Welcome to the eighteenth recap of Glee, a show about a fat orange cat who just wants to sleep, eat lasagna, kick his lousy beagle frenemy off a table and mail his adorable little kitten to Abu Dhabi. Riese won’t be joining us this week because sometimes Glee is just, like, too much you know? I’m sorry this is late though, for real, I just already had loads of feelings about it. Don’t worry though, I’ll fill in the gaps for those of you playing at home.
This week’s episode starts off with a viewer discretion warning, because yes yes yes this episode will make you have tons of feelings because it discusses school violence and man is that a loaded topic. I was so furiously warned about the emotional impact of this episode that I literally had my knots in chest the entire episode. Every scene of Shooting Star was framed to convince you that a shooter could burst in at any moment.
There wasn’t even a “That’s what you missed on Glee.”
We open on Will “I can’t believe my solo carrer didn’t work out and I’m still stuck doing this bullshit” Schuester welcomes Glee Club 2.0 to the stage where he announces their competition for Regionals! From Some High School in Indiana it’s the Hoosierdaddies and from Our Lady of Perpetual Loneliness in Michigan it’s the Nuntouchables.
In case this wasn’t immediately clear to you and you had to google it, “Hoosier” is what you call someone from Indiana. The more you know! As for the Nuntouchables, I’d be inclined to believe they must be an all girls Catholic school and not a convent except that school in Gleeland is called Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow and their team is The Golden Goblets! If they really wanted to do an all girls choir, instead of a convent somehow squirreling a team of nuns into a high school choir competition, maybe it really should have been an all lesbian 1950’s themed show choir named The Titty Boppers! Glee: hire me for the writing team; I’m available.
Just then we get this screen image thing and I think it’s going to be a shooter.
But it’s not, so hold on to your deep stress relieving breathing! Instead, Brittany busts in and announces there’s another astroid/comet/meteor coming directly towards the school. Is it an awesome comet made of lesbians? Nope, it’s the terrible type. The world is going to end soon! Didn’t we already go through this? Y’all need to be more creative.
Blaine:Didn’t we just go through this at Christmas?
Tina:Yeah, and is it true that you and Sam got married? Did that happen?
Brittany:
Either way now Brittany wants to sing songs all about last words to people but mostly to her cat Lord Tubbington. Schue is totally into this idea even though it’s sort of alarmist. At this point you would think he would set up a meeting between Brittany and his fiance/girlfriend/ladywoman guidance counselor about distinguishing between real and imaginary and the effect that declaring the end of the world might have on other students. Nope, he’s gonna have them all sing about all of their feelings towards each other. Which is somehow different than what they do every week? I’d love to comment on that more but I’m too distracted by Artie’s commitment to mimicking Mr. Schue’s body language.
Meanwhile, Ryder-Bieber Strong finally sees That Girl He Met On Tumblr Because They Both Used #Nooneunderstands, Katiexoxo6969.Surprise surprise she goes to McKinley which somehow never ever came up in conversation despite the fact that they’ve told each other absolutely everything and have been in online love for at least three weeks now! That’s okay though, because true love isn’t about know where somebody lives or grew up or about their family. It’s about knowing how they deeply connect to Jimmy Eat World’s The World You Love. Just to clarify, The World You Love wasn’t in this episode but totally should have been.
She’s blonde and perfect, so Ghost Ryder does what any healthy young Frosted Flake eating high school boy would do and goes running to talk to his best friend/worst enemy/equally bland character Puck 2.0.
Either way, you know the blonde girl probably isn’t Katiexoxo6969 even before Ryder-Beiber Strong shows up at her locker about to piss himself. Why do we know she’s probably not real? Probably because she looks confused for every single second that he’s speaking to her.
Ryder-face drags blondie to the choir room to sing her his favorite rendition of Your Song. Blondie is so adorable and honestly I fall in love with her a little bit throughout the song because we all know how much I love a girl in a scarf. She also falls hopelessly in love with Ryder during the song, evident by her shrugging shoulders and occasional smiling, which I find surprising based on the fact that so far his character has basically been presented as 93% bigot, 6% Finn, 1% Goober’s premixed PB&J spread. (For statistical accuracy I’d like to point out that being 6% Finn makes Ryder actually just 3% tater-tot, 2% mansplaining and another 1% Goober’s premixed PB&J spread for a grand total of 95% the worst and 5% lunch.)
Here’s Elton John’s original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTa8U0Wa0q8&feature=youtu.be
And here’s the Glee version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP53S-oqr5w&feature=youtu.be
And here’s the version from Moulin Rouge that I listed to in the back of a tour bus on repeat for two weeks during my Bat Mitzvah vacation with my grandmother:
After he finishes singing his littler floppy-haired heart out, Ghost Ryder announces his undying love for Katiexoxo6969 and– whoops, her name is Marissa. Unlike Marissa Cooper (the One True Marissa) she isn’t involved in a romantic relationship involving a secret identity. Actually someone just stole her picture to “Catfish” Ryder. What is catfishing? I only knew the word from that movie Catfish where a young man gets tricked into thinking he knows a girl from Facebook only to find out it’s someone just deceiving him– oh wait. I figured out what catfishing is.
Marissa’s is like, “Ryder, I know you just called me by the wrong name but I’m so attracted to your bigoted face that you can call me any time day or night if you want to hook up and be in love forever.” I sort of wish she could have been secretly crushing on Brittany and mortified by Ryder’s advances, but still I’m a little emotionally attached to this Marissa girl now. Ryder, on the other hand, literally could not care less about her feelings and just leaves to figure out who’s katiefishing him. Slick move dick.
Mostly I’m just really scared this is going to be a terrible, stereotypical awful “transgender entrapment” type plot line with Unique. It would so stupid if that’s where they’re going with this since:
1. Unique is hot and perfectly capable of finding a boyfriend without tricking someone
2. It would be really out of character for Unique to want to hide who she is since basically her entire plot line has revolved around being proud of who she is
3. It’s even more out of character for Unique to choose pretend to be white
4. Why on earth would Unique even be into a bigot who openly misgendered her like two episodes ago?
The most important take away from this scene is this hawt violinist who probably follows Autostraddle and DapperQ on twitter IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
The shakey-cam follows Ryder through the halls of McKinley and he confronts Marley-Kate and Puck 2.0. He’s convinced up and down that they’re the ones pretending to be Katiefish.
Ryder is pissed. Real pissed. Like so angry. he storms off mumbling to himself and leaving us all with that queasy feeling that this was going to turn into Ryder bringing a gun to school but, spoiler alert, I was wrong.
Starsweep to the Gleesters in the auditorium where Brittany gets the kids together to sing More Than Words. Is it to each other? Nope, it’s to Lord Tubbington. Either way I find this song insipid.
Here’s the Original:
Here’s the Glee version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANjQPY8J6QQ&feature=youtu.be
Time warp to when classes end, and in the dark hallways of the school, Will whistles while he walks. Rewatching it now I feel silly, but on the first round through I was just sure this would be a shooting. Instead Will heads into the locker room for… a dinner with Coach Beiste?
Anyways looks like Coach Beist set up a romantic dinner for two. Of all place in the school/town/country why on earth would Coach Beiste plan this for inside the school? I think in any other episode this would have taken place at Breadsticks fabulous Italian restaurant. The only reason this was set in the school was to heighten the drama regarding a shooting. Ugh. Either way, Coach Beiste proclaims her love for Will and his epic collection of sweatvests. Will’s not interested. I find this whole scene repulsive. Not because of heterosexual sex and stuff, but because of Glee‘s treatment of Coach Beiste. I mean, Coach Beiste isn’t some hideous undesirable woman with a horrible personality. Dot Jones is hot! She has a hot girlfriend and everything! Let’s stop pretending that this is realistic. Whatever.
