Glee

I seem to recall there was a thread for this, but google can’t find it and the site search is baffled.

We watched the pilot back in July and my wife was all excited for this. Last Wednesday we moved, so the DVR wasn’t hooked up, so despite its best intentions, it couldn’t fulfill its programming and record the first real episode.

So last night I check and it’s available on Hulu, but the wife can’t watch it because she has other things to do. We sit down tonight and it is no longer available.

It’s no longer on Hulu, Amazon, or iTunes.

The speculation is that it has been pulled because of music rights. BFI or ASCAAP or whatever gave them the rights to some song for TV broadcast, but they now want more money for internet streaming.

Which might spell the death knell for the series, because if the record companies are going to be dicks about rights for every medium, then Fox can’t count on music rights for DVDs either, and that means no DVD sales, which are probably figured into the long term profitability of the show.

It would seem they would have worked this all out before they started, and I admit this is based on internet rumors. It may just be they can’t put it up until 8 days after the original air date, but then why was it up as soon as it was?

http://www.hulu.com/watch/94447/glee-showmance

Heard a few things about it. I think it’s on Netflix. I’m planning on watching an episode or two to see what it’s about.

I wondered if music licensing was going to become a huge problem for this show. I’d have thought the production company lawyers would have figured this stuff out by now. I mean, we’re all still suffering under the tragic weight of the Wonder Years not being available on DVD. Never forget!

My lady LOVED the pilot for this, and though it wasn’t great for me, I didn’t hate it.

But man oh man did I hate the second episode. Cheesy, boring, predictable, ham-fisted, and just weird. They seem to be wanting to do a camp musical about a bunch of white straight people. And that’s just WACKY!!

Some of the lines are funny, and I love the redhead teacher with OCD, but everything else about the show screams “one person’s singular vision that’s UTTERLY wrecked by studio suits”.

Or “one person’s singular vision is utterly stupid”.

So the ONE night we sit down to watch it is also the one night when it’s not available? Why do I feel like Charlie Brown?

Jane Lynch is so unbelievably fucking awesome in this.

I don’t understand why you felt the need to add the words ‘in this’.

Touché.

I liked the second episode a lot more than the first one. Should be fairly entertaining, for a couple more episodes at least.

I love the show. And not even in a gay way.

It’s just a ton of fun, and makes me happy.

Okay, maybe in a bit of a gay way, but Matthew Morrison kind of looks like a hispanic David Boreanaz, and that’s okay by me.

I already found him attractive in the first episode, but in Ep 2, it turns out he has some style and rhythm too which completely stole my heart. Imdb says he was in a boy band and did a lot of Broadway.

ahahaha

I went to college with Brad Falchuk. He watched a lot of VHS porn in his dorm room and some of the quotable quotes have stayed with me to this day. Such as, “Yeahhh, suck that eggroll, bitch. Got some wonton soup fo’ yo’ ass.”

We watched the second episode, and everytime they’re doing a big musical number we both say, “There are at least double the people singing.”

Can’t you make a full sound with the number of people they have? Or are they just doing multiple tracks of the people for the rich sound?

And on Hulu we got ads for tampons and birth control. So this is very targeted at women, but it would seem that the central problem of the teacher’s life-- stay with bitchy wife or run off with crazy guidance counselor-- is impossible given the middle America demographic. If he does what everyone wants him to do, then he has broken up the middle America family (no matter how dysfunctional it is). I just see it getting worse and worse with the wife doing more and more obviously bad things and the teacher being fooled so he looks like an idiot.

And there’s no way the main singing girl wouldn’t have a pack of boys around her and be able to pick and choose who she hangs out with. Sure, she wouldn’t be tops of the cheerleader clique, but she’d be tops of band/chorus/drama clique. Every school has one. The jocks call them “band fags” or “drama fags.” They generally move in different worlds.

I’m not so sure. I spent my entire high school existence hanging out in the back of the debate room, which was right across the way from the theater and we generally ended up snagging about half of their cast for Dramatic and Humorous Interpretation events, and while my school was pretty big by a lot of standards, their clique was awfully damn small, limited mostly to those of us who sat around and played bridge at lunch, the people in the theater program, and whatever ancillary folks knew them from their other circles (mostly the brainy kids, but possibly they were just the only ones that hung around with us in our rickety research cave). There were some attractive ladies in the crowd to be sure, but they weren’t generally regarded in the same way as the cheerleaders. It didn’t help that the drama group back then was…well, pretty much the drama group from this show: one ambiguously gay guy, a couple weirdos like me (I would not consider myself, particularly in high school, to be particularly crushable), and a bunch of girls.

My experience might have been anomalous, though.

My wife described it as having a “Grease” feel to it. Given that, the broad characterizations and clunky dialogue started to make sense.

Third episode started out with quite a bang

That thumb scene was awesome. Also, Mercedes has an arm like a cannon.

The part where the teacher is eating the thumbs-up cake is one of the most funny & uncomfortable things I’ve seen in a long time.

Plus, Jane Lynch. She’s hilarious when she’s just reacting to other people’s dialogue.

I was kind of disappointed that the stereotypical gay kid ended up actually being gay, but it was done in a way that kind of hit home in a touching/realistic way.