Glee Season 2
by Philip Chien
Fans of the TV series "Glee" call themselves "Gleeks" and there are a lot of them. Glee is a weekly hour-long musical television show set in the fictional William McKinley High School in Ohio.
The Glee cast has earned two Platinum and five Gold albums, more than 36 million downloads, and the record for the most titles on the Billboard Hot 100 by a non-solo act.
Over 11 million albums sold worldwide. Also, more than 50 percent of the songs have been Billboard Hot 100 chart entries. The Glee cast has performed over 300 songs in its three seasons on the air.
The cast consists of several extremely talented singers-dancers in a high school glee club. As with most TV series set in high schools the actors are in their 20s playing high school teens. If the show's success continues there's little doubt that many of the kids will end up spending five or six years in high school without ever graduating (a/k/a the "Beverly Hills 90210" syndrome).
Besides an extremely talented cast Glee has had many famous performers as guest stars. Carol Burnett played Sue Sylvester's mother. Gwyneth Paltrow returns as substitute teacher Holly Holiday. Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth returned to sing amazing numbers.
The glee club members are the underdogs; looked down upon by most of the kids in the school. A few of them are jocks and cheerleaders but most of the in kids at the school look down and harass the students in the glee club. That makes the series appealing to tone deaf viewers with two left feet - almost everybody can sympathize with being one of the unpopular kids in high school.
Unfortunately almost all of the jocks in the school who harass the glee club are two dimensional characters - all we know about them is that they're jocks and they pick on the glee kids. The audience has no knowledge which would make them more sympathetic or have any depth.
The true "villain" in the show is break-out character Sue Sylvester, the cheerleading coach. Originally intended as a minor supporting character she quickly became one of the most popular in the show. Fortunately the producers are conscious not to overuse the character and there are many episodes where Sue doesn't appear. While most of Sue's actions are over-the-top she also has a tender side and can't just be dismissed as a comic-book villain.
In many ways Glee is similar to the 1980s series Fame. Both featured a high school setting with song and dance numbers in each show. But there are significant differences - in Fame the kids attended the School of the Arts and were the popular kids in the school while the glee club kids at William McKinley are the underdogs and always picked on by the jocks. Fame's songs were organically interspersed within the show; with just a few songs in planned school plays or concerts. Most of Glee's numbers are in the school glee club or performances and only a few are spontaneous ones in non-musical situations. Most of Fame songs were originals with a few pop hits. In contrast Glee performs current songs, Broadway hits, and pop songs across many decades and has only had a few original numbers. The most important difference was the quality of the performers. Only a few of the Fame actors could sing and dance well while all of the Glee cast are top-notch performers.
A controversial episode crossed Glee with rock musical Rocky Horror. The cast performed many of the numbers from the 1970s cult classic and the episode included cameos by stars Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf. The DVD includes a bonus song "Planet, Schmanet, Janet", but it's only the red lips on a black background, not a full music video.
Each DVD has a "jukebox" extra, the various musical numbers from each episode. The jukebox videos are just clips from the episodes, so they have overlapping dialog and sound effects interrupting the songs. When the shows were shot the actors sang their songs in a studio. Then they performed the songs on the set in front of the cameras and interacting with the other actors. Non-music shots within the songs were then filmed and everything was edited together into the final version which appears in the episode. It would be trivial for a video editor to use the original raw video shot on the sets and mix it with the audio recordings to make clean music videos without the overlapping dialog and that would have been a far better extra feature on the DVDs.
It's wonderful to watch the episodes on DVD or Blu-Ray - no commercial interruptions, no overlays advertising other television shows, local lottery numbers, or the ‘must see' news story coming on that night's news. But I was extremely disappointed in the lack of commentaries on any of the episodes, something that's greatly appreciated when it's done well on other TV shows.
There are only a few additional features on the DVDs; a behind the scenes featurette on the "Rocky Horror Glee" episode, one on the building of a major set, features with some of the characters, and a behind the scenes on the season finale filmed in New York City. Most of those featurettes have already appeared on the Fox.com website. Additional features just for the home video releases would have been appreciated.
One especially annoying "feature" is the disclaimers and copyright notices. Certainly they need to be included on every DVD, but the Glee disclaimers and copyrights run at the end of every single episode. It seems ironic that the boilerplate disclaimer says that any commentaries do not express the opinions of the Fox corporation when there aren't any commentaries!
One major item not on this DVD release is the Glee 3-D concert. During the summer hiatus the stars of the show went on a multi-city concert tour which was filmed with 3-D cameras. It was shown in theaters for a limited two-week release. No doubt the concert will be released on DVD and 3D Blu-Ray, probably in time for the holidays.
photos copyright Fox Television, used with permission.
Links
Order Glee: The Complete Second Season
on DVD from Amazon.com.
Order Glee: The Complete Second Season
on Blu-Ray from Amazon.com.
Order Glee: The Complete First Season
on DVD from Amazon.com.
Order Glee: The Complete First Season
on Blu-Ray from Amazon.com.
Order Fame: The Complete Seasons 1 & 2
on DVD from Amazon.com.
About the author
Philip Chien has always loved musicals and good television.
copyright 2011 neatinformation.com. All Rights Reserved.
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