GLEE: Review in The New Yorker

So spot on. I mean, I watch and like the show and everything, but I agree with the criticisms in this article.


http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2010/05/10/100510crte_television_franklin?currentPage=2

Quotes:

"With several production numbers per episode, almost all of which have remarkably weak choreography and poorly synched lip-synching, the writers haven’t been able to go very deep into anyone’s life."

"Will’s wife, Terri, has to be the worst part that Jessalyn Gilsig has ever been given. She’s unaccountably unpleasant to Will, and she fakes a pregnancy for much longer than is credible."

"The episode in which many people’s affection for the show was cemented was the one in which it was revealed—briefly, in a moment done just right—that Sue had a human core; it was also an episode that was free of Terri and Emma, and thus didn’t leave you with a knot in your stomach."

"There is in “Glee” an element of creepiness, or, at least, sourness. Tonally, it hasn’t found its way yet. A teacher’s dismissal for touching a student inappropriately is treated as a joke. And Sue says to two doltish cheerleaders: “You may be the two stupidest teens I’ve ever encountered. And that’s saying something. I once taught a cheerleading seminar to a young Sarah Palin.” I get it that a group of teen-agers singing a choral arrangement of “Rehab” is notionally funny; unfortunately, watching it is notional fun. Still, “Glee” is well produced, and it works, even if some of the music, like high school itself, makes you roll your eyes and wish you were somewhere else."