I remember my dad making fun of me for being an adult who stood in line for hours at bookstores to get my hands on whichever new Harry Potter book was coming out at midnight, every time there was a new book, and I was always like, “The only people I want to know in my life are the ones who will stay up all night, nearly coming out of their own skins, because they’re so excited to be told a story they love.” Which is how I felt watching Twitter on Friday, gearing up for this episode of Glee.
I can’t claim the win; I checked out on Glee emotionally a long time ago. But goddamn, it was beautiful watching you your victory! That’s what I couldn’t explain to my girlfriend. “The thing” about Brittany and Santana is about falling in love with your best friend, which is a tale that never gets tired, but it’s also about a generation of queer women seizing their power and leading the way into a brave new world.
Becky comes clean to Sue about how she’s been lying to Darrell about her accomplishments of like discovering Atlantis and eradicating Ebola and beating Rainbow Road on Mario Kart Wii without ever even falling off the track even one time. Sue says all relationships are built on lies, even if the person you’re marrying is yourself. Sue seems genuinely excited to meet Becky’s beau, until she actually meets Becky’s beau, and then she seems like she wants to set his nards on fire. He doesn’t have Down Syndrome, which makes Sue think he’s exploiting Becky somehow, and so when he doesn’t die from the lethal laser beams she is shooting at him from her eyeballs, she decides to try a different tactic. But first Becky and Darrell have plans for Fuddruckers.
At glee club practice, Brittany and Santana mash-up “Hand in My Pocket”/”I Feel the Earth Move,” with a little harmony from Quinn now and again. The whole time, Santana is trying to get Brittany to just sit down so she can propose marriage to her, but if Santana is a kitten, Brittany is a golden retriever puppy and SHE JUST WANTS TO PLAY. Or either this is how they always are, like, “I’m going down first.” “No, let me.” “No, really, let me.” In which case they are gonna be juuuust fine. They sing, they shimmy, Brittany is dressed like breakfast. It’s awesome.
At the end of it, Santana asks her to please sit down, and then:
“I figured that this is as good a place as any to ask you this question. Mainly because it’s gonna really upset all the single guys and gals in here, but I wanna mash-up with you forever, Britt. I mean, some people love someone because they make them a better person and that’s not why I love you because you’ve always just wanted me to be myself. You’re my favorite person in the whole world. And we’re a big deal, you know, like no matter how many times we’ve tried to put our thing down and walk away from it we can’t because, I don’t wanna live my life without my one true love. And I normally say a lot of words when I’m saying something negative so since this is the most positive thing I’m ever gonna do, I’m gonna keep it simple. Brittany S. Pierce, will you marry me?”
Anyone who thinks that proposal wasn’t the best damn thing can suck an onion-flavored popsicle, and I mean it. Some asshole dropped a Tumblr ask in my box over the weekend talking about, “Santana used more words to tear down Kurt than she did to propose to Brittany and that says everything you need to know about how awful Brittana is.” And I’m like, “Uh, no. It tells you everything you need to know about how awesome Brittana is.” My girlfriend and I have been together four years and she can tell me three million words by touching my face and looking at me in my eyeballs for five seconds. I feel closer to her just lying in bed reading books for six hours, never saying anything, than I would if she was monologuing in my face all day. She can look at me across a room at a party in a bar with six hundred people, and I can tell you what’s going on in her head, and she never has to say a single thing. That thing Brittany and Santana have goes beyond words! They felt realer than ninety percent of the stuff on this show even when they were only holding pinkies and swaying together in the background!
Brittany says yes, obviously, because destiny is as destiny does.
One of the new guys is like, “What in the worrrllld?” And Puck is like, “Just a Tuesday, buddy.” The only person who isn’t moved to tears is Kurt, who — and we’ll forgive him for this because it’s the nature of humanity — can’t understand that his particular life situation isn’t the same as everyone else’s particular life situation, so he tries shut the whole thing down. But Tina goes, “When you find yourself trolling someone’s happiness in a way that even I would not contemplate, you need to check yourself.”
