Glee: Walking on Pseudoephedrine
The war of the sexes got hopped up on speed last night. It was like watching the Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs tennis match on fast forward, but with musical breaks. Unlike that famous contest, no one here was a winner.
Yes, it was boys versus girls last night as Will pitted the two halves of his Glee Club against one another. It was an XX/XY mashup, and the theme transferred over to the rest of the characters and the songs they had to sing. Will sparred with his wife Terri, Rachel and Finn continued their intricate dance of antagonism and desire, and Emma and Ken were fighting to either stay together or fall apart, depending on the moment of the day. But the gender divide was not the the only thing causing drama last night. Let's see what the songs have to tell us.
"It's My Life": As usual, the kids were singing about unfettered ambition while stuck in a desperate situation. Things were so bad for Finn that he was passing out in rehearsal and couldn't even get past level two of Halo (or some other bloody video game—this isn't really my area of expertise). He can't handle the pressure of being in school, being the macho QB, the slightly-less macho male lead of the Glee club, a good boyfriend, and an expectant father at the same time! Sure, he gave up on doing homework, but other than that he couldn't prioritize. Good thing Nurse Wretched had a cure for him.
Will was trying to get the Glee kids out of the gutter so that they could beat the kids from the Jane Adam's Half Way house at sectionals. Also high up on the to-do list was to stop fielding barbs from Sue Motherfucking Sylvester in the faculty lunchroom. But it was SMS who gave him the plan to instill some fear into his troupe, because, as she says, terror "is like mothers milk to them, without it they won't grow properly." With his boys vs. girls singing scrimmage he instills some terror and makes them grow, but in the entirely wrong direction. The whole thing was a bit like a lightning strike to an above ground swimming pool, but with fewer plastic floating animals.
Speaking of Sue, we finally got to see her write her deepest darkest delusions in her diary, and the whole segment was total brilliance. We learned that she is insecure in her ability to take Nationals—even though she blames it on Quinn's minuscule quiver rather than her coaching abilities—and somehow that transfers into her need to destroy both Glee and Will. After all, without a big win, how is she going to afford that hovercraft?
"Confessions": Now that Sue is all hopped up on the hatred for her rivals, she goes to Terri and confesses that Will and Emma are having an affair, even though they are both way too mild-mannered to actually go through with having a tumble in the well-waxed hallways of McKinley High School. Sue Motherfucking Sylvester once went to a television land seminar on plot devices, so she knows how to trip the school nurse down the stairs so that Terri can lie her way into the position. Now Terri can keep an eye on will and exact her petty revenge on Emma. Too bad she has no medical training. She may not be a nurse, but she's played one on TV. And who doesn't know how to take a temperature, hm?
Too bad Will has to confess to her that she is annoying and driving him crazy. She seems a little crushed that someone doesn't want to spend all of their time with her, and it was that that we realized that Terri and SMS are exactly the same person—scared insecure women who bolster their meager station in life with bravado and delusion. She still doesn't get the hint, and it takes getting fired for her to finally go back to the Sheets -N-Things where she belongs.
My Facebook friend Quinn Fabray, who has a name that sounds like a product that will make your linens very very soft and clean, got the two best confessions of the night. She told Terri that she wants to live her life and that she will pass off the pom-pom she's carrying inside of her to Terri when she finally gives it a B-I-R-T-H. Yay, BIRTH! Even crazier, she admit that she likes being in Glee. Le gasp!
The more touching confession came when Quinn was talking to Rachel in the hallway, and Rachel lets her know that the Glee kids aren't going to judge her for being pregnant. Well, that's not exactly the truth—since everyone is making jokes about maternity clothes when she's not around—but Rachel knows that she needs Quinn's voice to beat the boys, so she fudges a bit. But Rachel's right. They are a band of merry misfits, and having a pregnant abstinent teenager in their ranks is a move right out of the quirky cast playbook. And if these clowns aren't going to love her, then she is doomed to isolation. The sad part is when Quinn tells Rachel that if the roles were reversed, she would make Rachel's life a living hell, and Rachel forgives her anyway. Sure, Rachel's motivation was entirely selfish, but this kid may be learning her lesson.
"Halo": There were plenty of angelic good deeds last night, the least of which was the writers giving us yet another shirtless locker room scene. Thanks!
The winner of Oprah's Angel Network VIP award goes to Emma, who agreed to be Ken's mercy non-fuck for all of eternity, as long as she could live in a galaxy far far away and not tell anyone at the cantina that she and Ken the Hutt were joined in matrimony. This came after dark Sith Terri told her that she better back up off her man or she was going to get out her red double lightsaber and do to her what Jar Jar Binks does to the English language. That's kill it, for those of you who know more about George Gershwin than George Lucas.
It's a killer kindness though, when Emma accepts his hands in marriage (locker room scene Number Two was not nearly as much fun as the first). She is only doing it so that neither of them end up alone. At the end of the hour, when she and Will stare at each other down the hallway, they aren't thinking about helping to wax it with their naked bodies, but about how it will continue to separate them until one of them is strong enough to fight for what they want.
Yes, Babytrannygay Kurt was kind enough to the girls to give them some insider information about the sing-off, but the real Glee MVP of the night was none other than Rachel Berry. When she finally sobers up, she comes to the realization that she's only as good as the group that backs her up, so rather than trying to break free—as she has all season—she is trying to drag everyone else up to a higher level. When we see that she has replaced the picture of her Grammy as The Secret Visualization Aid at the end of her elliptical machine (girl, you should get on a stair climber and build those glutes!) with an image about winning sectionals, it seems like she has finally put her selfishness behind her. Well, at least a little bit. Come on, Rachel, we really want to like you, and now that you've stopped acting like a total bitch, we're almost there. Now, if only we could do something about your outfit with the giant bow that looks more like a fashion parasite than a whimsical embellishment.
"Walking on Sunshine": Well, if by sunshine you mean drugs, then, yes, everyone was. Thanks Terri, who is the worst drug pusher in the history of Lima, Ohio. When Finn shows up in Nurse Wretched's office complaining of being tired, she gives him some Wal-Mart Wallies, some CVS Cruisers, some Duane Reade Dynamos. OK, none of those are street names for decongestant speed, but they could be. We're not sure why Terri was so hot on pushing the stuff in the first place. Was she trying to get Glee disbanded so that she could have Will all to herself? In an episode where she was supposed to be all about death to Emma, that's one too many motivations. Please keep our dramedies two-dimensional. They're so much easier to follow.
So, Finn gets hopped up on the stuff and spreads the gospel to the rest of his singing fraternity. When they give a performance like 'N SYNC after Lance Bass took all the boys to a circuit party and they stayed up for three days on meth, the girls had to do their fair share of Hillbilly Hoppers to compete. Just like in Major League baseball, they had to level the playing field. Eventually, they do the right thing and confess, which means neither team wins, Terri is kicked out of school, and Will can no longer be their trusted adviser.
That last decision seems to make a bunch of sense. Every week Will tries to do something to make the group better and he only manages to get the kids drunk, high, or pregnant. Man, it's a wonder he doesn't have kids beating down the door trying to sign up—everyone's getting wasted and laid! They must not have the D.A.R.E. program at McKinley. But Will's punishment is worse than the crime, when Sue Motherfucking Sylvester is called in to be his captain my co-captain. Oh, it's going to be horrible for him, and delightful for the rest of us to watch. We're going to be walking on sunshine until next Wednesday.