Glee to Me

I started watching Glee a week or two ago. The first episode I watched in full was the Madonna episode, only because Hulu didn't have any of the earlier episodes posted. After watching that one and the following ep. with Kristen Chenowith, I was hooked. I ordered the Season One, Volume One DVDs so I wouldn't have to buy all of the episodes from iTunes that aren't on Hulu, and the rest is history.

After watching through the first 13 episodes on DVD and then returning to iTunes and Hulu to fill in the blanks, I'm almost caught up with this season. I just have the Doogie Howser episode yet to watch. I still like the show, but I have to say that I find a lot of it unnecessarily cheesy and annoying. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order, about Glee.

-Finn: After watching him chase Rachel through the library in the Madonna episode, I had an immediate crush. He's cute, and he looked even cuter when he was singing. But now that I've seen him scrunch his eyebrows together through 18 episodes and basically amount to a huge, indecisive airhead, the crush has faded.

-Emma: I hate this character. I like her outfits, but that's about it. From her voice to her obsessive cleaning rituals they try to play off as endearing, I find pretty much everything about her annoying. I think we are supposed to be rooting for her and Will, but it bothers me that she was putting the moves on him even before he was separated from Terri. Yes, Terri was a deceptive beeyotch who treated Will like crap, but that still didn't make me sympathize with the Emma situation. Also, her "engagement" to Ken was a really stupid plotline.

-Sue Sylvester: probably the best part of the show. I want to watch the show with a pen and paper so I can write down every quotable quote that comes out of her mouth. I also love the scenes between her and her sister in the nursing home. Guy informed me that the actress who plays Sue is a regular in Christopher Guest movies, so that makes me curious as to how much of what she says is ad-libbed...which makes me love her even more.

-Quinn: Now that she's pregnant, she's suddenly Miss Congeniality? Sorry, but I don't think someone who was on a horse as high as hers can be brought back down to earth as easily as they have made it out to be.

-Artie: First of all, I thought he was giving the cupcake money to buy handicap ramps at the school, but in the episode where they go to sectionals, there he is getting on the special bus. His mode of transportation is the least of my worries, though. I don't mind his participation in the choreographed dance numbers because at least he doesn't look sorely out of place, but when the kids have an impromptu jam session in the choir room, it's always so awkward to see him just sitting there. In one of the most recent episodes I watched, all of the other Glee kids were having a dance-off to "Ice Ice Baby," and they just left Artie sitting there and shaking his arms a little bit. The absolute worst Artie situation, though, was when they did the mattress commercial and he was just sitting in the background with a piece of posterboard that said "Jump." I know I'm borderline Sue Sylvester insensitive when I say it, but it was painful to watch.

-Santana: Eye candy and that's about it. When they finally let her sing a solo with Mercedes in "The Boy is Mine," I realized why it had taken them so long to let her sing on her own.

-Kurt - love everything about him. Every episode that features him prominently, whether it was the Single Ladies one, the one where he sang Defying Gravity, or the one I just watched with Rose's Turn, is always a fun hour of television. Plus, I like the scenes between him and Mike O'Malley.

The show in general is almost always enj0yable to watch, and it's especially good to exercise to (lots of skinny girls to envy, plus musical numbers to keep things upbeat), but one thing I'm confused about is how much time supposedly lapses between each episode. When I originally watched the Madonna episode with Jesse St. James, I thought he would have been introduced to the show much earlier than the prior episode. In the end, Glee definitely has its flaws -- it's no Seinfeld or LOST -- but the bottom line is that it's entertaining, and for that reason alone, I'll keep tuning in.