Glee-full Thoughts
We recently started watching Glee for the first time here in Camp Brain Jar. It’s not a choice I expected to fall into, given my dislike of the musical as a format and my partner’s dislike of autotune, but I was lured in by some smart writing, some really sly dialogue in the opening episodes, and their ability to sidestep the thing that I dislike about musicals for the first half of a season (to whit: everyone verbalising internal states through song, rupturing my feeling of verisimilitude). Also, Harry Shum Jr, who is the best part of the Shadowhunters TV series and criminally underused as a back-up dancer here. Of course, now we’re in the second half of season one and the musical conventions are seeping through a lot more often. I’ve grumped through the last two episodes, which have been very music-heavy and very light on plot as they work to get the conflicts for the second half of
