"HIGH SCHOOL Musical" meets "Election" tomorrow night as Fox uses the hour after "American Idol" to tease "Glee," a comedy you shouldn't expect to see again until fall.

For those who love music more than they did high school, it could be a long summer.

Tony Award nominee Matthew Morrison stars as Spanish teacher Will Schuester, whose uphill battle to revive the glee club at William McKinley High pits him against just about everyone in the school, from the bean-counting principal (Iqbal Theba) and the coach of the nationally known cheerleading squad (Jane Lynch) to the kids themselves.

Another Broadway veteran, Lea Michele, plays ambitious ingenue Rachel Berry, who is to glee club what "Election's" Tracy Flick was to student government.

Ruthless, vulnerable and with a voice as big as her dreams, she's delicious.

So is Cory Monteith as Finn Hudson, the sad-looking football hero whose impressive locker-room shower singing leads Will to blackmail him into joining the glee club.

Those who only know co-creator Ryan Murphy from FX's "Nip/Tuck" may be surprised to see him dealing with something a little lighter and brighter, but anyone who saw his old WB series "Popular" will recognize his jaundiced view of the high school caste system.

The problem with TV shows that tell anything approaching the truth about high school, whether we're talking "Freaks and Geeks" or "My So-Called Life," is that they tend to be written and produced by the people for whom those four years were far from the best of their lives.

Since that group often also includes TV critics, such shows are often praised for the very things the larger audience would rather forget, and quickly canceled.

So instead, we get the rich teens of the CW's "Gossip Girl" and "90210," whose high-class problems exist so far from most of our own lives as to render them unthreatening.

"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 than anything I've seen in a while.

But pitch matters, and some may find "Glee's" a little sharp.

"I always think the title 'Glee' means sort of joyful malice," Murphy, a former glee club member, told reporters in January.

You could watch for the musical numbers, which are beautifully rendered and likely to stick in your head far longer than most "Idol" performances. But the irony that surrounds them is so thick at times it's a wonder the gyrating singers aren't bumping into it on stage.

"Glee's" two halves meet in a stunning performance by a powerhouse rival on the "show choir" circuit of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab," an unlikely choice - we're talking a high school in Ohio - that beautifully illustrates the tricky divide between Murphy's "joyful malice" and, well, just plain joy.

Too long at the party?

But what about the shows that really should be leaving?

With reports last week that Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke had signed to do more episodes of ABC's "Scrubs," which, yes, could get a ninth season, and that there'd be some recasting on the CW's "One Tree Hill," I have to ask: When is enough enough?

"Scrubs" had what was generally agreed to be a satisfying finale this season, one that could easily cap the series.

Tonight's "One Tree Hill" (9 p.m., Channel 57) is one of those wish-fulfillment episodes in which just about every character gets what he or she has long wanted or deserved.

I've been begging the network to cancel this one for years, so I could stop watching it. Obviously, that hasn't worked - it's already been renewed for next season. And this season, I pretty much kicked the habit, anyway.

Still, while I don't care if I never again see Chad Michael Murray or Hilarie Burton, who are both reportedly leaving the series, I have to wonder why the writers would go to the trouble of making all those people happy if they're just going to start messing them up again next fall.

And what of the CW's signature show, "Gossip Girl"?

While we wait to see if the network will pick up what seems like an ill-conceived spin-off set in the '80s, tonight's Season 2 finale (8 p.m., Channel 57) does what it can to assure us that going off to college won't break up the gang - or free them from the clutches of the still-mysterious blogger who's the show's unseen star.

I don't care how many of them ended up at NYU and Columbia. The college years are seldom kind to high school shows, and it's hard to imagine "Gossip Girl" sashaying past the obstacles that have tripped up so many others. *

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