MADness #85: GLEE!

THE HALLS ARE ALIVE, WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC (…AND THE SMELL OF ARMPITS)!! Get ready to duck those flying slushies, Gleeks! We’re back at it this week with another tone deaf performance of a moldy oldie of a look back at my work for MAD Magazine. Today we revisit MAD‘s parody of the TV show “Glee”, written by the great Arnie Kogen and first appearing in MAD #506, December 2010. This show was a favorite of my wife, The Lovely Anna, and my kids. In fact this parody is rife with cameos of people I know, including my kids in the splash page. On the stairs in the upper left are may youngest daughter The Effervescent Gabrielle and Number One Son Thomas, and on the right sporing the black T-shirt with the “V” on it is my daughter The Dramatic Victoria and her then boyfriend Pat. Also in a cameo is a young Justin Bieber, but thankfully he’s not my kid. Sadly three of the actors in this splash page are dead now. Cory Monteith, who played footballer Finn Hudson, died in 2013. Mark Salling, who played Noah ‘Puck’ Puckerman, died in 2018, and Naya Rivera, aka Santana Lopez, died in 2020. Drug overdose, suicide and a swimming accident, respectively. Tragic.

Many of the cameos in this spoof are of stars who in fact DID cameos on the show. Josh Groban, Olivia Newton John, Neil Patrick Harris, Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth on page 3 are examples. Also featured on page three (lower left) are two people decided NOT from the show, MAD editor John Ficarra and his friend Michelle, drawn by request.

Simon Cowell acts as a sort of narrator in this one. I was trying to remember why I drew Ellen Degeneres with him at the end of page 4, but then I remembered she was actually a judge on American Idol that season.

This was not the last time I drew the cast of “Glee” for a MAD related project. A few years later I would be doing character designs for the animated MAD show on the Cartoon Network, and would do several of the cast in a more simplified caricature form for the animators to work with:

Was that the bell? School’s out! Toon in next week when we once again visit the Wizarding World of Harry Plodder!