At a time when LGBT characters show up less dependably on the big screen, and then often in budget underground movies shown only in selected cities (and surprisingly, the Bay Area often gets left off these informal theatrical circuits), old-fashioned, over-the-air TV has spun out a couple of jewels.
Modern Family: The Complete First Season Despite its large queer content, this rambunctious ABC-TV series (Wed., 9 p.m.) is best-suited to fans wanting to see fun at the expense of Over-attentive Parent Syndrome. Each week, the half-hour sitcom, thankfully sans laughtrack, whipsaws among three family clusters: the nuclear-style clan undergoing a slight meltdown with bratty kids, an overly sensitive dad and a slightly peevish reworking of the old Donna Reed-style supermom; an older man with his trophy bride and her precocious 10-year-old son; and a queer couple who solve their relationship's bed death by adopting a Vietnamese baby girl and frequent trips to Costco. The gay couple, the snobby Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and the uber-queeny Cameron (Eric Stonestreet), often steal the episodes with their ongoing tug-of-war between Cameron's desire to display his inner girl and Mitchell's propensity for slipping anonymously into gay suburban dad-hood. Fox veteran Ed O'Neill (Married with Children ) occasionally upstages the queer couple with his underplaying of a self-absorbed small-business guy struggling to appear cooler than he really is, while devoting his time to the pleasure of his younger pepper-pot bride. I like this one, but am not yet addicted. It would be nice to see some alternative examples of gay male coupledom.
The DVD's special features include: The Making of Modern Family; deleted family interviews; and deleted, extended and alternate scenes.
Glee: The Complete First Season All the advance buzz did nothing to prevent my instant addiction to this original, clever and entertaining fixture on Fox-TV's Tuesday night schedule. If it were an animated series, it would surely surpass the longevity of The Simpsons.
Originally conceived by its creator Ian Brennan as a stand-alone movie, Glee's script languished on industry slush piles until a fortuitous series of events brought it to Fox, where a smart producer suggested it be a TV series. Fox was an obvious home due to their mega-hit American Idol and the network's history as perhaps the most daring home for original comedies since NBC crashed out of the business in the wake of Seinfeld and Friends .
Since the show unfolds as one continuous story over the first 20-episode season, don't be impatient that it takes until episode #8 for our gay boy, Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), to tell his painful and at times funny back-story. Living with a macho, widowed dad, Kurt divides his energies between marketing his own perfume, trying to avoid his almost daily dumpster-dumping by the football jocks, indulging his secret crush on football captain Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) and finding himself part of the Lima, Ohio high school's beleaguered Glee Club. Kurt's dilemmas are handled with wit and sensitivity. He is probably the best young male gay role in small-screen history since Dawson Creek's uber-butch Jack.
Glee's sassy plots zigzag between Desperate Housewives relationship pratfalls and Seinfeld-worthy character beats. Handsome choir-teacher Will Schuester (talented Matthew Morrison) has weekly battles with his archfoe, the scheming head of the school's cheerleader squad The Cheerios, Sue Sylvester – a devilish mean-girl spin from Christopher Guest veteran Jane Lynch, for whom this role has become a professional coming-out party. Lynch drolly plays her character's bottomless lust for revenge against the Gleeks in a style that goes from Betty White's "Happy Homewrecker" (The Mary Tyler Moore Show ) to every variation you've seen on female gym-teachers. The result is an original social parody: at one point, Sue takes a conservative blogger slot on the local TV channel that is a terrific send-up of all the howling right-wing meanies on the other Fox.
The scripts are wickedly funny, skewering high-school celibacy clubs, pill-dispensing school nurses, germphobic guidance counselors, and penny-pinching principals. The production numbers are Broadway-quality, and songs and albums released by the Glee cast have enjoyed Beatle-like chart sales.
Intended as a postmodern musical modeled on Chicago, Glee is less geeky than Fox's earlier loser parody Undeclared, and less irritatingly queer (for a mainstream audience) than Todd Graff's brave 2003 gay musical Camp, to which it bears more than passing resemblance. It's also a great pit-stop for those in American Idol recovery.
Features: Over two hours, including Glee Sing-Along Karaoke and Glee Music Jukebox, full-length audition pieces, dress like your favorite Gleek, and making of a showstopper. Both shows: www.foxconnect.com