Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside

My two favorite new shows this season are Glee and Community. I'm kind of in love with both of them. (And am kind of in love with Matthew Morrison and Joel McHale, respectively, but that's not really pertinent to this discussion.) You can't really compare them--Glee is an hourlong drama/comedy/musical; Community is a sitcom. Both take place in a school setting (high school and community college, respectively), but that's about it.

I keep seeing Glee being referred to as happy and feel-good and that sort of thing, which I find interesting, because it's really not. I mean, sure, it has the cast performing musical numbers, but it's not like they're all "Single Ladies" and "Sweet Caroline" (though, sometimes they are!). Sometimes, just like in musical theater, it's people expressing heartache and pain and confusion through song. The characters are dealing with fertility issues and being outcasts and unrequited love and sexuality and acceptance--and not always in funny ways that involve getting Slushees thrown at them. (Though sometimes there are airborn Slushees.) It's a show that on the outside is fun and happy...but is a LOT darker on the inside. Like any show about high school, if you dig just a little, you see the conflict. This is a show full of characters who really are not happy people.

Then you have Community. It stars Joel McHale, so anyone familiar with The Soup automatically views it as having a level of snark and cynicism. It's about a disgraced lawyer and doesn't really go into much depth (why exactly is he at a community college?) and there's a lot of banter and put-downs and that sort of thing. And it's a LOT more of a feel-good show than Glee. It's full of characters who care about each other and go out of their way to help the others out. Sure, they have problems too, but when I look into these people's futures, I see a lot less pain that what I see if I think about how the lives of the Glee folks may go.

Though I have to admit that very little cheers me up as much as watching Matt Morrison do "Bust a Move" or "Gold Digger."