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Ellen Gray: 'Glee' gets off to a good start

GLEE. 9 tonight, Channel 29. BETWEEN THE mall tour, last week's "Tweet-peat," the "director's cut" of the pilot and the countless other promotions for Fox's "Glee" both on-air and online, it might feel as if the series about a high school show choir had been on for months.

GLEE. 9 tonight, Channel 29.

BETWEEN THE mall tour, last week's "Tweet-peat," the "director's cut" of the pilot and the countless other promotions for Fox's "Glee" both on-air and online, it might feel as if the series about a high school show choir had been on for months.

But in a way it's like the health-care issue (which, no matter what ABC, CBS and NBC have chosen to do, won't be allowed to pre-empt tonight's fall premiere of Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance"): Just because you've heard a lot about it doesn't mean much has gotten done yet.

And tonight, as "Glee" makes its season premiere with only the second episode of the show, we're beginning to get a closer look at what creator Ryan Murphy has in mind.

Which, not surprisingly, given that he also created FX's "Nip/Tuck," is something a bit edgier than Disney's "High School Musical."

Good news for those of us who'd rather slit our wrists with a butter knife than spend one more minute trying to picture Zac Efron as a basketball star, but maybe not such good news for Fox, which seems to have pinned its hopes for the fall on "Glee" 's becoming a mainstream hit.

That's hard enough with a scripted show involving singing and dancing. It's harder still when that same show's inclined to cast a jaundiced eye at high school, which is just the kind of thing that earned shows like "Freaks and Geeks" and "My So-Called Life" the small, passionate audiences who still mourn their too-quick passing.

I don't want to see the same thing happen to "Glee," which, thanks largely to some great singers and the comic delivery of Jane Lynch, packs more entertainment into an hour than some networks manage in an entire night. But sometimes I wonder if the show Fox is selling so hard is the same one Murphy's making.

It's not so much the joke involving the lack of a gag reflex that might trigger one in some of the parents who'd been looking forward to having a show beyond "American Idol" that they could watch with their kids.

There's nothing there, after all, that they might not have heard on "Family Guy."

It's more that Murphy, in the three episodes I've seen so far, seldom uses a single plot point when five or six will do, and isn't above overdoing the quirky, sometimes to the detriment of his own quirky characters.

Still, I love much of what I've seen of "Glee." And I refuse to stop believing just yet.

'Top Model' lowers sights

As Cycle 13 of "America's Next Top Model" (8 tonight, Channel 57) gets under way, some of the stories seem sobbier than ever, though the young women telling them are shorter than usual.

In an "ANTM" first, the usual cutoff for fashion-model wannabes - a height of about 5 feet 8 inches - was turned upside down, with only women 5 feet 7 inches and under even considered.

Short women who'd also been abducted and sexually assaulted, or whose living conditions didn't include indoor plumbing or who'd long sat by themselves in the school cafeteria might have had an edge.

Or not.

Maybe stories like those are merely representative of the pool of applicants for a job that, we're reminded repeatedly both on "Top Model" and on Lifetime's "Project Runway," consists largely of being a cooperative canvas for other people's artistry.

With emphasis on cooperative.

Yes, there are skills involved and tricks to be learned, but there are also limits to how far they can take someone whose genes don't cooperate, something that becomes all too evident tonight as a few "ANTM" contestants are singled out for the highest of praise - that a particular pose or picture actually makes them look taller.

Leno's 'Lost' summer

But with months off the air while gearing up for NBC's "The Jay Leno Show," which launches Monday, the comedian told reporters yesterday, "I got the whole five seasons, and my wife and I watched like five hours a night, and I'm almost to the end."

Not only did he love it - "I find it very clever and very well-written" - but it fits a point Leno made repeatedly, that TV today has less of a shelf life than it used to.

"That's a show that can't rerun. You really can't watch an episode from Season 3 if you missed it because you know what happened after that . . . That's the same kind of deal with our show. These jokes are good for one day only." *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.

He'd interviewed members of the cast on "The Tonight Show," but until recently, Jay Leno had never really watched ABC's "Lost."

There's something positively Oprah-like about Tyra Banks' determination to save the world, one aspiring fashion model with a sob story at a time.