​I'll give the Parents Television Council this, they did Fox a huge favor by keeping Glee in the headlines even in a week when the show was pre-empted by the network's NLCS coverage:

GQ's sexy Glee cover has gone too far, The Parents Television Council says.

In a statement released Wednesday, the group slams the November issue, which features Cory Monteith, 28, Dianna Agron and Lea Michele, both 24 -- all of whom play highschoolers on the hit Fox show -- wearing hardly any clothing.

"It is disturbing that GQ, which is explicitly written for adult men, is sexualizing the actresses who play high school-aged characters on Glee in this way. It borders on pedophilia," the statement reads.

"By authorizing this kind of near-pornographic display, the creators of the program have established their intentions on the show's direction," the statement concludes. "And it isn't good for families."

What is the point of the PTC again? Oh, right: " to promote and restore responsibility and decency to the entertainment industry in answer to America's demand for positive, family-oriented television programming." That's from their home page. The Council helps facilitate this by offering their "Seal of Approval" to programming that's free of sex, violence, and profanity. Because this is -- according to the PTC -- what the American people want.

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Rob Lowe will soon join the cast of Parks and Recreation.

​The dog days are upon us, the networks are planning for fall, and there's always money in the banana stand. This was the week in TV Land:

• The Television Critics Association summer press tour has been going on for the past few days. The biannual event is a chance for networks to preview material for critics at an expo in Los Angeles and try their hardest to avoid looking bad. I can't begin to sum up all the mundane ins and outs of the TCA tour; check out The Live Feed or HitFix for extensive recaps from panels about shows you will forget existed by this time next year. Some interesting news for some of my favorite comedies, though: Rob Lowe has been added to the cast of Parks and Recreation as a series regular, and 30 Rock will air a live episode in October, one for each coast.

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Accept no substitutes

​Where has the time gone? It seems like just last week that New Directions was contending with Sue Sylvester's evil schemes and singing Journey songs, and here in the season finale they're...doing that all over again. Give the show points for consistency, at least.

Regionals are upon our faithful glee club members, a normally giddy time rendered somewhat less so by the news that Sue has earned a spot as a judge thanks to her dubious celebrity status.

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​"Daddy?"
"Yes, son?"
"What does regret mean?"
"Well son, the funny thing about regret is that it's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, will you be sure and tell her SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!" - Butthole Surfers, "Sweat Loaf"

Glee threw me off a little bit this week. After hearing all the lip service Will and company were giving to the concept of "regret," I felt sure that was the theme. After all, he was finally finalizing his divorce from Terri and subsequently lamenting all the time wasted with her. Meanwhile Jesse (surprise!) slimed his was back to Vocal Adrenaline, leaving Rachel regretting her stunning (and obvious) naïveté. And a preemptive performance of "Another One Bites the Dust" by VA sends the members of New Directions into such a funk that Will demands they come up with numbers inspired by that grooviest of genres.

Admittedly, I experienced my own sense of regret later on in the episode. After loudly complaining about the inability of anyone on the show to do justice to the late, great Freddie Mercury, I was rewarded with an unironic rendition of Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations," a song which should be attached to any Oscar screener of a Mark Wahlberg movie, lest an Academy member unwittingly nominate the guy for an award.

And never mind the hilarity of the white, uptight, and outta sight Will lecturing his students on funk's underpinnings of "soul and anger." Mercedes calls him on it, but that doesn't stop the (finally) visibly pregnant Quinn from leading the club off with James Brown's "It's A Man's Man's Man's World," accompanied by a retinue of similarly embarazada ladies. I admit it, "Unwed Mothership Connection" got a laugh. Well played, Ryan Murphy.

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​Apparently you've forgotten our deal, Glee: I won't goof on the fact that you keep hitching yourself to trendy musical topics and awkwardly using old Top 40 sings to teach that week's life lesson, and you won't mess with any of my favorite bands. This time, it's personal.

More on that later. The episode opened with Principal Figgins chastising Tina for her Gothness, which is tied to his frankly unconvincing belief that she and her ilk are actual vampires. Stripping Tina of her not-at-all dated look coincides with Rachel's discovery that Vocal Adrenaline are going the Fame Monster route, all leading to the weekly assignment: Lady Gaga.

High school dress code travails are older than I am, and that's saying something. Back in my day, the major proscriptions were against t-shirts glorifying alcohol and tobacco products (note to those born post-1990: cigarette companies were once allowed to advertise on most open surfaces). In fact, it was my casual remark to a coach my sophomore year that led to the banning of Corona Beach Club apparel at my high school. Don't hate me, class of 1987.

This week's episode (titled "Theatricality," which you could probably guess from the dozen times the word was spoken in an hour), also highlighted two rather disparate parent-child relationships, which I'll get to in a bit. But first, the Gag-ster.

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​I have two confessions to make about this week's episode ("Dream On"), both of which are kind of embarrassing (but only slightly less embarrassing than actually admitting I watch the show on a regular basis in the first place).

The first -- and I really have no idea how this got past me -- was that I totally spaced on the fact that this was THE JOSS WHEDON EPISODE. Honestly, the pairing never made a hell of lot of sense to me, just because I couldn't see a lot of parallels between the fans, "Once More, With Feeling" and Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog notwithstanding.

Point of fact, it wasn't until the show was over that I found out Whedon had directed, my only clues to the fact being the extremely talky first act (nearly 20 minutes passed without a musical number), a few telling directorial moves, and -- of course -- the presence of Neil Patrick Harris.

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​The theme this week was the loss of the glee club's voice -- both literally (Rachel has laryngitis) and figuratively (Puck gets a haircut, followed by a corresponding loss of mojo). Will asks everyone to solo in front of the whole group with a song that represents where they are in in their lives at the moment. Considering everyone is pretty much in the same state of romantic limbo as the last month, this should be pretty easy for all concerned.

Kurt has gotten so jealous of dad hanging out with Finn he decides to butch up via flannel and John Deere hats, even to the point of potentially making the sign of the two-humped whale with Brittany and singing *shudder* a John Cougar Mellencamp song. Though in all seriousness, one of the best parts of the whole show was Burt's (mostly correct) assessment that every Mellencamp song is about how tough the 80s were (though not "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.", surely).

They also rightfully accentuated Rachel's annoyance factor by having her ream out the rest of the club for not pulling their weight then sing "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus song, only to have her voice finally give out. And it's a testament to the "quality" of Cyrus' music that it took me a good 20 seconds to realize Rachel was singing off-key.

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​Our favorite show that doesn't at all remind us of Fame halted the steady slide into mediocrity we've been witnessing since it returned from hiatus with a rather frenetic episode dedicated to the idea that reputations, like songs, can be redeemed.

So the assignment this week -- prompted by Kurt posting a video of Sue lip-syncing to "Physical" (to the latter's subsequent extreme humiliation) and the publication of a list (or "Glist") ranking the club's membership by hotness -- was to take crap songs and find "what works." The songs skewed heavily towards the 1980s, a logical move considering creator Ryan Murphy was in high school himself at the time.

So while historians of musical embarrassment might have found more laughs with "Billy Don't Be A Hero" or Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," we were left with "Ice Ice Baby," "Can't Touch This," and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (no comment on which of those, if any, currently reside on my iPod).

I found the use of the Vanilla Ice track, performed by Will (minus the dance moves) with the assistance of the mysterious and omnipresent backing band, to be a bold choice. As universally reviled tunes go, it's hard to top. Still, the song sold 11 million copies, which is what makes current hatred for it so amusing. Why, you'd have a hard time finding anyone who admits to...oh, I don't know...drunkenly singing it with a couple of college friends at the birthday party of a girl he ended up clumsily fornicating with later that night, never realizing she'd come to his place of work the next day and spill the beans to another girl he was trying to date.

Man, I hate that song.

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​At the outset, it looked like another Sue Sylvester-heavy episode. First, she gave Mercedes (and, less emphatically, Kurt) an ultimatum to lose weight or be dropped from the squad, then she commandeered the McKinley High auditorium for an entire week, forcing New Directions to secure a new location for their rehearsals and leading to another in an endless series of confrontations with Will.

But just when you thought Fox had gone overboard in reacting to everyone saying Jane Lynch was the best part of the show, she disappears until the third act. In the meantime, we got an episode that did little to advance the overall plot, whatever that is (regionals...I think), and instead focused on Mercedes' attempts to lose weight and the smoldering homoerotic tension between Kurt and Finn.

Oh yeah, and the return of Kristin Chenoweth.

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​It's fitting that the Madonna episode would feature not one, not two, but three cherry popping story arcs: Rachel deciding to give herself to Jesse, Finn submitting to Santana's years of experience, and Emma peeling off the cardigan for Will. That only one of the three actually went through with it is unimportant, because all anybody was really here for was the Madonna.

In a set-up that didn't feel remotely forced, Sue decreed to Principal Figgins that the Material Girl's music would henceforth be played at top volume throughout the school, the better for students to learn from her example. This applied to the Cheerios as well, who were put through the paces of a new routine set to "Ray of Light." Will ended up loving the idea so much he decided to subject New Directions to a Madonna theme as well. It seems the ladies of the glee club have been suffering at the hands of the men, and could use a little empowerment.

And who better to provide that example than a woman who once had herself photographed with her tongue up some dude's ass?

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