We’re only a few short weeks into the new TV season, but it’s still time enough to hit a few milestones. There’s the first casualty (CW’s newsworthy for all the wrong reasons The Beautiful Life), the first failed experiment that will limp on through the season anyway (can anyone see NBC’s Jay Leno Show going anywhere?) and a few shows that are actually proving worth the buzz. ABC’s FlashForward is just intriguing enough to be appointment television, the CW is doing surprisingly well with Melrose Place and The Vampire Diaries (well, for the CW anyway) and CBS is killing with yet another spin-off of a popular procedural — this time for NCIS: Los Angeles. No other freshma has gathered more buzz, though, than Fox’s musical dramedy Glee.

Glee, as you might have suspected, is about the trials and tribulations of the glee club of a small Midwestern high school. It’s got a large cast, at least two or three musical numbers per episode, and after watching it you kind of feel like you’ve just eaten the world’s biggest SweetTart: it’s satisfying enough when you’re watching it, but after the hour’s over you feel like you’ve had a little too much candy. Nonetheless, fans are eating it up. It’s doing modestly well in the ratings but the fan base has quickly become one of the most vocal in all of TV fandom.

That, perhaps, is one of the most perplexing things about the show. It’s like finding out that there’s a rabid Smarties fan club that meets once a week at your local church. They go on prosletyzing missions every once in a while to get their friends and family to try out a pack, because man, isn’t it the most awesome thing ever? Way better than the steak and potatoes of say, Lost or Mad Men. I think everyone here can agree that Smarties are pretty good, and I’ll have a few if they’re there, but they’re really nothing to get excited about.

And yet people are. Admittedly, the show is building impressively. There’s a storyline about teen pregnancy that also includes the wife of glee club leader Will Schuester planning to ‘steal’ the baby to keep up the charade of her false pregnancy. The disparate members of the club (the high school quarterback, the bitchy diva, the ghetto princess, the goth kid, the flaming gay, the nerd) are slowly stepping out of their stereotypes into full-fledged characterdom. And the musical numbers are the most enjoyable cheese you can get outside of Wisconsin. But that still doesn’t change the fact that the characters began as incredibly broad stereotypes, the show tries a little too hard for a sharp and irreverent bite, and the moments engineered to be touching come off as far too “Afterschool Special.” In the few weeks it’s been on the air, it’s been getting better but it still has a way to go before being anything other than a guilty pleasure.

So why the rabid enthusiasm? Why is this show, with its many flaws, gaining such rampant adoration? I think it’s because it does precisely what creator Ryan Murphy created it do: provide the chance for pure escapism.

All of the friends I have who are into the show are also hard-core Lost, Battlestar Galactica and Joss Whedon fans. The darker the sci-fi/fantasy, the better. It’s not even a real season finale unless a major cast member dies a tragic, painful death. You know the types I’m talking about. And here’s this little show, this happy little confection, this one thing that’s actually unabashedly syrupy. Say what you will about Glee, but what other shows can boast that sort of feel on the air right now?

TV is dominated by the anti-hero, the cynical amoralist, the self-centered buffoon, the compassionate but fundamentally flawed protagonist. We see so much of our fictional prime-time landscape as a dark place, where vast and mysterious forces are constantly threatening. Even the conflict in Glee is relatively simple, and that familiarity alone makes them less powerful. We’ve all been through high school. Most of us have had to deal with the cruelty of jocks and cheerleaders and even teachers. We’ve all had the fantasies about someday, somehow coming out on top. Well, here’s a group of students occupying the same social niche but managing to do just that.

I don’t want to reduce Glee to a simple attempt for us geeks and nerds to play out the fantasy of a less-painful high-school career. But I think that’s one of the things that makes the world so engrossing for the people who have found it. It’s more than the wish fulfillment, so much of it is wish fulfillment. It’s the chance, just for an hour, to watch awkward people during the most awkward times of their life finally having a place where everything fits just right. And even if Murphy and company haven’t figured out how to do that believably just yet, you’re rooting for them just the same.