If there’s anything I love more than sticking my face in a bucket of gumbo — and boy do my eardrums appreciate a good shellfish scrub — it’s white gay men writing stories about Latina lesbian women, filming them, and putting them on my television set!
This week on Glee, tiny mockingjays continued their vicious attack on Kurt’s sweater drawer, Sue stole Beast’s Balding Boyfriend from Beast and lost the election to Burtbear, inappropriate teacher-student relations exploded in Puckelby’s pants, Quinn changed personalities six times, Rachel & Kurt fretted over admissions to a conservatory acting program that by definition cares way more about their auditions than about grades or student government positions, and Santana and Brittany didn’t kiss.
This is similar to how nobody had sex for the first time in the “First Time” episode.
Before we begin with the recap I’d like to point out that it’s clear (to me) that in preparation for this week’s Lezstravanganza, this episode’s writer, Matthew Hodgson, marathoned Season One of The L Word. I think this ’cause sometimes what I’ve just read/seen finds its way into my writing in insidious unconscious ways and I assume this happens to other writers too and having memorized all six seasons of The L Word, I can authoritatively state it happened to Matthew this week.
You can skip this part if you’re not as deranged as I am, but I’m just gonna refresh your memory of a few key L Word moments before we hop into this episode of Glee. Just keep these scenes IN MIND, grasshoppers:
#1:
Lara:Â You have to at least take some steps towards being out.
Dana:Â I will.
Lara:Â Because you’re going to be miserable being in the closet.
Dana:Â I know.
Lara:Â And you are really… really gay.
Dana:Â (whispering) I know.
Lara:Â You know, it’s one of the things I like so much about you. When you hide that, you’re hiding the best part.
#2:
Cherie:Â Â In this fucking ugly world, that kind of love does not exist.
#3:
Dana Fairbanks appears in an ad campaign which, much to her surprise, references her sexuality. Dana then must come out to her parents before Subaru does it for her. They don’t take it well:
Dana: I didn’t do this to hurt you.
Sharon: We all have feelings for our girlfriends, Dana. It doesn’t mean you have to act on them.
Basically, these writers trying to write this episode is like me trying to write about vampires. I’m not a vampire. I like True Blood but I hate Twilight. So I’m pretty ambivalent on the whole vampire situation. You should only ever write about things you care about passionately! Otherwise don’t bother. Is what I think. As you can tell by that amazing paragraph you just read. Fuck. Jesus.
Anyhow! This recap won’t be getting any better, I suggest getting a box of Teddy Grahams and saddling up to the  laptop for a long long night.
This episode I’ll only be recapping the lesbianish scenes, because my vadge lesbo angry ragefuck womyny feminista powerpuff anger is already so extreme re: this episode that I can’t even get into things like, um, this:
We open in Principal Figgins’s Lair of Inconsistent Leadership, where Santana’s battling patriarchal oppression in the form of a two-week suspension for bitch-slapping Finn with two cheeseburgers after he outed her to all of Northwestern Ohio. Figgins cites a recently-invented zero-tolerance violence policy, but seriously, look at Finn, the kid isn’t exactly bleeding from the eyeball, this ain’t waterboarding.
We pause for someone to point out that outing someone also warrants a jaunt to the office, but nobody does, so Santana then proudly introduces us to her unstoppably feisty alter ego, Snix:
Santana: “You don’t get it. When I get really pissed off, Santana gets taken over by my other evil personality. I call her ‘Snix.’ Her wrath of words is called ‘Snix juice.’ I’m kind of like the Incredible Hulk. You can’t blame me for anything Snix does.”
Figgins: “I’m suspending you and this Snix two weeks.”
Finn, hiding in the back in his flannel, debating whether or not he could enhance the gender identity diversity of Autostraddle’s 2013 Calendar by offering to model for it, suddenly lumbers into action. “She didn’t slap me,” he announces.
She’s off the hook! Back in the hallway, Santana’s mystified by this sudden twist of personality and presses Finn for his rationale. Finn responds in a tone so condescending only tiny birds and ferocious Snixes can hear it:
Finn: “I kinda feel bad for you. Look, I know we’ve been at each other a lot over these past couple of years, but the truth is I think you’re awesome. And when you hide who you are, I feel like you hide part of that awesomeness with it. And that’s why you act out, because you hurt inside every day.”
Oh so wow. Nobody loves anything more than being told who they are and what they think by a six-foot-five hunk of brisket whose been photographed in public with Taylor Swift. Furthermore this riff isn’t Finn’s problem to fix — Santana hated him first and doesn’t need his pity, psychology, or penis.
Santana: “That’s sweet, but if you think that in exchange for keeping me from getting suspended, I’m gonna come…”
Finn: “Back to the Glee Club? Exactly!”
Finn’s obsessed with Glee Club now, he’s absorbed all of Rachel’s most insufferable personality traits. However, lacking Berry’s intelligence and talent, this absorption leads to Finn seeming deranged whereas for Rachel it just makes her seem selfish and ambitious.
Finn: “It’s up to you. Either you can come back to the choir room and embrace your awesome or take a two week vacation and enjoy your seat in the audience for Sectionals.”
Finn oughtta write that down, screenprint it onto a Hallmark card and sell that shit for National Coming Out Day because BOY am I inspired. Flip-Flop-Flin thus leaves Santana, and the audience, confused, nervous, and a little bit scared.
Also in the hallway, perhaps on the same day or perhaps next week or yesterday, Rachel Berry is treading with frustrated fear, monologuing: Â “I haven’t been this worried about a vote since Lambert versus Allen.”
I personally spent that fateful June 2009 evening drinking vodka out of a water bottle while interviewing D-list gay-or-gay-friendly celebrities in the 85 degree bath of lower Manhattan, and though the vodka numbed my apathy towards The Paradiso Girls it did not come close to easing my anxiety over the American Idol Election. By the way, Lambert “lost” the popular vote, but he won overall. Let that be a lesson to you Kurt — even if you lose the contest to get into NYADA, you can still make out with hot boys onstage and paint your nails for money.
Rachel casts a leer over at Brittany, heretofore known as Bi-Brittany, ’cause someone’s gotta say it and this show sure won’t — Brittany’s bisexuality, that is. Yup. If it’s Brittany and Santana’s relationship that technically outed both of them, it’s so strange, yet predictable, how invisible she and her story becomes. Anyhow —
Bi-Brittany:Â “If elected I will be sure to have sugary treats available at all times. It helps the concentration. That’s what George Washington said.”
Anyhow, Rachel’s stressing that Kurt won’t get into NYADA without a student council win on his resume, which’ll leave her gay-less in New York City, stranded without easy access to makeovers and, apparently, souffles, neither of which she’s picked up from 18 years of living with Two Gay Dads. Now she’ll have to troll craigslist “gigs” when in need and will probably get killed just like everyone did in that Lifetime movie about the Craigslist killer.
Oh but first some Classic Rachel® perfection:
Rachel:Â “Nobody cares. They’re all so lost in their own worlds that they can’t see how important this is to me.”
Rachel locates Kurt and zeroes in on his blazer/bandana otherwise known as a “blezanda.”
Killjoy Kurt refuses to let in Lea’s sunshine:
Kurt: “What’s the point. I’m gonna lose unless I pull a JFK.”
Rachel: “You’re gonna shoot Brittany?”
Apparently JFK stuffed the ballot boxes somewhere along his rise (that’s what she said) to the presidency. Obviously Rachel’s already scheming, having seemingly forgotten what happened when George W.Bush cheated. I’ll remind you — 9/11. 9/11 happened.
Rachel and Kurt go together like peas and carrots, but only if “Machiavellian” is a word you can use to describe vegetables.
Will Schecter has given up on securing Finn’s body or his ego to his chair for the entirety of a class period and figured if Finn’s always standing up he may as well do something. Like teach!
Finn’s got the magic marker and scrawls “Lady Music” onto the vision board, announcing to the class that in order for Santana to embrace her identity (not that Santana’s actually displayed a reluctance to do so, she’d just rather do it on her own terms and not on television ’cause Finn OUTED HER), they’ll spend a week demonstrating exactly how men are capable of ruining beautiful things created by women by dedicating the set-list to “Lady Music.” It’s redic enough that “Lady Music” counts as a theme at all, seeing as we clock in at 51% of the population and are well-represented in the World of Music and therefore should be similarly represented in weekly setlists BUT SORRY HERE I GO AGAIN thinking women are real people.
Flip-Flop-Finn: “Santana we’re worried about you.”
Santana: “Worry about yourself, fetus face.”
[That fetus reference is foreshadowing for the position you’ll be in while cowering in the corner in about 15 minutes when Finn breaks into an barbaric low-key version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”]
Finn: “Glee’s about learning how to accept yourself for who you are, no matter what other people think. And that’s what this music is all about.”
Santana: “So wait, I don’t even get a say in this? Not cool.”
Yup! Even when it relates to the sweet sapphic sounds of lesbian folk-rock music, a genre of music universally despised by every man I’ve ever shared a car with, Finn’s the decider. He decides when/why/how Santana should come out, he picks the music, he’s the decider. He decides things.
Finn: “Everybody in this room knows about you and Brittany and we don’t judge you for it. We celebrate it because it’s who you are. I know not everybody outside of this room is as accepting and cool as we are, but we’re doing this assignment this week so that you know in this rotten, stinking mean world that you at least have a group of people who will support your choice to be whoever you wanna be.”
First, Kurt, clearly tired from the sword-fight that resulted in his diagonally damaged sweater-like-thing, chucks his past beliefs and prior personality out the fake window and condescendingly says coming out was hard for him, too.
Kurt and Blaine are ready to kick off Manslaughter Lady Music Week with “Fuckin’ Perfect,” a song written by two men and one woman with an exclamation point in her first name. Blaine says Kurt and Blaine always sing this song to each other in the car which is REDONK adorbs, and you know it.
As Klain hop around performing their Spectacular of Sanctimonious Bullshit, the entire Glee Club flips out and begins smiling and opening their mouths like kids catching snowflakes on their tongues but thank the lord of all that is glorious in the world of character consistency, Santana remains fairly icy throughout.
Meanwhile, Finn’s grinning like a cheetah who just got fistfucked by a five vegan turkey dogs. At one point, his entire head begins to expand, like a balloon.
Santana: “Thank you guys, thank you Finn, especially. You know, with all the horrible crap I’ve been through in my life, now I get to add that.”
You know, with all the horrible crap I’ve already been through in this episode, at least Santana said that.
Some other things happen involving, I think, a Will/Emma scene in the Teachers’ Lounge or maybe an office-related event involving a journaling voiceover re: Sue Sylvester’s madcap race for the senatorial seat via Cooter’s cooch:
Butttt anyhow, back at Manslaughter Lady Music Week, Puck is slaughtering fields of unborn lesbians like a Roto-Rooter by “singing” one of Melissa Etheridge’s many Odes to Stalking, “I’m the Only One.”
Puck is making a breast cancer survivor cry gay tears, which is against all the rules for all the things:
COME ON DUDES — you’ve already taken government, the world economy, television, movies, literature, religion, sports, Logo and prison, can’t you let us keep our lesbian folk-rock music?
Cut to the hallway, where Quinn attempts to seduce Puck into a weekend sleepover to play hide the salami which relates, somehow, to whatever enigmatic plotstravangza the writers gifted Dianna Agron this week, but Puck turns her down because Quinn is approximately ten years short of the minimum required age for any passengers interested in riding Puck’s pony.
Later and/or simultaneously in the heedful hallways of Finn Hudson High, Finn the Decider is ambling over to Santana to vomit some words in her face. Finn’s probably bored, he’s already been to Wendy’s twice and Rachel’s compulsively micro-managing the electoral process and brushing her hair. He just watched Ke$ha’s “It Gets Better” video and has a lot of feelings:
Finn wants to know how she likes his “lesson” thus far.
Santana:Â “Why are you getting so worked up about this?”
Finn: “Because I don’t want you to die.”
Really.
Really?
OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD OVER THE GRAVE OF ALL THE REAL PEOPLE FOR WHICH THIS IS A REAL ISSUE JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY GODDESS IN HEAVEN ON A CRACKER FUCK ME IN THE EAR.
Finn: “A few weeks ago, some kid who made one of those “It Gets Better” videos killed himself. You deal with your anxiety surrounding this stuff by attacking other people and some day that’s not gonna be enough and you’re gonna start attacking yourself.”
Okay, firstly, have some motherfucking respect for the fact that Jamey Rodemeyer was an actual person — a person very unlike Santana Lopez — an actual human being, not a little trick you can pull out to infuse a lackluster episode with faux-emotional-weight ’cause you can’t actually be bothered to think about anything more complicated or character-specific than that.
Santana: “Thanks but that’s not gonna happen. I’d miss me too much.”
AMEN.
Next: IT GETS WORSE
