| 100 |
Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker
This comedy from creator Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck) is so good--so funny, so bulging with vibrant characters--that it blasts past any defenses you might put up against it. |
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
Glee is infectious and hilarious and oddly inspiring. |
| 80 |
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
Glee, which marries popular music to unpopular kids, and will make its debut immediately after the season's penultimate episode of TV's most-watched show, probably has a better shot of breaking this cycle [of rich teens] than anything I've seen in a while. |
| 80 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
It's the music that makes Glee a gleeful delight. |
| 80 |
Hollywood Reporter Daniel Carlson
The series is smart, fun and completely winning. |
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
Glee is the first show in a long time that's just plain full-throttle, no guilty-pleasure-rationalizations-necessary fun. |
| 80 |
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
Glee is a yes, yes, yes of a show. A lot of folks have their fingers crossed for this one. |
| 80 |
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
It has a strong satiric pulse that doesn’t diminish the characters’ identities or dim the showmanship of a talented cast. |
| 80 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
The dominant note in Glee is comedy, the production numbers are vibrant, and the cast is consistently winning. |
| 80 |
Salon Heather Havrilesky
Former show choir geeks, Broadway show tunes crooners, "American Idol" fans, cheerleading masochists and pretty much anyone who remembers the merciless absurdities of high school life a little more vividly than they'd like to will savor this very clever, very original new comedy. |
| 75 |
New York Post Linda Stasi
Glee is part "High School Musical," part "Election" and part "Friday Night Lights," while retaining its own unique storyline--and it does so beautifully. |
| 75 |
Slant Magazine Julie Leung
Glee nevertheless proves that a few good song-and-dance numbers can make up for a few unsightly bits of maudlin fluff. |
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
So Glee works as a musical. Whether it will work as a satirical dramedy about the cutthroat social environment of high school is another matter. |
| 70 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
Glee has likable characters, a good sense of humor and a reasonably deft touch with music. |
| 70 |
Washington Post Hank Stuever
This is not to say it's a perfect show. Glee never passes up a serving of ham (or cheese, in the case of the musical numbers), and its frenetic pace will enthrall its hippest viewers and exhaust others. Well, they need to get with it. [But] Glee is certain to delight likeminded grown-ups. |
| 60 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
The pilot is packed with musical numbers that are intended to be as vocally impressive as they are funny, but the jokes tend to wear thin quickly--particularly if you've seen snippets of the songs in Fox's nonstop promos for Glee over the past month. |
| 60 |
Variety Brian Lowry
Wisely drawing upon Broadway talent, these [musical] sequences represent the program's saving grace, but also it's most formidable challenge, inasmuch as producing a weekly musical--see "Cop Rock" (failed but good) or "Viva, Laughlin" (not)--can be a logistical nightmare. |
| 50 |
Baltimore Sun David Zurawik
The staging of that song by a group of misfit high school students in glee club near the end of the heavily promoted pilot is so elevating and inspirational that it almost redeems all the stereotypes and lame humor that come before. |
