Why I'm a Gleek

If you aren't familiar with the term "Gleek," well, I guess I'd wonder where you've been this year! Fox TV's smash hit Glee has taken the country by storm, and for good reason! The show ran a test series in the fall--13 episodes, just to see if the idea would catch on. It did. Immediately. Like wildfire. They took the winter months off to record the second half of the season and brought it back in April for the past 2 months. The season finale was last night, and oh my word. SUCH a great ending to the season.

Charles and I began hearing our youth group kids (and leaders) talking about this thing called Glee in the fall. It ran on Wednesday evenings right as youth group was going on, and since we don't even have cable, much less fancy TiVo to record shows we miss, we didn't really attempt to catch up. The chatter amongst our students (and around Fuller) kept spreading, so over Christmas break we finally said "okay, we gotta watch a couple episodes to see what the fuss is all about." We were hooked. (Me moreso, but he enjoys it). The creators of this show brilliantly tapped into something every high school kid experiences--feeling like a misfit. Even as you get to know the so-called popular kids you realize they feel the same way. A Spanish teacher with a passion for music pulls them together to form the school's Glee Club (he uses some unconventional methods to convince some of them to join, but nonetheless he gets them all to commit to the program) and manages over the course of the year to form a community for them where each of them begins to feel like they do belong. They deal with real life teenage issues throughout the show--a student struggling with his sexual orientation, a teenage pregnancy, family issues, divorce, adoption, popularity, grades and friendship--so it's not a show for little kids to watch, but I love many of the ways they handle these situations. To top it off, the actors who play the teens are some of the most talented people ever--they sing, they act, they dance (yes they do all the songs themselves). The music is fun, all covers of familiar songs that you'll want to sing along with!

Fox has decided to re-run the entire first season over the summer, on Thursday nights, so if you missed it the first time around, jump on board this summer and check it out--I promise, you'll appreciate the fun, the cheesiness, and of course, the music. Come on, you know you wanna be a Gleek :)