Layton: An Open Letter to Ryan Murphy, ‘Glee’ creator

Dear Ryan Murphy,

First and foremost, thank you for creating “Glee.”

Every Wednesday,… Dear Ryan Murphy,

First and foremost, thank you for creating “Glee.”

Every Wednesday, I trudge through my classes in a daze, eagerly anticipating the moment that I can plop down on the couch at 8:58 p.m., switch the channel to FOX and pretend my problems don’t exist for approximately 59 minutes per week.

The characters you created don’t really have problems. I mean, sure, Finn (Cory Monteith) has a pregnant girlfriend whose actual baby-daddy — unbeknownst to him — is his best friend, Puck (Mark Salling). I guess Rachel (Lea Michele) has a hard time dealing with her unrequited love for Finn. And Kurt (Chris Colfer) is a gay high school student — enough said.

But in the “Glee” universe, all of these problems only serve as platforms for rousing musical numbers, like a heart-breaking rendition of Rihanna’s “Take A Bow,” or a Bon Jovi/Usher mash-up.

Ryan, your show is the embodiment of what diehard musical theater geeks have used as a motto since that unfortunate niche came to be: Life is a musical — sing your way through it. These geeks, however, obviously knew the socially disastrous implications of actually carrying out this motto in reality.

The thing is, though, now that your show is a certified hit, people outside of the musical theater bubble are starting to think it’s OK to sing and dance in real life — it’s not. Just because musical theater is a suddenly socially acceptable thing again does not give jocks who don’t know the difference between a step-ball-change and the chicken dance the right to think they are the second coming of Liza Minelli.

From a recent post on the website Texts From Last Night, a texter from the 225 area code (southern Louisiana) urged, “Dude stop singing. Your life is not an episode of f***ing glee.”

Then again, if “Glee” is making plenty of other people as joyous as it makes me, I say more power to you. There is no better new show this season, and if its popularity means I must suffer through butchered interpretations of the now-infamous “Glee” version of “Don’t Stop Believing,” so be it.

So more power to you, Ryan Murphy, and keep up the good work. And if I may make a suggestion, get a “Glee”-ified version of a Britney Spears song on the show, pronto. I’m just saying …

Yours truly,

Kieran (with a Z)

P.S. “Nip/Tuck” premieres next week, and if it has suffered any lack of quality because of the singing high school kids, I will instate a boycott. It earned my loyalty long before “Glee” introduced the general public to a jazz square.