My name is Michelle Doyle and I am addicted to Glee. I know, I know… all that singing, all that dancing, all that Sue Sylvester, how did I not see it coming? I am a shadow of my former self; I get my fix on the TV. I then cruise YouTube for hours on end and search IMDB for quotes. My life is spiralling out of control; my sleep pattern has been drastically altered. I stay up until 3am for catch-ups. This is the third time I’ve watched that episode today. Glee has destroyed my life.
But how did this happen? When did it start? How did I get in quite so deep? I remember it all so clearly. I remember seeing the ads, the logo, some girl with a big mouth stepping forward and grinning at me before singing Don’t Stop Believin’, one of the most irritating songs in existence. And what’s more, what really gets me is I remember ridiculing Glee. Glee was no better than a piece of flattened gum on the sole of my shoe but what’s worse, that gum has been impossible to peal and now Glee is an intrinsic part of my daily existence. I need help!
As for the soundtrack an American girl in my course brought it back from the states for me…
For the troglodytes amongst you however that have somehow managed to escape the feel-good clutches of TV’s newest teen sensation, Glee is the all-singing, all dancing American hit show that is raging almost halfway through its first season on E4 and hurtling at unstoppable speeds in national popularity. A perfect fusion of all that has come to be derided in stereotype, teen-TV, the show follows an after school show choir (or glee club) called “New Directions!” and is a back-to-basics approach to teen drama that plays to its own conformity by drawing on the age-old recipe of old-school teen movies. What makes Glee different to all its less popular and more derided sibling shows before it however is that despite playing to the cliché by the book, the broth has been contorted ever so slightly to bring the viewing public something new and fresh.
Indeed, myself and probably everyone else reading this has had the misfortune of being veterans of 90s TV, an unimaginative breed of television that drew from its parental legacies of The Breakfast Club and culminated the decade with the intellectual failure that was cheerleading movie Bring It On. Come the millennium it was a case that while we still hadn’t built cars that fly or taken family vacations to the moon, we could at least shake up our programming. So, hand-led into the new decade by our friends Sebastian, Catherine and whatever Reese Witherspoon’s name was in Cruel Intentions, TV focused on breaking the derided mould made popular by Saved by the Bell, instead favouring pseudo-sophisticated teen shows that plugged at the idea of a more intelligent viewer. Gone were the days of mere popular girls with bad attitudes and in was the notion of popular girls with diverse ranging personality complexes whose bitchiness derived from loveless childhoods and bad parenting. Flat characters were out, replaced by the wholly relatable 3D anti-hero.
However, just as we grew tired of the vegetative appeal of 90s TV, so did the drama, scandal and intense character development seen in practically every TV show in the 00s become a little overbearing. We wanted everything to be less serious, more fun, Jedward style. The seeds were sown for something different, something that reverted back to the age-old stereotype but manipulated it in a way that it wasn’t merely a copy of what had come before it: the answer was Glee.
Don’t get me wrong now, Glee is such a stereotype, from the quiet Asian girl to the girl fabulous gay boy, to the Beyonce-esque diva and the nasal voiced nerd in a wheelchair, there is essentially nothing that separates Glee from its identical siblings before it. Except… it is different. The winning formula applied to Glee is that it’s thoroughly unoriginal but unoriginal in a new and witty way that hasn’t ever really been seen before it. From the dry, sharp-tongued, non-PC, outlandish remarks from Sue Sylvester to the feel-good singing and dancing, this show appeals to a wide spectrum of audiences by honing in on a diverse range of target markets that up until now were not being adequately catered for.
Aside from the soundtrack obviously, the blatant appeal of Glee is fast-talking, insidious Cheerio’s coach Sue Sylvester whose toxicity will stop at no lengths and whose ambition to win sees no limits. In shows like Gossip Girl, were Sue’s thoroughly un-PC approach to life aired, it would bring down the credibility of the show. Glee however does not try to attempt plausibility; instead Sue reigns down on the students of McKinley High as well as appearing in ‘Sue C’s It’ on the Ohio News in which she gives subtle and terse advice to the people of Ohio, deriding ‘fatties, uglies’ and homeless people and calling for a post-mortem on fat people’s inclusion in society. Sue’s character is played by actress Jane Lynch and is currently nominated for Best Supporting Actress in The Golden Globe awards.
Just like stage-hit and film success: Hairspray, as the LA Times put it: “Glee is the first show in a long time that’s just plain full-throttle, no-guilty-pleasure-rationalizations-necessary fun!”. And what’s more, Glee could be set in any day and age and has the potential to, like Fame, be dare I say it, timeless in the event that it doesn’t over-repeat itself in subsequent seasons and become another of TVs toxic assets.
Currently Glee is up for a string of Awards including Teen Choice Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and Writers Guild Awards as well as winning Best TV Series at The People’s Choice Awards.
And so, before I draw this ‘Gleek’ rant to a close, I leave you with a snippet of advice from my idol Sue Sylvester which would have done me well when writing out my CAO options two years ago: “I empower my Cheerios to be champions. Do they go onto college? I don’t know, I don’t care. Should they learn Spanish? Sure, if they wanna become dishwashers and gardeners. But if they want to be bankers and lawyers and captains of industry, the most important lesson they could possibly learn is how to do a cartwheel!”
And that’s how Sue C’s it.
