My New Problem With Glee

You may remember that I didn't take to "Glee" at first. I watched for a couple of weeks and then stopped. After the first 13 episodes the show took a break for a few months, then came back in April. Since the second episode upon their return was their much-ballyhooed Madonna episode, I started watching again. I loved "The Power of Madonna," and watched every episode thereafter. Slowly it won me over. This summer Fox ran two repeats on Tuesday nights and I caught up on what I missed.

I'm still watching, but I have a new issue. And it's not the Britney Spears episode, which was annoying in the way it forced Britney and her music into the show so blatantly. It's not that Artie, the kid in the wheelchair, is now on the school's football team -- something even more impossible than the offense lining up with time running out, stopping a play and doing Beyonce's "Single Ladies" dance to distract the opposing defense and score a game-winning TD without getting called for some sort of penalty. (Delay of game, illegal formation, maybe illegal use of the hands?) It's not any of the other implausibilities or improbabilities. I've been able to overlook just about every bit of weirdness. (And I adore Chris Colfer. Love the picture from Rolling Stone...)

But last night it dawned on me that, in light of all the recent events regarding bullying and suicides, I am very uncomfortable seeing the goon football players dousing Glee kids with slushies, yelling menacingly, and worse -- remember, they were about to beat up Kurt in the so-called "Lady Gaga" episode (which only featured two Gaga songs) until Finn and the others arrived -- and no one in authority even tries to do something to stop it. Ever. Maybe it seemed funny in those early episodes when they were throwing kids into Dumpsters. It doesn't seem all that funny now. It's strange that, for all the surreality on the show, bullying is what seems to be the most grounded in reality.

Am I overreacting here or does anyone else feel the same about this?