Five Reasons Why You Need to Watch Glee

We are really, really good.

Glee, season-premiering (only the second episode ever aired, actually) tonight on Fox at 9/8c, is my favorite show of the new TV year. Hell, it may be one of my favorite shows of the past few years. Ryan Murphy--of Popular and Nip/Tuck fame--has created something beguiling and wonderful. A musical high school series without that saccharine corporate manipulating of High School Musical. Murphy's writing has only improved since his Popular days and his return to high school--specifically to a glee club and its big-dreaming members (and big-dreaming director, Spanish teacher Will)--is steady and honest and weird and hilarious and frequently moving. You really should watch it. Still not convinced? Here are five more reasons.

5) Don't Stop Believin'

Yes, the first episode was awesome, and you maybe feared that the crew just had beginner's luck. Nothing could possibly top that, right? It'll be all downhill from there. But! The season premiere episode, "Showmance"? OMG, you guys... It's even better. Like, really really good. There's kissing! And five songs! Five! On one episode of television! Swoon.

4) The Way You Look Tonight

Speaking of swooning, um, have you seen the cast? Specifically, Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, and Dianna Argon. These are all very good looking people. And, you know, very talented people too, and that's really what's important, y'know, their talent. Not their soulful good looks and chiseled jaws and perfect hair and-- well, you get the idea. So, yeah, they got that goin' for them.

3) Respect

In a not-at-all-preachy way, Glee celebrates difference and diversity and gives everyone a really nice, simple common dignity that feels in short supply on television. Sure certain traits are played for laughs, but there's also a deep and warm humanity in the way every character is written. There's a gay kid and a kid in a wheel chair and folks of different races and, let's be frank, attractiveness levels, but they're all still pretty much equals, they're all treated fairly. Murphy and company don't seem out to acidly mock dorky kids with big dreams--a show like that would be pretty mean and boring. Instead they're just saying "Here are some idiosyncratic, funny, sympathetic kids and here's a little life adventure they go on, warts and all on display." Which is how these kinds of stories should be! Because that's how life is, most of the time.

2) Barracuda

In two words, Jane Lynch. The always-reliable comedy character actress gets a slightly bigger part than usual here, playing the cheerleading coach villainess of the series. Lynch's Sue Sylvester is completely batshit for sure, but not batshit enough that she can't also be pretty ruthless and diabolical when it comes to thwarting the glee club. Lynch, an avid improviser, strolls through her scenes with a kind of menacing centeredness that belies the insane-speak flying out of her mouth. It's a terrific, if as-of-yet kinda unshaded, performance that hopefully will ring some bells come Emmy time next year. Think Ugly Betty's Wilhelmina, only butcher. And pettier. And crazier. Throw in the terrific Jessalyn Gilsig as Morrison's calculating (yet slightly sympathetic!) horrorshow of a wife, and you have two fearsome baddies.

1) Joy to the World

How many TV shows can you say make you genuinely happy? How many shows make you laugh with strange, disarmingly grown-up humor one minute, make your heart thump and ache the next, and then tie it all up in a wonderful musical bow at the end? Very few, I'd gather. Glee is a show that isn't overly cynical or meta or self-aware. The mantra "There is nothing ironic about show choir" is, yes, hilarious, but it's also so painfully true. Irony is everywhere, especially these days, but some things... Well, some things are sacred. Maybe the high school experience is one of those things. Rife with silliness and awkwardness as those years may be, they also, while you're going through them, really mean something--they hurt, they suck, they stoke, they humble, they inspire. Glee plays homage to all of those valid emotions while also reminding us that those years do, blessedly, eventually end and lose much of their potency. Glee is a funny show about not feeling very funny. It's a gleeful show about not feeling, well not all that often anyway, terribly gleeful.

It shows a world that is human and flawed and simple and bafflingly complex and sad and sexy and painful and joyful all at once. It's pretty wonderful. Please watch, won't you?

"Glee" premieres tonight at 9/8c on Fox