It's all tableau.

On my bike ride this morning, I passed a couple of women who were deep in conversation. One said to the other, "...and so she stormed off...."

I could only assume they were discussing last night's episode of "Glee," which was filled with females storming off. And they weren't all teenagers.

If you've never seen "Glee," allow me to sum it up for you:

• My husband thinks it's stupid.
• My daughters think it's funny.
• I think it's tragic.

At first I was with my daughters, until the glee club performed its first song, and then I shifted to my husband's side. It was overproduced and inauthentic. And then, by about the third episode, I realized that it didn't matter, because this show was no more about a glee club than the brilliant and tragically-short-lived "Sports Night" was about sports. Or the equally engaging WHOSS is about Enron.

Nor is the show about teenaged angst, which was my second choice. The adults are just as messed up and lost as the kids. In fact, they are even more messed up and lost than the kids. The only character who seems to have anything figured out is the self-absorbed and almost-certainly sociopathic cheerleading coach. I suppose it's possible that she will have a flash of self-awareness in Part One of the two-part season finale, but by the time Part Two concludes, she'll be back to her narcissistic self.

Why am I talking about a TV show? (Just so you know, I sat here for a second after typing that and literally sighed.) I guess because this show makes me think -- not necessarily about the storylines and the sadness of it all, but about how cleverly the creators have put it together. It's a complicated program about a complicated subject.

Life.