“i can’t wait to start singing and dancing
and maybe even putting on the ritz a little bit.”
(or: december 29 — a thumbnail sketch)
posted at 8:33 pm by brandon in tuesdays in the record store with brandon
Your local record store’s new release wall is an utter dead zone this week, which finds not even one major new album jockeying for all those post-Christmas gift card dollars. (And buck up out there, cowboys, because a quick scan of the January slate reveals that next week ain’t lookin’ so hot, either.) But the week is not a total wash, rest assured:
And now, a true story: my beloved A, who is the great love of my life, absolutely detests television. He’s one of these people who would much rather be reading The New Yorker, or enjoying a measure of sunshine, or doing anything other than spending an hour or two or seven channel-surfing, and while I’ll confess that I find that quirk in his personality to be quite admirable (and even a little inspiring), I also find it very strange, and thoroughly crazy-making. Nevertheless, there are shows that can impel A to sit still for a spell and offer up his undivided attention, and — at least of late — none holds more powerful sway over him than the new Fox smash Glee, whose first thirteen episodes arrive on DVD this week in a sparkling four-disc set entitled Vol. 1: The Road to Sectionals.
A boldly ambitious hybrid of giddy musical and demented soap opera, Glee chronicles the romantic and professional travails of a slapdash high school glee club, and even when it goes flying over the top on one ridiculous flight of fancy too many — almost without fail, every episode hurtles between plot twists that are by turns garishly illogical and profoundly moving — the series is anchored by its uniformly terrific cast, led by theatre vet Matthew Morrison (as the club’s lovelorn leader Will Schuester), the hilarious Jane Lynch (as Will’s twisted, rampagingly bitter archrival Sue Sylvester), and the brilliantly talented Cory Monteith and Lea Michele (as musically gifted outcasts Finn and Rachel, a Romeo and Juliet for the brand new decade). And while I’m not nearly as enamored with the show as A is, I’m certainly man enough to admit that this is a mostly enjoyable hour of good solid weekly fun, and I can’t wait until its April return to see exactly where its story is headed.
