I don’t like Glee as much as everyone said I would. “Oh, you’ll simply love Glee!” they breathed, like girl boarders in a novella about schooling away. “It’s ripping fun!” They didn’t say that last bit, but they may as well have because it was all so hysterical.

“Guilty pleasure!” they fluttered. “Quirky!” they screamed. “Original!” they hyperventilated, before collapsing onto a convenient pile of pom-poms. None of these people have ever seen the TV version of Fame, I assume. There were quirky kids and misfits in that, too, all singing about attaining dreams and battling personal demons. With legwarmers! How quickly we forget.

Glee is self-consciously cutesy. Turn-off number one. The tunes are knowingly shoe-horned in in a way that I find charmless. There, I said it. charmless. That’s two. And the songs they pick are those kind of “a young girl/ schoolteacher/ reverend would never sing that!” choices that are as obvious as the fact that him and her (that’s he and she, grammar fans) are going to get together. Like the granny rapping in The Wedding Singer: Ho ho! An old lady rapped!! Obvious. Lazy. Yawn. Three strikes and Glee‘s out.

There were a couple of laughs in the eps I’ve seen and I love the gym teacher. I want to be her. I will continue to watch it occasionally because I have heard from people whom I trust that I should. I feel almost guilty that it doesn’t fire me up. I’m somehow letting those people down who know me well and thought I would love it. Well know this:

It’s all down to my age-old allergy to quirky. Quirks are great and to be encouraged; they set us apart from other people and make them wonder whether or not we should be sectioned. When they’re self-conscious and contrived, however, they cease to be quirks and become cynical bids for attention, in a very teenaged way. (Yes, Florence and the Machine, I’m looking at you.) If you’re not genuinely bonkers, why oh why would I be interested?

So I’ll watch and I’ll wait, but if Glee continues to make my teeth hurt and my brain seethe, I’ll just go down to the kitchen and mainline sugar. It seems to be the same thing. Then at least my viewing time will be freed up for some Lost.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.