many others to mention. If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t yet gotten hooked on Glee, tune in next Tuesday for this season’s finale. You too will become a gleek.