Kat with a K

Happy Glee Day!

Glee returns from hiatus tonight. The fans (including me) are pretty excited. To put it mildly. You should give it a try, unless you hate music and funny things. Then you might not like it, I suppose. To those who have asked whether it is basically a TV version of High School Musical - no. Not at all. I mean, they are both about high schoolers involved in music programs, but the similarity pretty much ends there. Glee is much funnier, and smarter, and more adult. And it takes itself a lot less seriously.

There were two lines in the midseason finale that really encapsulated the reasons why I love this show. The first occurred when one of the students (Finn) asked the teacher why he always had to be the one to step up to the plate. Mr. Schuester's response: "Because sometimes being special sucks." So often, adolescents who are talented in some way (be it academically, musically, athletically, whatever) are told how lucky they are, and how many opportunities they have, without any acknowledgment from adults that there are drawbacks to being the different one, the special one, and that it can be a burden as much as a gift. So Mr. Schue's blunt statement was refreshing, and the show deals with this dichotomy well in general.

At the competition that comprises the climax of the first half of the season, the glee club discovers that they need to change the songs in their program at the last minute. When asked if she has a solo ballad she could sing, one of the main characters, Rachel, immediately responds with "Well, I do have something I've been working on since I was four." And I had one of those instant flashes of recognition of a kindred soul, because don't we all have something like that? Or, as I said to my mother when I was trying to explain why she should watch the show, "Haven't you spent forty years just waiting for someone to come along and say 'Help! We need someone who can recite The Sound of Music in its entirety, right now!'?" This scene was perfect wish fulfillment, for a character who often has a hard time of things on the show.

And here's the song she'd been practicing since she was four:

Watch tonight. Really.