Glee: Preggers Review

Glee is a high school musical comedy. It’s had enormous success through the first three episodes and “Preggers” did not disappoint.  The high school setting has been overdone in television but Glee creates a formula that makes it entertaining again.

Its major plot points are all things that you will see in other high school, coming-of-age shows. “Preggers” included many character driven plot developments but the main focus was on Kurt’s sexuality.  Kurt (Chris Colfer) is a walking gay stereotype, yet he didn’t have the courage to tell his father. Kurt joins the football team to quell any suspicions and kicks the game winning field goal. Although his father is proud of him and all seems well, he decides to come out to his father. This is a pretty standard high school drama plotline and some people have criticized the show for being a rehash of an old formula.

But what makes Glee great is the addition of fantastic music and teacher’s comical lives. I was surprised at the former’s weakness in the episode. There were quite a few plays of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” but the show didn’t really have any memorable music numbers like in previous episodes.

What made “Preggers” such an entertaining episode was the introduction of new relationship dynamics—particularly those involving teachers. One was the old high school drama truism of teacher-student relationship. Finn (Cory Monteith) goes to Will (Matthew Morrison) in regular teacher-mentor fashion so as to tell him the shocking news that Quinn (Dianna Agron), the head of the celibacy club, is pregnant.

But the more entertaining one was the relationship between Sue (Jane Lynch) and Will.  Sue is intent on destroying glee club and putting all focus back on her award winning cheerleading program.  The confident coach opts for a segment on the local news to spread her advice around the community. Lynch delivered the lines flawlessly and her words of advice were the best part of the episode. Some of the highlights include:

• “Not everyone is gonna have the walnuts to take a pro-littering stance. But I will not rest until every inch of our fair state is covered in garbage.”
• “Caning works! And I think it’s about time we did a little more of it right here… yes, we cane!”
• “I often tell homeless people, ‘Hey, how’s being homeless working out? Maybe you should give not being homeless a try’”

Sue is very passionate about her segment but the show’s producer will cancel it if she fails to win the cheerleading national championships. She has already lost some of her top athletes to glee and creates a new plan to destroy the club.  Sue is becoming one of my favorite characters on the show, even if her plans seemed destined to fail.

Fox extended the show for a full season this week. It’s a fantastic, if obvious, move as they have a popular juggernaut in Glee.