Glee: Deep Fried Birthday Cake Ice Cream Sprinkled with Happiness

I didn’t want to watch Glee.

In fact, I can say that I successfully and artfully dodged all the rabid exhortations from friends and family to watch the first season. Not even when my brother expertly performed the entire Brittney Spears episode, word for word and step for step, did I relent.

(Actually that’s not true. He only told me about it. And as he dwarfs me in stature—a grizzly bear to my pug—let’s not mention I said that.)

Unlike Mark Sanchez, I had better things to do than deal with teen angst on a weekly basis. (Google his name and move down the results until you see the number “17.” You’ll get the joke).

And though I’m fairly high on the metro-sexual scale of masculinity—somewhere above cool with shopping at Express for Men but still far below skinny jeans—I just wasn’t going to be force fed from the Pop Culture Poop Monster any more.

You know of this Poop Monster.

It’s the same evil beast that makes sure you have kids in the car when Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber spray their rainbow tinted vomit through the radio and directly at your ear canal. The Poop Monster knows that turning the channel would set into motion the greatest hissy fit since the U.S. asked Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to get those pesky little missiles out of Cuba.

Or, for our younger readers, since the city of Los Angeles politely asked Ke$ha to go easy on the booze.

(Reader’s note: #342 why I LOVE Ke$ha. She lists Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash as two of her musical influences. With lyrics like… (click for classy video):

I’m just talkin’ true

I’m tellin’ you ’bout the sh** we do

We’re selling our clothes

Sleepin’ in cars

Dressin’ it down

Hittin’ on dudes

Hard

…how could she not list them as influences?)

But I don’t have kids. And I fear no Poop monster. So I refused to get sucked in.

Until I found myself without employment.

Wait. Stay with me.

When you’re bumming a room from your brother, and there is only one TV you have access to, and it is set to Glee (remember, he could snap my arm like Adrian Brody’s nose if he wanted), you can either go sit silently in your room, hope to catch the Grizzly Bear off guard for one good shot with a frying pan, or you do the unthinkable…watch Glee.

One stupidly fun cover of “Telephone” later, and I’m now officially more addicted to this sweet pop candy than Charlie Sheen is to…well…that’s just too easy. I’ll let you insert your own comical analogy.

The show does what Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer did more than ten years earlier—it manages to take the peaks and valleys from an emotionally tumultuous part of life—adolescence to early adulthood—and couch it inside a hellaciously cool framework.

For Buffy it was vampires and demons. With Glee it’s pitch perfect covers and usually impressive, almost as good as Step Up 2 like dance numbers. (And Glee even plucked the best dancer from that movie).

Don’t get me wrong, some plot lines are preposterous, such as the morbidly obese student who draws the relentless sexual attention of one the show’s beaus. (I don’t think girls should try and be Taylor Swift transparent skinny, but this gal is one more latte from a massive coronary.)

But other ridiculous storylines are wildly entertaining, such as the bad girl of the show wielding mononucleosis as a tool for revenge. Even more funny when she reveals her own immunity, saying that she’s had mono so many times “it’s turned into stereo.

So, if you’re looking for cotton candy fun, and you don’t take yourself too seriously (your enjoyment of the Ke$ha video would be a good litmus test), then watch Glee on Tuesday nights.

Unless you limit yourself to one hour of television a week—then watch Justified.

Tagged: bieber, buffy, glee, kesha, tv show

Posted in: Entertainment, Television