Rise

Despite its flaws, Rise still delivers those goose bump-raising moments that Katims has been reliably serving up for years. Granted, it’s sappy and wears its heart fully on its sleeve… but who says that’s such a bad thing?

For all its flaws--and Rise has a number of them--when these kids open their mouths to sing, the NBC drama is nearly irresistible.

Rise struggles to rise above its familiarity, conspicuously feeling like a "Glee"-"Friday Night Lights" mashup. That doesn't mean the NBC series -- from Jason Katims, producer of the latter series, as well as "Parenthood" -- doesn't have its merits, only that this show about high-school kids putting on a show plays like a revival, not an original.

Unlike “Friday Night Lights,” Rise doesn’t organically arrive at its sweet revelations after building up to them deliberately. Rise is far more aggressive when it comes to wringing tears and pathos out of us, with a seeming checklist of juicy issues including alcoholism, trans acceptance, abortion, gay self-acceptance,

I was simply ensnared by the siren song of Spring Awakening, those aching melodies of my early adulthood calling to me tantalizingly from out of the past. It’s powerful stuff, a testament to what great theater can do. And, I suppose, what decent TV can sometimes do, too.

The writers rely too heavily on the cliches to develop characters, which leaves many of them underdeveloped or inconsistent. Radnor is such a good actor that it takes a while for us to realize his contradictory actions don’t really line up with what we think we know about Lou.

The big, heartfelt, Dangerous Minds style lines that are geared at squeezing out tears are so cheesy, predictable, and trite, they cause eye-rolls instead.