For decades, the business model of network television has been simple: NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX rent out our eyeballs to advertisers. Better programming, more eyeballs, more advertisers. People don’t pay to watch network TV—if anything, someone should have paid us to watch the last two seasons of “Heroes.”

Hulu, it seemed, understood this. Since March 2008, the website has provided premium network TV shows for free, legal online viewing. Hulu also carries non-network content from the likes of PBS, Bravo, E!, and A&E, not to mention a surprisingly adequate rotating buffet of B-movies. The site is even gracious enough to offer a choice between standard commercial breaks or a longer presentation at the start of the episode. It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship between viewer and network.

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I didn’t want to like “Glee.” It first entered my consciousness last May when a friend told me about the cast’s cutesy version of “Don’t Stop Believing.” Um, what? You do not cover in your series premiere a song featured prominently in “The Sopranos” series finale. What kind of young TV upstart would dare take on that legacy?

The Journey cover topped the iTunes charts, and it would’ve made Tony’s Uncle Junior puke all over his gabagool. I watched five minutes of the first episode and decided that “Glee” was inane, idiotic, insipid, and many other angry adjectives. And the worst part? I really, really liked it.

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