So as all big-time TV viewers know, “Glee” returned last week. It ended its hiatus with a special welcome back episode (cutely titled “Hell-O”) in which all the students and teachers at McKinley High sang songs of greeting including “Hello, I Love You” by The Doors, “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie, “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles and “Hello Again” by Neil Diamond. And then there were a few songs focusing on the “Hell” part of the greeting like “Gives You Hell” by All-American Rejects and “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. They went all-out with the theme, and it won’t be the last time a gimmick dictates the musical content of the show.

The Madonna episode is airing tonight, and after the “Hell-O” episode I have to say I’m not looking forward to it — at all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as big of a gleek as anyone, but only when “Glee” isn’t serving as a happy-go-lucky music video. First and foremost it should remain a TV show, but lately that doesn’t seem to be the case. “Glee” succeeds when it creates a compelling story and inserts appropriate music around it. There are so many characters with interesting backgrounds and points of view and when the song-and-dance numbers are used to highlight this, it's something special.

But as evidenced by last week’s “Hell-O” and what we've seen so far of the Madonna episode, “Glee” hasn’t been working around the story or characters, the characters and story work around the music. I’m sure the numbers will be great, but narratively, how is an episode centered on Madonna going to make sense? Why would the manly Sue Sylvester appear in an ultra-feminine music video for Madonna’s “Vogue?”

There’s a reason we don’t see more TV musicals: They're incredibly hard to pull off. Too many shows attempt the genre without knowing whether the story or the songs are going to take the lead. TV musicals can be successful (and have been) when the creators don't obsess about creating a balance. But in the old days, this wasn't such a concerning problem.

Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s there was an odd trend of TV shows about musical groups and family bands. We had “The Partridge Family” who traveled around in that groovy, painted school bus. The Partridge Family produced hits like “I Think I Love You” and failures like Danny Bonaduce. More successful was "The Monkees," through which the titular band gained clout with “Daydream Believer” and “I’m a Believer,” even though the four band members were assembled solely for the purpose of creating a TV show. Hell, they didn’t even cast a drummer and ended up hiring a teacher for Micky Dolenz. Even the Brady kids of “The Brady Bunch” started a singing group, released a couple albums and went on tour. The ’80s brought us “Fame,” a show about a bunch of talented kids at a school for the arts trying to hit the big-time and maybe some people remember “S Club 7” about a British pop group from ’99.

These shows worked (or mostly worked) because there was a reason for song and dance. When Erica Gimpel jumps up on the lunchroom table in the premiere of “Fame” and starts singing the show’s theme song, it makes sense in a school where all the students are show-offs. “S Club,” “The Monkees” and “The Partridge Family” were more concerned with album sales than producing a narrative and consequently were much more successful musically. “The Brady Bunch” honestly started to suck after the band story arc was introduced because the show had always been plot-driven and the sudden shift to music just didn’t make sense.

So for about 40 years, TV musicals (with the exception of a few special musical episodes) have been looked at with trepidation. And then “Flight of the Conchords” hit the small screen. New Zealand’s hottest comedy-folk duo, Bret Michaels and Jemaine Clement, showed the world that TV musicals can work without being corny.

The two wrote the first season around the arsenal of whimsical, awkward and hilarious songs they already had.