I’m going to mix things up a little and try a series I’m going to dub First Impressions, giving you my thoughts on the first episode of a television series. Some will be things that I’ve watched before – like this one, Glee, and some will be brand new ones that I’ve never watched. Let’s see how this goes. (Side note to the reader, I wrote this before my post on 3 Body Problem, because I’m really organised).
Glee was brilliant, at times. Like most series over a run of several years, there were ups and there were downs, but Glee at its height was one of the funniest, most enjoyable pieces of television that I’ve ever seen. I’m not exaggerating. For whatever this show might have become, I think that the whole first season was incredible, and that starts with the Pilot (as American shows often do, just spend five minutes thinking of a name for the episode, I beg of you).
So much of an American TV pilot’s runtime is dedicated to introducing as many characters as possible in as much detail possible in as little time as possible, which lends itself well to the quick cuts and snappy dialogue so often seen throughout the run of Glee. I used to hate the way the camera cut what felt like every half a second, but on rewatches I’ve found myself loving it. Anyway, Will is kind of useless, Emma has OCD, Sue is brilliant, Ken is sad and lonely, Rachel is a drama queen who will do anything to get her way, Finn is conflicted, I could go on. Through the auditions for the Glee club, we get a good sense of all the other major players that we’ll carry on seeing. Tina even writes her name with a stutter, which is something I’ve only just caught. Glee is so full of all these little visual jokes that work so well, and they’re very much ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ due to the speedy camera cuts.
Already in the first episode, Rachel and Sue are the absolute standout characters. While the rest of them fit varyingly within and without the caricatures that they are destined to parody, Rachel in particular is striking from the first moment she appears on screen. From her fake crying to get the old Glee coach fired to signing off her name with a gold star, she’s golden. No, I didn’t intend that. Yes, I’m leaving that in. She’s delusional about everything other than her incredible talent, and as annoying as her character is, she’s the star of the show. If she wasn’t she’d let you know about it.
Sue is too of course, but Jane Lynch was always destined to be brilliant. Her first line of ‘you think this is hard, try being water-boarded, that’s hard’ is so good, and you can see throughout the episode the different jokes they tried out for the opening scene. While her influence and power as a character wanes throughout the show, as she becomes more and more overused, she starts off incredibly and carries on for at least a couple more years. Jessalyn Gilsig is another standout as Will’s domineering, overbearing and slightly psychotic wife. ‘I’m on my feet four hours a day, three days a week here’ is essentially her opening line here too, and yeah, written down this stuff isn’t so funny, but trust me, it is.
What I think is the truest testament to the quality of this episode is that I’ve seen so few of the things that Glee parodies and pastiches. You’ve got the fourteen to sixteen-year-olds played exclusively by people aged twenty-five or older and the strict caste system of jocks and cheerleaders above everyone else. The only things I’ve seen which feature Glee clubs are this and Pitch Perfect, which both kind of make fun of the concept of a Glee club, which I’m pretty sure are an alien concept to anyone outside of the USA. Yet, despite that, I find myself getting the jokes. It’s true that as the show goes on, it seems to become what it’s parodying. This is a fatal flaw in pretty much every Ryan Murphy production, it’s like he forgets what he was doing in the first place and goes to playing everything way too straight. The first season of Glee is brilliant though, and the first episode starts things off brilliantly.
I haven’t even mentioned the music yet, and that’s where most of the show’s heart comes from. There’s a lot of telling each other how they feel through songs, which sounds cheesier and more insufferable than it is. I remember the first time this episode was on TV it featured a scene with Will singing ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ because he was leaving his job, and my dad walked in and said ‘I take it that guy is leaving to go somewhere’. I think that sums up how on the nose the music in this show can be, but in later episodes it gets so much more fun. Finn singing ‘(You’re) Having My Baby’ to Quinn without realising he’s outing her pregnancy to her parents is hilarious. I won’t mention Will’s white-man rapping though. ‘Gold Digger’ is something to be forgotten.
I’ll finish before I get too ahead of myself though. As a first episode, this is a triumph. If you like it, chances are you’ll enjoy the show before abandoning it somewhere in the fourth season and then picking it up several years later to see how it all ends. That’s based on a true story. If you don’t like it, well, you never will.
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