Director's Cut

Few pop stars are as cerebral about making music as Kate Bush

While Glee doesn’t seem a great bet for a long run (the ratings weren’t great for a post-Idol show and a lot of people tuned out in the middle), there’s a growing sense that it might have done better if the network had aired a longer version of the episode. The version of the pilot that was sent to critics, and which turned up on various online sharing sites, was several minutes longer than the version that ran after American Idol. The aired version was about 43 minutes, the length of a regular Fox episode; the original version was closer to the length of one of Fox’s “remote-free TV” episodes. And while Fringe and Dollhouse have not made particularly great use of the longer format (which they will no longer get to use next season), the Glee pilot in its uncut form apparently was much more coherent and unified than what millions of people saw. In particular, it had an opening that explained why the lead character was so obsessed with teaching Glee club, it had scenes that filled in other plot holes, gaps and backstories, and it had a little throwaway scene that gave the star, Matthew Morrison, a chance to do some singing himself.