Gleek

My name is Dr. Plog and I am a Gleek.

There, I said it.

I tried to resist it, I really did. For starters, I am already over-committed, televisually, especially since I am trying to reduce my overall couch potato-mashedness in a new year's false promise to a new-me. Also: I am instinctively programmed to resist trends du jour on the very basis of their seemingly sudden mass-desirability. I call it the Dan Brown effect - though now my Da Vinci Code aversion (it's so freaky to suddenly see everyone across the world toting the same badly-written book) has now found new life in The Girl with the Dragon Earringmania. Ipods can pod off; I haven't even graduated to tampons, letalone Ipads.

But I'm hooked on this silly show!

Cheeky covers? Check. Subversion of seemingly same-same stereotypes? Check (That shameless display of artificial affected alliteration? Check, check, check!). Maybe I'm just impressed that a single show that is, on the surface, as samesamey as your subpar nineohtwooneohmelroseplaceremake staple, would have not just one token Jew but, like, four - rendering them somewhat less token - and one breaking the mould, majorly. Noah Puckerman, I'm talking to you! Mr P said I'd have had a field day with you if I was still writing my thesis.

Ok, it's not as groundbreaking as some would have you believe. A recent facebook status of a local wit (whose critical eye I trust implicitly) declared she was "whelmed"* - neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed. I love that category. And I totally get that response.

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*Slightly off-topic but there are so many words that have no counterpart. Mr P sometimes shakes his British head at me and labels me "incorrigible", to which I reply, "No, I'm actually quite corrigible". Also are you always "appropos of nothing" or can you be appropos of something? I know you can be but I think nothing is more common, usagewise Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?

Answers welcome in comment section below. Join in! Don't be shy!

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But I think, even in shitty times, a lot of our escapism is occupied by/ mired in the ugly. I gave up 24 on those grounds. And the Ruth Rendell habit I inherited from Mama Plog. And reading the paper from cover to cover. But Glee makes me happy - filled with joy, utterly content, gleeful, if you will (and I know you will).

Nothing deep there. But try living with hepatitis. That's hard!**


**I LOVE Jane Lynch. And though I never got into Nip/Tuck (creepy-as-fuck more like!), I adored Ryan Murphy's early career masterpiece Popular (which appropos of nothing (see!) I used to watch with my dad over a bunch of weekday afternoons in the early 00s. Good times.)