Image: CBS.com

My daughter started watching The Big Bang Theory with my wife and me last fall, and she got hooked pretty quickly.

The show took far longer to reel me in, frankly, because when TBBT kicked off in fall 2007, it seemed much more about poking fun at geeks rather than skewing its humor toward geeks.

That pendulum has swung significantly in the opposite direction over seasons two and three, though, so I recently brought home the season one DVDs from the library to see if the early adventures of Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper and their neighbor Penny were as bad as I remembered. They’re not, really, although I’m obviously watching them now through a fan’s eyes. Still, they make it easy to see just how much the show has evolved.

Consider some of the early gags, like Leonard emerging from his bedroom armed with a Force FX Lightsaber to investigate a middle-of-the-night noise.

Though I appreciate the shout out as a Star Wars fan, it’s really an all-too-easy joke, and besides, as everybody knows, those things are expensive and breakable.

That same oft-mined-nerd-joke-territory feeling comes up all through the early episodes: The guys and their friends Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrappali play Klingon Boggle; they only talk to women on MySpace; they visit Penny’s ex-boyfriend and get sent home de-pantsed. It all struck me as rehashed Revenge of the Nerds stuff, and that was already well-worn in the 1980s.

Now, contrast that with what we see in seasons two and three, and it’s clear TBBT has totally aimed itself at a geek audience rather than making the easy jokes at their expense.

Check the guest stars: Summer Glau. Wil Wheaton. Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist George Smoot. Katee Sackhoff. Danica McKellar.

And the offhand references and minor plot points have also become much more geek-Easter-eggy, with nods to everything from Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland to a Pictionary representation of the phrase “Higgs boson particle” to a bet with The Flash #23 and Fantastic Four #48 at stake.

Penny’s at the epicenter of the other pretty seismic shift in TBBT’s tone. Even my daughter noticed right away while watching the DVDs that through the first four or five episodes of the series, it was seemingly not enough that Kaley Cuoco’s bubbly blonde wasn’t a geek. She was portrayed as an airheaded idiot who talked in a squeaky Valley Girl voice. (I’m not the only one to notice this change, either.)

Fortunately, that persona  – and, thankfully, that voice – disappeared pretty abruptly beginning with an episode in which she joins the guys for Halo 3 and utterly pwns Sheldon. This marked the beginning of her growth as a character and really makes a huge difference in the show’s chemistry.

Oh, and Bonus Points because TBBT has UCLA particle physicist David Saltzberg on board as a science consultant. He takes care of things like making sure appropriately complex-appearing equations show up in the background, and he writes a little about some of the science in each episode at his own The Big Blog Theory.

Yes, the easy jokes still come around from time to time. And being a sitcom, TBBT is still prone to circumstantial exaggerations that stretch credibility. And yes, its writers will take a hit or two in some quarters for perpetuating stereotypes of brilliant social misfits.

But you know what? It’s clear now that they get us.

Image from xfiles.com downloads.

Fox Mulder’s government contact once told him, “They’ve been here a very long time.” He was talking about aliens. I’m talking about my almost ten-year-old X-Files Season One DVD set, which I’ve been waiting to dust off and share with my daughter.

Honestly, I thought it would have happened before now. She’s almost 13 and a huge Fringe fan, so you’d think getting her to watch The X-Files would be easier than tracking down a shape-shifting alien bounty hunter, but when I brought it up: “Um, no thanks.”

So I waited awhile. When Peter and Olivia and Walter finally took a summer vacation from their alternate-universe jumping and monster chasing, I tried again: “X-Files, anyone? It was first! It was better! And it’s kind of the same, but, you know, different!”

Nothing doing.

Given a recent rainy January Sunday to share, then, I suggested once more, “Want to watch X-Files?” – absolutely certain that she’d shoot it down like a government-planted fake weather balloon – and she responded, “Sure.”

Okay, so I grab the DVD and pop it in, and now, of course, I’m fraught with fear that is I’ve oversold it, right? That being such a Fringe fanatic – Fringe-ite? Fringe-o-phile? – my daughter might see Chris Carter’s iconic 1990s creation as a slower-paced, humorless ripoff. (Oh, there are plenty of laughs in The X-Files – “Mulder, I … I think it’s bile.” “Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?” – but until the Lone Gunmen show up, there’s nobody played for regular character snickers like Walter Bishop on Fringe.)

Well, here we go: We start watching “Pilot” … and the and the next thing I know, she’s saying, “Can we watch another one?” Okay, then! And forty-some minutes later: “One more?” Onward to “Squeeze,” the first – and still one of the best – of the non-UFO “mystery of the week” episodes.

By dinnertime, we’ve gone through the first half-dozen, and we probably would have enjoyed more except for the fact that darkness was falling, and my daughter’s got a thing about not watching spooky shows as bedtime nears.

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched these, and given the way the show’s overarching mythology seemed to shaped so much of what happens in later seasons and Fight the Future, I’d forgotten how quickly the seeds of the government conspiracy and alien abduction are sown and then left to grow quietly mostly in the background while the standalone episodes unfold. To my mind, that’s a good thing – and a pattern Fringe seems to have also taken to heart in its own second year.

I’m pretty psyched that our local library system has all the X-Files DVD sets available, though I confess I gave up on the series myself back when David Duchovny left the show, skipping most of the last couple seasons until the finale. It will be awhile, though, until we reach those later, debatable years of the show.

In the meantime, you can find us munching sunflower seeds and hanging out with “the FBI’s Most Unwanted.”

The lack of toys, videos and handprints on the walls say no kids in this house, but the TV is safely mounted. Image: peerlessmounts.com

Which would you rather have fall on your kid: a 36 inch screen, 236 pound Trinitron tube TV or a 40 inch screen, 43 pound Bravia LCD TV? The correct answer, of course, is neither. Unfortunately, it seems that many people have inadvertently opted for the second choice, with the number of children injured by falling televisions increasing despite the shrinking mass of today’s flat screen TVs.

Being hit by a television seldom ends well. While flat screens are much lighter than CRT models, the screen sizes keep growing, resulting in increased weight. Even a small flat screen is still a big slab of glass surrounded by sharp plastic and metal. Being hit by a TV can cause a range of injuries, including skull fractures, other fractures, bleeding in the brain, nasal obstructions, loss of facial nerve function and hearing loss. Sometimes injuries are severe enough to be fatal.

Our current obsession with thin has caused some problems with respect to safety. The most current published stats are from 2007, but during the 1990 to 2007 time frame -a period that marks the transition from bulky CRTs to relatively svelte flat screens- the number of children injured by toppling furniture rose 41 percent, with nearly half of the carnage caused by TVs. To put that in perspective, 17,000 children in the US had to be rushed to Emergency in 2007 after furniture fell on them, with half that number being TV victims. According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, seven people were killed by falling TVs in 2000, with the number rising to 23 deaths in 2006. Why should this be?

Much of the blame for the increase in injury rates lies in parents’ mistaken assumption that because a modern flat screen TV is so light compared to the massive tube TVs they grew up with, the danger of the set toppling over is correspondingly reduced. It’s a false sense of security. You may not have seen one recently, but a 40 inch tube TV commands respect. It’s not only massive and difficult to move on its own, but it has such a large footprint that it’s actually pretty stable, especially on the low bases these TVs were typically placed on. Nonetheless, parents pictured what 250 pounds of glass, plastic and metal would do if it landed on their kids, and they installed the safety  straps that secured the TV to a wall or the base it stood on. Flat screen TVs are large, thin objects that balance on a relatively thin base, making them extremely top heavy and prone to easily tipping if a child pulls on them. At that point it doesn’t matter that they “only” weigh 50 pounds, it’s still 50 pounds falling several feet onto a little person.

The good news is that it’s easy to prevent these sorts of accidents from happening. If you want to place a flat screen TV on a cabinet base, choose a base that’s low and stable, without drawers that might invite climbing. Fasten the cabinet to the wall behind it with a safety strap. When you place the TV on the cabinet, use straps to fasten it securely to the cabinet and, if possible, to the wall as well. The best option is one that also shows off the best of your flat screen; do away with the cabinet and wall mount it. Mounts are available that can hold your TV nearly flush against the wall for a clean look, while supporting several hundred pounds. Out of reach means far less likelihood of little hands being able to grab it, and this option takes the potential wobbliness of cabinets out of the equation altogether.

In the end, the most important piece of safety advice is to keep an eye on your kids and make sure they know they aren’t to climb on the TV; but because kids will be kids, make sure you also invest in some basic safety precautions.

Team Umizoomi is a new kid’s show, geared toward the preschool set, premiering this week on Nickelodeon. Why are the GeekDads really excited about this? Well, for one thing, the show’s focus is on teaching preschoolers the basics of math. Yes, a math-based show, at last! I’ve watched the pilot of Team Umizoomi, and it’s just as engaging as Blue’s Clues and, absolutely a delight from a design perspective (not to mention utterly adorable).

How can I describe Team Umizoomi? First, it’s set in Umi City, a multi-textured world of shapes and colors populated with people, cars, buildings, and just about anything else you’d expect in a big city. Using 2D and 3D animation techniques, the designers have created a colorful, dazzling, math-based world kept safe by young super heroes Milli and Geo as well as their robot, Bot (voiced by Donovan Patton of Blue’s Clues fame), and of course, Umifriend: the viewer. It’s interactive, informative, and turns math into real-world application and adventure. It was a smash in our house, to say the least.

Says Brown Johnson, President, Animation, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, “Math surrounds us everywhere we go, which is why we wanted to create a fun, adventure-filled, interactive series that engages preschoolers and encourages them to practice and refine their mathematical thinking skills. Team Umizoomi is an action-packed series with interactive math games and catchy pop songs that provide kids with takeaway tools to help them learn and use math in their daily lives.”

I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with Donovan Patton last week about the show. Donovan, for the uninitiated, became a household name when, in 2002, he replaced Steve Burns in Blue’s Clues, as Steve’s little brother Joe. We had a great conversation, and Donovan talked to me a bit about what working on the show is like, as well as shared some of his geeky tendencies (spoiler: he loves Tolkien!). An all-around sweet guy, our chat definitely was a blast, and I’ve excerpted it for you below. We certainly wish him, and the great team behind Team Umizoomi, all the best.

You can listen to the interview here: Donovan Patton Interview

Team Umizoomi premieres January 25th at 11:30am EST on Nickelodeon!

Image by Flickr user trainman74.

Twitter was buzzing a little this weekend about NBC’s plans to relaunch the 1970s hit television series, The Rockford Files. The big question now is who will play the roguish private eye as he tackles cases no one else wants to handle.

The network announced last July that it planned to revive the show with David Shore (House) leading the creative team. NBC will be joined by Universal Media Studios and Steve Carell’s Carousel Television in trying to get the beloved ex-con back into the Firebird seat.

In addition to the first run of the series, Jim Rockford—played by Emmy-winning James Garner—also saw screen time in eight TV movies. The 81-year-old star might be a fit for Rocky, but his wrongfully convicted private investigator son now needs a casting call. At the risk of sacrilege, I offer a few suggestions.

And the nominees are …

1. Bruce Campbell

My first reaction at hearing NBC was going to cast anyone other than Garner as Jim Rockford was scorn. Then I thought of Bruce Campbell, and the remake sounded appealing. There is no actor more universally loved by geeks than the man who showed how a chainsaw can be a fortuitous replacement for a lost hand. He gained some crime-fighting experience as an Old West bounty hunter (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) and has fought alongside the world’s greatest warrior (Xena) and its most resourceful spy (Burn Notice). It doesn’t hurt Campbell’s geek cred to have a couple of cameo appearances in the Spider Man movies, too.

We can probably stop right there, as Campbell would be perfect for the role. However, like any good geek list, this one goes to 11.

2. Colin Ferguson

In his portrayal as the sheriff in a town of geniuses, Colin Ferguson captures the beleaguered, intuitive spirit of the original Jim Rockford. On more than one occasion, he’s walked into dangerous situations armed only with acerbic wit and a sense of what’s right.

3. Vince Vaughn

Swinger, wedding crasher, and rival news anchor Vince Vaughn would add a hint of smarmy to the P.I.’s quips in the face of danger. Of all the actors, Vaughn would look the most natural doing a J-Turn in the gold Pontiac Firebird Esprit.

4. Ving Rhames

Although he’d also be great as Gandolph Fitch, Ving Rhames has the combination of swagger and charm to pull off Jim Rockford. He can take a punch like Sonny Liston and still hack a computer on impossible missions. Rhames also has experience remaking ’70s sleuths, although his Kojak only got 10 episodes in 2005.

5. Tom Sizemore

His eyes are soft but his stare is hard. Tom Sizemore’s Rockford would probably give a few more punches than he’d take, more like DeWitt Albright in Devil in a Blue Dress. He’d fit well if Shore wants to re-imagine TRF with more shades of gray.

6. Paul Blackthorne

As Harry Dresden, Paul Blackthorne was essentially Jim Rockford with something up his sleeve. He’s got the hard luck detective schtick fine tuned. More geek cred: appearances on Burn Notice, Monk and 24.

7. Josh Holloway

The Southern charmer Josh Holloway is finishing up his stint as the lovelorn confidence man Sawyer on Lost. While on the island, he’s been knocked around more than a few times and survived to snark again.

8. James Franco

Sure, James Franco was two years old when the original series was canceled, due to Garner’s health issues. That makes him perhaps better suited to be Richie Brockelman than the lead. However, Franco has the acting chops to range from a spacey drug dealer for Seth Rogen to the New Green Goblin.

9. Nicholas Brendon

Another youngish option for Jimbo is Nicholas Brendon, who has battled demons as Buffy’s loyal sidekick and hackers as a nerdy computer genius (Criminal Minds). He’s also comes with a spare, in case of injury.

10. Enrico Colantoni

No, he doesn’t look anything like James Garner, but that could be a plus for a remake of a series where the previous lead won some awards. Enrico Colantoni gets my vote because of (a) his Geek cred as Mathesar in Galaxy Quest, and (b) his Rockford-like wit as dad of teen detective Veronica Mars. If not Jimmy, then at least make him Police Det. Dennis Becker.

11. Nathan Fillion

Like Bruce Campbell, Nathan Fillion is another geek list fixture. He’s currently unavailable with his own successful television show, Castle, in which he shows off weekly the charm that makes Rockford so appealing. (Heck, Fillion was charming as The First’s plaything when he was killing Buffy’s peers, too.) The space cowboy has proven he can take a punch and still save the day. Maybe he can bring along Felicia Day to play Beth Davenport.

BONUS CASTING, Lest I forget: Balthazar Getty would make a great Angel Martin.

Replacing James Garner as Jim Rockford is unthinkable, until I thought about it. (Images: IMDB)

Where The Flock screenshot courtesy of byteIDEA

Question: if you had the ability to track your child’s every movement during the day, would you do so? Or is this an example of helicopter parenting taken to extremes? How about tucking a portable GPS unit in her backpack?

Partaking in my Saturday morning ritual of coffee accompanied by a laptop to scan through the daily newspapers, I came across a Toronto Star article by reporter Robert Cribb, who has been testing the Entourage PS, a portable device offered by a Canadian company called Blackline GPS. (Wired reviewed an earlier version of this technology by the same company in 2008.)

The twist on this one is that Robert used the GPS to track his 5-year-old daughter during her walk to school, slipping the GPS into her backpack, then monitoring it remotely (on his computer screen or Blackberry). The father in me definitely sees the appeal of this capability — it’s very similar to the initial wave of comfort I felt with the concept of being able to log on and watch the goings on at the daycare on webcam. And like the webcam, the initial “that’s an awesome idea!” phase wore off a bit the more I thought about it, replaced with the feeling that maybe these things are going just a little too far.

In theory, tracking by GPS is a great parental advantage, but what happens if your kid ducks round a corner to look at something? Maybe it violates the instructions of coming straight home, but kids will be kids. You wouldn’t know any better under normal circumstances. However, as a red blip on a screen that suddenly deviates from course, do you freeze and stare at it, leap out of a meeting to drive screaming across town to the rescue, or call 9-1-1 in case it’s a potential abduction?

What if their backpack is swiped or picked up accidentally at school? These things happen and the mix-up could end with police chasing some innocent parent driving their kid home with the wrong backpack.

It’s costly, too: You’d have to fork out CN$350 for the GPS unit itself, plus $15 a month for a service subscription.

And then there’s the issue of technology falling into the wrong hands. It’s not like this isn’t a secure service, but we’ve seen far too many examples of military communications being intercepted, and nothing is hack-proof.

A planned neighborhood in my city was built with a central playground equipped with video cameras and all the houses were prewired to be able to watch the park on their TVs. The idea sounded great at first — your kids run off to happily and securely play at the park and you can watch them while you cook dinner. But like things have a way of doing, the technology was subverted and squabbles broke out over people watching “inappropriately” and the like.

Maybe you gain a bit of personal safety, but potentially lose some with a smattering of confusion and civil discord thrown in with each of these advances. At any rate, if the concept appeals to you, there are also alternatives that offer similar functionality without the associated costs.

An iPhone, for instance, provides the GPS, and apps like Where the Flock (WTF) can give you info like the updated location and speed of not just one person, but anyone you know who packs an iPhone and cares to share with you. Of course an iPhone and data plan is going to cost a little more than $15 month, but it’s also not a one-trick pony.

Personally, I’m going to continue to do it the old-school way — I’m fortunate enough to be able to walk my kids to school and back most days (at least while they’re young enough to still let me), but once they’re teenagers, they may each just get a WTF-equipped iPhone for their birthday.

Image: Apple

In my experience, when it comes to home media centers, there are two main camps and an outlier.  In the main camps are the uber-geeks who want to build everything from the ground up and those who go with a gaming console or one of a myriad of inexpensive devices that plugs in to a TV and plays files in a wide range of digital formats. And then there are the outliers, of which I am one: the AppleTV people. Santa dropped off another of Steve Jobs’ hobby boxes under our Christmas tree this year and I couldn’t be happier.

Those who scoff at the AppleTV as being a closed system or too simplistic are missing the point. You don’t typically pick up one of these things as a standalone media center; it would be next to useless compared to the alternatives. However, if you’re already reasonably committed to an Apple universe -in particular, use of iTunes for media management, iPod(s) and an Apple computer of some description- then the AppleTV isn’t taking the easy way out so much as an taking advantage of a well honed multimedia ecosphere. Everything just works (mostly), and that appeals to the systems design geek in me much more than constructing a box myself ever would. There’s also something inherently cool about buying a piece of hardware that has continually expanded its capabilities over the past few years through software updates instead of leaving early adopters behind with multiple new hardware iterations. And for someone without cable, the ability to buy and rent movies and TV shows on demand is extremely useful.

Sure, lack of format support can be frustrating (DivX? What’s DivX?), the hardware can only handle 720p, the devices run hotter than hell and the tiny standard hard drive sizes are laughable, but there are ways around all of these challenges. If I want to geek out for a while, I can fire up iStumbler and try to pinpoint what device is interfering with my wireless network and kicking one of the AppleTVs offline, or I can just relaunch iTunes and everything’s fine again. It’s not a perfect device, by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is an iPod and both reflect one of the more interesting paradoxes of our time: while our equipment is capable of supporting technical specs that were unheard of a decade ago, in many cases we are satisfied with audio or visual quality that’s subpar compared to what ten year old technology could pump out. It’s that whole bit about a library of any media that’s “good enough” to watch or listen to on demand trumping high definition versions that require space, time and/or effort. For the stuff I really care about seeing in full 1080p glory, the Star Treks and Planet Earths, we buy Blu-Ray copies. For everything else -and for virtually anything the kids care about- the AppleTV is good enough. And if the rumors that have been flying around about Apple offering subscription TV services pan out, it may be even get even better.

The UPA Studio Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol has been a TV tradition since 1962.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol, favorably reviewed by GeekDad’s Jason B. Jones, is but the most recent in a long line of screen adaptations of Dickens’ classic. And through the years, I’ve argued with many fierce partisans over their favorites.

There’s the 1951 black-and-white version with Alastair Sim, considered by many to be the defining Scrooge. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who will always think of Dickens as a writer of quiet little black-and-white Hollywood films.) Some geeks I know might prefer The Muppet Christmas Carol , with Michael Caine as  Scrooge to Kermit’s Bob Cratchit. And of course, there’s the powerful version starring Captain Picard, I mean Patrick Stewart, and a creepy Joel Grey as The Ghost of Christmas Past. (Stewart has also done a wonderful one-man reading of the story.)

But in my opinion the version against which all others must be judged is the animated musical TV special, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol. First aired in 1962, Magoo’s Christmas Carol was the first animated Christmas special ever televised. And it ushered in a Golden Age of animated Christmas specials — Rudolph, Frosty, and Charlie Brown among them. Mister Magoo, voiced by Jim Backus, was the middle-aged, myopic hero of a half-hour limited-animation kids’ show. Kind of funny, but not one of my favorites.  So what made Magoo’s Christmas Carol special?

Now my friend, animator Michael Sporn, has blogged about the UPA Studio film’s “glorious” backgrounds. Earlier this month he caught a screening and panel at the Paley Center (formerly the Museum of Broadcasting) which included the author of a new book about the production. And it does have some great, broadly drawn comic images.

Yet what makes Magoo’s Christmas Carol a standout is the acting and the music. The score is worthy of a Broadway show, and no wonder — it was written by Jules Styne and Bob Merrill, who went on to write Funny Girl.  (In fact, IMDB claims that Funny Girl star Barbra Streisand’s hit “People” was originally written for Magoo.) And Magoo’s Scrooge hits all the high points of any Christmas Carol. In fact, I have to say that Magoo is, by far, the most sympathetic Scrooge of all time. I defy anyone to watch the young Scrooge sing “When You’re Alone in the World” and not tear up.

At the same time, this is a Christmas Carol that is accessible to any age. It is the most cartoon-y of cartoons, not sentimental in design at all. And in a way, that may be what gives Magoo’s Christmas Carol its power. Because by being funny, and cartoon-y, and full of great music, it lets kids open their hearts to the suffering of others in the most non-threatening way possible.

And isn’t that what Dickens’ Christmas Carol is all about?

Megapede

An hour of big, cool machines doing big, cool things. What’s not to love?

Heavy Metal Task Force is a fun show my five-year old and for me. Each episode has three acts, each starring a heavy metal machine and its support team. They are not just rolling out big dump trucks, but big, strange, unique machines.

Blade

The Heavy Metal Task Force premiere on October 2 featured three machines: Blade, a military surplus heavy lift helicopter, plunks 10,000 pound utility poles into the Colorado mountainside, an elite team of engineers harness the world’s biggest mobile cranes to move an offshore wind turbine, and loggers fight an epic battle to save the gulf coast of Louisiana.

Each feature highlights the massive size and power of the machine as they engage in their working activity. Each heavy metal machine also encounters crisis during its operation. The crisis highlights the team of operators and the resiliency of the machines themselves. I could probably do without the overly dramatic crisis, but it does allow the show the highlight that even these powerful tools have their limits.

Beluga – The Airbus A300-600ST

The downside to the show is that it airs at 10 on Friday nights. Recently, they have started broadcasting reruns at more reasonable hours.

Of course you can just use your Tivo to record it for enjoyment on Saturday mornings. That’s what happens in our house. You do have a Tivo, don’t you? (I suppose a DVR will also do.)

Images courtesy of the Science Channel.

The Cast of Glee (image: FOX)

In the ocean of television programming, it’s hard for a show to stand out — especially on the Fox Network, where notoriously fantastic shows get canned for no reason — and especially if it’s a musical. You can count the number of musical television shows that have succeeded in the past on one hand. I’m not counting Cop Rock as a success.

So, when I saw that there was a new show on television that was as much musical as it was comedy, I steered clear. On my wife’s urging, however, I finally gave Glee a chance after a couple episodes and I don’t regret it. I do regret missing those first couple of episodes because I hate trying to figure out what’s going on in a new show.

If you know me, and by my musings and opinion pieces on GeekDad, you might think, “How does this cynical and sarcastic super-genius like a show like Glee?” Well, aside from some great music including mashups of classic R&B with modern rock, Glee speaks to the geek or outcast we were in high school. Don’t stand up on a high horse and pretend you were perfect. Every teenager (thanks to the magic of puberty) goes through a time when they are not sure where or if they belong. I played baseball, but was a huge art nerd and creative-writing wonk so I got the short end of that stick in the school popularity game.

That’s what draws us into Glee and keeps us there. The show presents a character study of every stereotypical high school character and personality that can be fit into 40 minutes outside commercials. We’re able to see ourselves in those characters and along with their eventual evolution — our eventual evolution. With sharp writing from show creators Brad Falchuk, Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, Glee creates a high school atmosphere that’s a bit more snarky than I remember, but with as associative nature that feels like an in-joke memory. If all that isn’t enough to make you watch the show, how about the inclusion of a spot-on Jane Lynch, bursting with cocky confidence as the cheerleader coach?

With the season finale of Glee coming up this week, it felt like a good time to talk to executive producer and co-creator Brad Falchuk (of Nip/Tuck fame) not about the direction of the show or any spoilers for the finale (since those topics were off limits, and not because I didn’t want to know) but about some of the successes of the show and if those kids are lip syncing or not.

GeekDad: Creating a musical show is one thing, but keeping an audience for it is another. How do you feel you were most successful at doing that in this first season of Glee?

Brad Falchuk: I think the key is not approaching it as a musical show. One of the main pitfalls of any theoretically “niche” show is that you spend too much time on the “niche” and not enough time on the “show.” We make sure that our stories and characters are compelling first, then worry about the music. The music is a challenge, but what makes people interested in hearing it again and again is that it evokes the memories of the emotional experience they had with the characters when they heard the song on the show.

GD: Speaking about the music, who’s the master behind the musical selection on the show? There have been some great tunes belted out thus far.

BF: Ryan Murphy is the musical genius of the show. I (and others) pitch ideas, but he picks all the songs. He has an amazing musical library in his head.

Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk, happy he’s got a hit show on his hands.

GD: In a lot of programs, playing to the stereotypes of characters has bombed shows. On Glee, it’s worked perfectly. What was the formula for creating the balance between stereotypes and character development?

BF: We really don’t have a formula. Our idea was always to use the stereotypes as starting points — something to make the audience instantly relate to the characters. After that, though, all bets were off and we just try to make them as real as possible. I love it when characters surprise you, just like real people. When I write a scene I just try to make the characters behave in a way that feels natural to them. Sometimes that means they make a left turn and do something unexpected. Those are always the best scenes in my opinion.

GD: We’re geeks, the glee kids are geeks — just for being in glee club. It’s a social by-product. Does any of this come from your own experiences as a teen?

BF: The point of the show is that every teenager is a geek. Every teenager feels a wanting, a desire for something more, to be heard, to be seen. In reality, I was more of the Finn/Puck type in high school (yes, we did throw a kid in the dumpster … a few times) but like those characters, I was unsure of myself and my place. I think the show is working for people of all ages, though because that feeling never really goes away.

GD: Probably one of the most unsure of his place in the world on the show, Kurt (Chris Colfer), is freaking hilarious. Is he that snarky in real life or just really good at his lines?

BF: Any great character is the combination of a brilliant actor and the right writing. He’s much sweeter than Kurt is, but he’s also very wise beyond his years. I find him hilarious (as does everyone else). Writing for him is a blast, because you can basically give him anything and he’ll make it work.

GD: The right writing it is! The writing on the show is particularly sharp. Frankly, it’s the thing that got me hooked. How do you mix the musical aspect with the interpersonal dialogue and still keep both parts fresh and entertaining? A lot of shows fail when trying dual formats.

BF: Like I said in my first answer, the writing is always the priority. Three of us created Glee — Ian Brennan, Ryan Murphy and myself, and we write all of the episodes. That allows for a very uniform voice from episode to episode. Keeping things fresh and entertaining is our job!

GD: Do you think that the popularity of American Idol and those dance shows helped with getting a show like Glee developed? Hypothetically, do you think the absence of those programs would hurt Glee?

BF: Certainly AI gave people the opportunity to see that music works on TV. Without a doubt, it opened eyes and doors. Hard to think hypothetically because AI is not going away any time soon!

GD: There are some deplorable human beings on Glee (namely, Terri Schuester played by Jessalyn Gilsig), no matter their intentions. Did working on Nip/Tuck help with the creation of those types of people?

BF: I have to disagree with you here. I don’t think Terri is deplorable. If you watch her scenes carefully you’ll see that she’s usually right in her assessment of the world and her relationship. She says things many women think about their lives and their spouses. She’s just very honest and selfish — not always a great combination. All of it is fear-based with Terri, though. She’s so scared all the time and certain creatures lash out when they’re scared.

I guess that kind of answers your question — the key to writing “bad guys” is to never think of them that way. Working on Nip/Tuck certainly helped me see the gray areas of humanity a little more clearly — or at least be more willing to explore them.

GD: If you had to pick one actor from the show to sing karaoke with, who would it be? And for that matter, what song would you choose?

BF: Amber Riley (as Mercedes Jones) or Lea Michele (as Rachel Berry), because I could just pretend to sing and let them do all the hard work. They’re so talented you want to kick them. As for a song, probably “In My Time of Dying,” by Led Zeppelin.

GD:Brad, thanks for the interview, one last question. I’ve noticed that sometimes it seems (clearly) that the songs are being lip-synced — though actually sung by the actors right? And other times, it seems like they are actually singing while filming. I’m not going crazy right, that is happening?

BF: The actors sing all of the songs on the show. It’s very important to us that they do all of their own singing and dancing. That said, it takes four to eight hours to shoot a musical number and it would be impossible for the actors to sing the number that many times that perfectly. In order to make it work from a production standpoint we prerecord the songs then have the actors lip-sync on stage when we shoot. We have someone there who’s only job is to make sure the synch is good — 99 percent of the time it works, every now and then it’s not perfect. We rarely have the actors sing live while we shoot.

The cGlee season finale airs Wednesday, December 9th on Fox. For more, heck out the website or head over to Amazon to pick up the soundtracks, Glee: Volume 1 or Glee: Volume 2.

A special hat tip to Brad’s brother Evan Falchuk of the See First Blog, whom you may remember from a previous article I wrote on balancing social media and family, for hooking this up. Thanks Evan!