I'm a crier. Life insurance commercials, some episodes of Big Love, the series finale of almost any show I like--I cry watching all of them. But I'd never sobbed watching a reality TV show.
Until now. If the debut episode of The Glee Project, which premiered on Oxygen June 12, is any indication of how the series will go, then Oxygen may just have launched the most thrilling reality show this year.
There's no bug eating, global travel, boardrooms, runways or Kardashians and you can tell that many of the contestants have no interest in gyms or spray tans like the Jersey Shorekids.
But what they do have is the kind of authentic core uniqueness almost never seen on television. Unlike American Idol, a talent show where judges and voters supposedly value merit above all else, but actually weed out anybody noticeably different (like effeminate boys or pimple-faced cherubic girls), The Glee Project casting process actually eliminates anyone without character.
And what a casting it was. Almost 40,000 people posted audition videos, and it was up to casting director Robert Ulrich and vocal arranger Nikki Anders to watch each one in its entirety.
Sure, some were terrible, but many, Ulrich says, they liked so much, they "watched it like 40 times." Eventually, Ulrich narrowed the list down to just over 200 people to call back for live auditions and potential contenders flew from around the country and some even came as far away as Singapore, London and Northern Ireland.
The winner of The Glee Project, the reason 40,000 young people posted videos, gets cast on Glee. The seven-episode arc on Fox's hit series offers, says Ulrich, not just a part on the show but "a career."
Ulrich, Anders and choreographer Zach Woodlee act as mentors on The Glee Project, all meanwhile holding down their day jobs on Glee, so they become equally invested in seeing the cast members succeed.
The thing about The Glee Project is that the call went out to anyone-regardless of size, shape, race, gender presentation-that the only quality necessary was that they had to be over 18 and conceivably play a high school aged character. The main call to stay true to yourself shines through in the initial episodes where nearly everyone seems to be an underdog.
There are effeminate boys and masculine girls, fat kids and pimply faced geeks, lots of folks with braces and glasses, a girl with only one hand and another with a missing finger. They're all inspired by Glee, a show that popularizes the underdog.
And believe me, these contestants are underdogs, often bullied in their own communities for being gay or short, for being mixed race or poor. They're inspired by, and sometimes demanding of, a world that makes way for them to be themselves and take center stage.
Many have ideas for the kind of character they'd play. One young man with Down Syndrome, an excellent dancer, says he wants to play the boyfriend of Becky Jackson, a cheerleader on Glee who happens to also have Down Syndrome.
"She's really hot," he tells Ulrich.
Watching The Glee Project I began to cry not because it was bad but because I realized how groundbreaking it was. These potential castmates are revolutionary; there's the biracial home-schooled country singer McKynleigh, the cute fat chick Hannah, and the Brazilian-born Matheus, who sports glasses and braces and is least a foot shorter than the girls on the show.
Watching the show really underscores just how much these are not the kind of people we see in TV. And that's the allure of The Glee Project.
These kids are all good enough for TV. And The Glee Project is a rarity: a reality show that's good enough to compete with Fox's animation block.
So, which new reality show is your favorite? Or is it too soon to say?
Photo © Oxygen
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