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On Thursday's "O'Reilly Factor," Bill O'Reilly grappled with the terrible, terrible paradox that while "Glee" may have some merits, it also sends the message "that alternative lifestyles for children may be positive." And then, oh no, he showed a clip of the character Unique performing a KC and the Sunshine Band song in a dress and heels. O'Reilly, who is terribly concerned that America's youth "might go out and experiment with this stuff," next welcomed Carlson, along with Judge Jeanine Pirro, for an old-fashioned round of pearl-clutching. "Here we go again," said Carlson, "pandering to .3 percent of the American population that consider themselves transgender. Now I get to explain this to my 8-year-old, if I just wanted to watch a nice family show with some nice music?"

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You got the feeling the whole thing was built around a product endorsement, in this case “Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour,” which was mentioned twice and just happens to open in the U.S. right around the time next week’s “Glee” rolls around.

Part of the problem was the lily-white cast. This might be central Ohio, but can we believe there are no African-American males at William McKinley High School? Even when the singing group from the competing private school is on-screen, the only black male face is in the background.

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OK, actually, I should qualify that -- the middle section was brilliant. The wraparound stuff was the "Glee" usual: silly, pandering and dull. During the final number -- "Do They Know It's Christmas," set in a soup kitchen that no doubt was populated by the children of "Glee" cast and crew -- even the actors seemed bored, except for Jane Lynch, whose Coach Sylvester was acknowledging the first anniversary of her sister's death. (Tear cup.) But OH MY GOD IF YOU COULD HAVE SEEN THAT MIDDLE SECTION, DIARY! Presented in black-and-white, it perfectly re-created the set, the tone and even the camera moves of "The Judy Garland Show" Christmas special from 1963, but with a cultural flash forward/flashback quality, presenting a patchwork quilt vision of America that wouldn't have gotten past the network censors four decades ago.

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That's a trick question. Midway through its third season there's little that's necessary about "Glee," save for the underused Chris Colfer's performance as out gay teenager Kurt Hummel, the even more severely underused Mike O'Malley's performance as his dad, one out of every five musical numbers, and Sue Sylvester's surreal rants, which Jane Lynch sells even when the writing is just sassy word salad. And even those compensatory values aren't enough to make me watch each week. After a long and increasingly desperate infatuation with this musical comedy soap -- which repeatedly threatened to be astonishing and sometimes delivered, only to settle for cheerfully incoherent inanity at least 80 percent of the time -- I've relegated it to the second tier of my DVR, which consists of shows that I skip for weeks at a time, then catch up on in one dutiful burst. I doubt I would have watched this installment in real time if my 14-year-old daughter hadn't reminded me that it promised to deliver big moments this week. Her reactions were more entertaining than the show. She contrived reasons to leave the room whenever nooky threatened to break out, and ended up watching the parts she'd skipped while I was in the next room writing this recap. "If you were 14, would you want to watch this episode with your dad?" she asked later. Hell, no. I vividly recall being in the same tiny house with my mom while she watched "The Postman Always Rings Twice" on cable with the sound cranked way up, but only because my therapist dug that repressed memory out through hypnosis and primal scream therapy.

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The season premiere of Fox's comedy/drama/musical series -- aka the most infuriating show on TV -- had me wondering. It wasn't mind-bogglingly bad, as "Glee" so often is, nor was it genuinely inventive and passionate, as the series also often is. It was just ... How to put this? Is there an emoticon signifying a weary sigh leavened by the faint stirrings of hope? There isn't? Bummer.

It's a new school year. All the familiar faces are back, except for sinewy blond Sam Evans, who was last seen threatening to add some much-needed pep to the series by dating the plus-size African-American Mercedes. In a throwaway bit, we learn that Sam "moved away" over the summer, and now Mercedes has a plus-size African-American boyfriend. (Too bad; a relationship between Sam and Mercedes would have been groundbreaking for all sorts of reasons.) Will Schuester is back to teaching music at McKinley High after giving up on his dream of being a Broadway star (the fellow who replaced him won a Tony) and is trying to recruit new glee club members via the Purple Piano Project. The latter places a bunch of donated upright pianos (painted by Will) throughout the school, the better to encourage the teens to show off their talent by bursting into song. (They needed so much help doing that. Good going, Will!)

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Last week, Shields posted a new series of photos he'd shot of a primly ponytailed Morris on his website, along with the note that "Even Barbie bruises." In the pictures, the doll-like beauty appears made up with a whopper of a black eye, gets tied up with the electrical cord of an iron, lounges playfully on an ironing board and, in one shot, turns the tables and brandishes the appliance at the crotch of the photographer himself. It's certainly a far cry from the usual hot chick in her underwear tableaux you might expect from a shoot featuring one of the stars of a hit TV show. But does it make abuse look sexy?

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2. S'Paz of the day: "Empire Boardwalk's" Paz de la Huerta got more than a slap on the wrist for her bar brawl back in April. Though prosecutors were going to let her off on the condition she enter an alcohol treatment program and do a couple of days of community service, Judge Diana Boyar said Paz had to be evaluated by a rehab facility before she signed off on the deal.

3. "Friday" of the day: Grantland has compiled an oral history of "Friday Night Lights'" successes -- and failures -- throughout the years.

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These changes shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. "Glee" could never really figure out what to do with Chord's character -- the blond bass-mouth who looked like a more wholesome Culkin brother -- but Criss stole the show last season as the confident, preppy Blaine. His covers of "Teenage Dream" and "Hey, Soul Sister" brought new life to the overplayed Katy Perry and Train songs.

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1. Justin Bieber and Tiffani Thiessen have a creepy crush on each other: As evidenced by the shirts the two wore to Canada's MuchMusic Video Awards, bearing each other's faces. Bieber was born one year after "Saved by the Bell" went off the air.

2. James Blunt's blunder: Put a photo of himself on Facebook in front of a historical building near Auschwitz, then claimed it was his "hotel in Poland."

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So if it's not broke, why fix it? That's the question that came to mind when it was announced that "Glee" would be getting a writing staff for the first time next season outside the original trio of co-creators and executive producers Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. The new staff will include the comic book scribe who rewrote "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, as well as "Buffy"/"Angel" vet Marti Noxon and Christopher Guest contributor Michael Hitchcock. Co-producing the show will now be a four-person job, with "Chuck's" Allison Adler added to the mix.

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Last week, Katy previewed her alter ego for this video, Kathy Lee Perry, a dork with headgear who just wanted to party and/or remember how hard she partied the weekend before. (It was a little unclear.) After finally watching the video, the message of the song remains somewhat of a mystery.

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One was the unique experience of being a cast member on "Glee," which is probably the closest modern equivalent to Beatlemania. The brain-frazzling uniqueness of that experience  might account for the innocent intensity of the performances. Even when the material stinks, the cast members never seem to be phoning it in -- not even when they're stuck on the margins of a chorus line during someone else's solo. And they perform the romantic scenes with a circa-1955 intensity that would be laughable if it weren't so refreshing. Finn's plea to Rachel, "Take a chance on me," was a genuinely romantic moment, even with three classmates standing behind him crooning "Bella Notte" from "Lady and the Tramp." And Brittany's final speech to Santana by the lockers was sweet, too. That character could never compose such sentences, but Heather Morris' unaffected delivery made me believe them.

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Yes, you read that right. I am, in addition to being a professional soldier in a combat zone, an aficionado of the campy show-tune-filled television musical program "Glee."

But it makes sense, and if you were here, you would understand.

For an American soldier this place is not exactly "Three Cups of Tea," even if the stories in that book were completely true. It is war, and war is not fun. War is not something you can turn on and off. You cannot shut off the lights, close the door, get in your car and go home at the end of the day. You are here, 24/7, for almost 365 days, and there is no let-up, there are no days off, and there is no release. You cannot have a beer, or three, and you cannot lose focus. Because regardless of what type of war you may be in, the ultimate measure in war is reduced to the simplest terms: life. Death.

For me, and for people like me, you are either planning the death of somebody or you are planning how to keep somebody else from killing you, yours and most especially the civilians and innocents, because in these most recent wars, that is what the enemy often tries to do. Lose focus, lose intensity, and innocent people are more likely to die. Here. Now.

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Anyway, in normal American speech it was once called "the prom" or "the senior prom"; these days "Prom" seems to have become a trademarked proper noun, and also a subset or metastatic offshoot of the corporatized girl-culture that brought us the princess craze. I suppose if my daughter (who is 7) had heard about Disney's "Prom" and wanted to see it, I'd let her go, with kind of a sinking feeling just below my solar plexus. First of all, it wouldn't make much of an impression on her because it's so boring, and second of all, it would strike her as a story set among a Stepfordian alien civilization, one with similar artifacts to our own but entirely different folkways and hairstyles.

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1. 19-year-old Estibalis Chavez from Mexico went on a 16-day hunger strike to get to the royal wedding:  And as a reward for this kind of behavior, a lobbyist is sending her the airfare to get to London. She still won't be able to attend the ceremony though. Should we be encouraging this?

2. "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams defends Gwyneth Paltrow from an African-American blogger who wrote about her privileged life at Huffington Post: Thanks Scott, Gwyneth is doing a fine job being completely unlikable without your help.

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