Now it’s time for an episode of Fondue for Two, aka “When Keeping It Real Goes Right,” featuring Mercedes Jones and Rachel Berry!
Brit-Brit launches right in to dishing  the dirt with Rachel, doing that thing Glee does now where it responds to fan critiques of the show’s radical disassociation from reality by lampshading instead of by fixing the actual show.
Brittany: You’re currently rehearsing for a lead role in a Broadway musical. You’re also working full time as a singing waitress at a diner and enrolled full time as a student at NYADA.
Rachel: That’s correct.
Brittany: Would you agree that it’s slightly irresponsible for you to leave New York for an entire week for no other reason than the Glee Club’s been canceled?
Rachel: No- I just-
Brittany: When are the lies going to stop? You don’t even live in New York. I’m not even sure you’ve been to New York.
Rachel: Brittany, we went to New York together.
Brittany: Don’t change the subject.
Rachel: Are your cats making out?
Brittany: Yes, they are.
Brittany hops over to Mercedes to wink/nod at her turn on Dancing With The Stars:
Brittany: Mercedes, how would you respond to the rumors that you’re a really good dancer-
Rachel: Baha.
Brittany: -but you hid the fact the entire time you were in Glee Club so Mr. Shue would allow you to, quote, “park and bark”?
Mercedes: No comment.
Brit-Brit’s final question: what song will the ladies be bestowing upon us today? They answer at the same time: “Defying Gravity.” Rachel says she and Kurt will be switching parts, but Mercedes says that doesn’t count as “reinventing a song,” but Rachel disagrees and suggests they handle this “the old-fashioned way.”
Mercedes: “A diva-off? Oh HELL TO THE YES.”
Cut to The Olive Garden, where Quinn has taken Biff to enjoy Lima’s number one silent killer: Alfredo-induced cardiac arrest.
Biff is yabbering about how rich people are better-looking than poor ones, because he’s an idiot.
Quinn: It means so much to me that you came back here. You know, it makes us feel so much more real.
Biff: Yeah, well, we are very real. I love you, Quinn. I want to really get to know you.
Quinn: Well, what do you want to know? I can tell you so many things, like that time that I saved this girl from dro-
Before Quinn can continue with her farcical tale, Biff spots her buddies at an adjacent booth and invites them over to enjoy a $9.95 Tour of Italy with the Inventor of Apples.
Santana: Hi. Santana Lopez. Word on the street is that you’re old money. I’m a lesbian but totally into that.
Mike: Mike Chang. Asian dancer.
Artie: And I’m Artie Abrams. I may look like a dweeb in a wheelchair, but my girlfriend’s a cheerleader.
Biff really wants to get the scoop on his Angel Queen, and her friends are eager to explicate.
Biff: So what about Quinn? How would you describe her in one sentence?
Mike: She’s constantly surprising you. Like, one year she showed up to school in the fall and decided she wanted to be a skank.
Santana: She died her hair pink. She got a Ryan Seacrest tattoo and then lit a purple piano on fire.
They haven’t even mentioned that time she had an actual HUMAN BABY and already Biff is bewildered, but Quinn insists that they’re just kidding! With Biff sent to the car to fetch her purse, Quinn tells her friends to STFU because she needs to get in with Biff’s “Philadelphia mainline family” and then she’ll be “set for life.” That would potentially look like this:
Me: grace can you photoshop Quinn into this picture?
Intern Grace: hahaha yes.
[five minutes later]
Intern Grace: How’s this? I’m very mad because there is a picture of quinn wearing chambray but she is pregnant :(
so now they look straight out of But I’m A Cheerleader
Snap to Sue’s office, where April Rhodes is explaining how she wants to save the Glee Club with her non-profit LLC. Â See, April Rhodes funds the existence of the auditorium, an arrangement which remains fuzzy at best in the recesses of my damaged mind. Therefore, she claims, it’s her choice what happens in the auditorium, and she choses GLEE CLUB!
Sue is skeptical.
Slam-bang back to Glee Club, where we launch into “Defying Gravity,” as performed by Rachel Berry, Mercedes Jones and Kristin Chenoweth JUST KIDDING even though K-Chen is right there, they once again involve Kurt Hummel in this number. I mean, he’s great! But KRISTIN CHENOWETH IS RIGHT THERE and he’s not part of the Diva-Off so WHAT GIVES.
http://youtu.be/BSz7I3l7gMI
Here’s the original:
http://youtu.be/uQHIFMzQSs0
At the song’s end, April exclaims “That song should be on the Broad-way!” Har.
The Glee Club members are supposed to vote on who’s the BEST but Sir William says they’re all winners and everyone should go home and “sleep on it.” Fake Quinn is like, okay I will sleep on that and also on my new dildo.
This episode reminded me of how much more alive the whole show felt when the original cast was still around. They had a lot of dud episodes, to be sure, and some spectacular failures, but it was rarely boring.
Starsweep to the great outdoors, where Brittany’s gotten the entire Chess Club to enroll in a live-action re-creation of the 1972 chess match between Bobby Fisher and somebody else. Santana interrupts to remind Brit-Brit that her true heart’s desire is not telling adolescents dressed in spandex where to walk and who to check but to dance dance dance!
Santana suggests they do a little dance number together but Brit-Brit refuses because “this is my life now.”
Sweep on back to Glee Club, where Rachel and Mercedes are delivering monologues about why they are the best and should win the Who’s The Best Contest. What about a Who’s The Worst contest? Huh? What about those of us who identify as The Worst?
Before the vote takes place, drunken socialite and overall badass April Rhodes shimmies up to the happy homos to inquire about their impending nuptials. Kurt and Blaine say they’re having a very long engagement and have yet to pick a date for the big day.
April Rhodes: “I’m so happy for you. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: The one thing this country needs more of is teen marriage. I got you a wedding present.” [She gives them HOOCH because she is amazing.]Â It’ll help dull the excruciating pain of your wedding night sodomy and the inevitable divorce that you’re careening towards a couple months later.”
Next up, Private Puckerman wants to perform a hymnal from the open seas, but really who gives a crap, not us, because then PRAISE LESBIAN JESUS Santana pops in to stage a dancervention on Brit-Brit.
Thus Santana seduces us all into a rousing rendition of “Valerie,” which you may recall from some kind of geographically-based singing contest during The Season Lauren Zieses was in. Brit-Brit resists the urge to Shut Up and Dance but is swiftly seduced by the beating of her athletic heart.
It’s full of energy and perfection and offers New Puck and Mike Chang and Brit-Brit a chance to showcase their dancing chops. We don’t really get to see New Puck dance very much ’cause he doesn’t have a girl who can match him.
Plus — despite the fact that the choreography could’ve easily paired of Santana and Brit-Brit with the dancer boys, the sapphic twosome remain front and center! I appreciated that, and you will too:
http://youtu.be/hXraTtoqKXA
Here’s the original:
Now Puck wants to do his number in the auditorium so everyone can sit in a circle and he can stare creepily at Quinn for the entire time. Here’s how that goes:
http://youtu.be/_eadeFYTg8o
Here’s the original:
http://youtu.be/wt_qKCF4KHA
Quinn cries afterwards but says it’s not because of Puck, it’s because she had totally forgotten that that song ever existed and pretty soon she’ll forget everything. I think this means that Quinn has been smoking a lot of pot at Yale.
Puck:Â We all love you for who you are.
Quinn:Â And I’m in love with Biff.
Comments
Holy shit, that Toxic video. Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yeah, to my bunk I go!
Just realized that Santana’s had sex with both of them, and I’m angry that they didn’t even hint at that. Grrrrr
But yeah, I nearly threw my laptop against the wall with the Quick kiss. CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT THEIR MEMORABLE MOMENT WAS NONCONSENSUAL??? Yeah, highlighting the deplorable state of your sex education, Glee. Good job. We need Ali to fix that shit.
(Otherwise, I’m definitely going to watch this episode and weep at what could have been and the loss of what once was.)
Brittana felt like home, but if Santana chooses Brittany does it she won’t come back to new york?. And also Dani is the most underused character Glee has ever had.
Yeah, I feel like we’ve gotten maybe two minutes of Dani, total, which is ridiculous. I want to see them in bed together after having kinky sex all afternoon, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Brittana getting back together means no more Demi Lovato and I am just not okay with that. At All.
lol that fanfiction break for the Brittana scene was beautiful
I had to stop reading the recap to frantically google Ellen and Portia because of that caption, and when I returned, I saw the next caption.
I think from now on we all need to agree jokes about them may cause widespread heartbreak and rioting, and for the safety of us all those jokes must be banned.
haha, my heart definitely tightened when I read that caption! I was hoping the next caption would be what it was!
I never comment but I just want to mention that I LOVE THESE RECAPS and I have never missed a single one. Also I want to feel conflicted about the possibility of Brittana reuniting because of Santani (I thought I just made that up but Google says no), but I don’t. Oops.
see, the great majesty of these recaps is how you can re-watch something seemingly boring like a rendition of “Happy,” and Grace and Riese can spot a hidden gem in the episode, like Ryder’s leap into the air.
Or, how they totally save me the time to look up the original songs and still express a healthy does of “ugh” at Glee’s poor excuse of lampshading. I mean, I stopped my morning marathon of good/bad television just to read this recap, and it makes me feel SOOOOOOOO much better that I still watch Glee, even though it will never give me the Santani (we should use that term, or at least make a drink with the same name) sex scene that I dream of.
Well, done, Riese and Grace.
i loved loved loved Valerie! and i’m totally for the Brittana reunion, maybe they’ll go together to New York? (it’s never going to happen, is it?:( )
also i would have preferred having as guest star Adele Dazeem (i’m never gonna stop laughing about this) instead of Gwyneth Paltrow.
They can’t really bring in Shelby for a cheerful visit since her character has a very complicated story with Quinn and Rachel.
But it’s Glee. They pretty much ret-conned Beth anyways so they’d probably forget anyways.
Oh god I am so anal over this and I apologize forever, but the wrong form of ‘dyed’ was used where Santana’s quoted as saying “She died her hair pink.”
GREAT ARTICLE THOUGH! You save me the pain of having to watch this show by recapping all of the best Lesbian Lord and Saviour moments and for that I am eternally grateful.
Every time the old cast comes back I just realize how much better they are than the new ones – singing, dancing (apart from New Puck, who can really move) and acting. I don’t know if the new kids aren’t really getting the chance to make an impact because they’re constantly overshadowed by the old guys who we already know and (maybe) love, or if they really just aren’t as engaging.
Also, I just watched the original Defying Gravity – how young and little they all look, and how much higher their voices are! Kurt especially has traded in his superhigh voice for cheekbones.
As an army brat, I should point out to Puck that in the military, you can and will go to prison for going AWOL, so I would think twice about “staying”.
Also, I’m fed up with the writers always going back to the evil-Santana place, and I don’t remember her hitting that below the belt in the entire five seasons of Glee. What gives?
I hate the evil Santana place too. They always make her especially bad before they put her in her place. The last time she was this awful and mean was with Finn and then he outed her.
I watched this entire episode instead of just watching Pezberry clips on tumblr. That is a testament to the fact that I am naive sucker. Brittana is going to ride off into the sunset – is this how they are writing Naya out?