Hello, welcome to the sixth recap of the sixth season of Glee, a show that nobody is watching anymore except us! No but seriously, why’d they move this show to Friday night, how many teenagers watch television on Friday nights. Even I didn’t watch the show on Friday night, because my girlfriend wanted to watch SVU on Netflix instead, so then I had to wait forever ’til it went up on Hulu and I had plans all weekend and now here we are, today, sitting in front of our screens in our pants and our socks, ready to talk about this gay-ass show.
We open in the hallowed hallways of McKinley High School, where Samuel and Rachel have converged, like two stars in the raging night, to discuss their date that very evening at Soup Salad and BREADSTIX, a hot night-club-slash-family-style-restaurant.
Unfortunately, even the smoky residue radiating from their burning hot loins cannot overcome the melodic beating of their scarred “teenage” hearts — in fact, they fear they will never Fall in Love Again. NEVER AGAIN! Let’s sing about it:
http://youtu.be/PKwAIwU4uFc
Over at Pierce’s Party Palace, Brittany’s parents — played by my BFF Jennifer Coolidge (I met her once, she held me in her bosom) and Ken Jeong — pop in to inform Brittany that Pierce Pierce is not her real father. I hope it’s Darth Vadar!
Nope, it’s Stephen Hawking, which explains Brittany’s mathematical genius. Turns out that J-Cool and S-Hawk knocked boots during The Pierces’ Honeymoon and nine months later, Brittany fell out of j-Cool’s vagina in a barn in Indiana!
Then, Brittany tells the parents that she’s getting married to Santana and they’re delighted. Just pure delight, free of politics, entirely in their own vacuum of fat cats and pink flowers: she’s getting married! Loving love for love’s own sake.
Back in the hallowed halls of McKinley High School For Tiny Creepy Dolls, Rachel and Sam are wearing shoes and are nervous running into each other. No really, that’s what I have in my notes: “Rachel and Sam are wearing shoes, are nervous running into each other.”
Unfortunately, the gaping holes in their hearts where their exes once hung out singing soft rock ballads are too enormous to conquer, so they awkwardly cancel that evening’s date, then accidentally say “I love you” to each other. Oops.
We then ice skate on over to the Meeting Of the Club Of Glee, where Kurt and Rachel inform the little birds that it’s Burt Bachrach Week. They’re honoring Mr. Schuster’s memory by convincing teenagers who are too young to remember when AOL cost $2.95 an hour to flip out about over the collected works of somebody Colonel Sanders’s age. But they probably don’t even know who Colonel Sanders is! No really Burt Bachrach is a genius.
In honor of this triumphant week of song, Mercedes shows up to mentor. She’s famous now, but it’s cool, we can still be friends.
The thing is, reader, that these little bits of Rachel and Sam feel like a final-season afterthought, a “well, why not?” plot to get Rachel back in the saddle without dishonoring Finn’s memory. I get it, and in a way, I think they have to do it, and it’s kinda sweet. It’s also sweet that Mercedes has returned, secure in her fame, in romance (and in being the club’s most successful alum), and that now Mercedes and Rachel can be friends and even cheerleaders for each other. But as much as I wanna get into this, I’m just so pleased as punch that the gay couple and the lesbian couple are center-stage this season that I JUST WANNA TALK ABOUT THEM FOREVER AND NOT ANY OF THE OTHER PARTS!
Anyhow…Â Mercedes tells Rachel that she should go for Sam’s salami and also that she should go to New York, New York to chase her dreams and hopefully also show up for an audition Mercedes booked for Russel Simmons’ new musical.
Mercedes: “You wanna know what the best thing is about having our gift? It’s always there, like a good friend. When you open your mouth, there it is.”
That’s how I feel about string cheese!
We then put on our pantyhose and our sensible heels and shuffle over to The April Rhodes Memorial Pavilion for a rousing musical number Mercedes has put together to raise Rachel’s spirits. Santana, Brittany, Mercedes and Rachel wear tight bedazzled dresses and the bigger their hair, the closer they are to the lord. There’s something so sexy about Brittany and Santana performing together, every time. Like I can’t stop thinking “those two girls have actual sex!” It’s cotton candy and pink stars all over.
I just wanna give myself a pat on the back for the excellent notes I took on this episode. For example, for this scene, I have helpfully noted: “auditorium bee-bop sha la la.”
Even after this uplifting musical experience, Rachel remains wary of returning to the Big Apple, where she could get hurt again. This is valid. (See 1-3 on this list.)
Hey, I wonder what’s happening over at the Palace of Pierce? Well, I’ll tell you: Brittany has invited Artie over to her room to discuss wedding plans!
Brittany: Welcome to my bedroom!
Artie: I’ve been in here before. We dated for, like, three months.
Brittany: I think I would have remembered if I had dated a guy with glasses, okay?
Brittany’s knocked her brain against her skull and come up with a list of things that remind her of Santana and she imagines one of them could be a theme for the wedding she just told Artie he’d be planning for free. Unfortunately, none of them are “Cuntry Living” or “Misandry.” They are:
- Scissors
- Sweet lady kisses
- Tuna
- Heaven
Obviously he’s gonna go with scissors, right?
Artie’s into the heaven idea:
Brittany: When I’m with Santana, it just feels like I’m in heaven, and angel wings remind me of her.
Artie: Okay, let’s explore heaven.
Indeed! Thus Brittany, Artie, Sam, Blaine and a bunch of extras put on nightgowns and angel wings and transport themselves to the set of “Beauty School Dropout” to explore heaven. Everybody’s wearing pajamas! It’s like a slumber party! Plus, I love a good pronoun switch.
http://youtu.be/Oj3pMz_1CcM
We then strap on our strap-ons and hop over to The Glee Club room, where Mercedes is rallying the children to inspire Rachel to leave them by reminding her that she loves New York. I hope this plan involves Tasti-D-Lite.
Santana looks over Brittany’s crayon-scrawled wedding invitation list, expressing concern that Joan Baez and Johnny Weir might not show up. That is exactly what my parents said to me about Chris Webber coming to my Bat Mitzvah.
More shocking than those additions, however, is this one:
Santana: Uh, why are you inviting my abuela?
Brittany: Because you won’t and she should be there.
Santana: You know, when I was little we used to play wedding all the time. She would give me her veil and I would wrap her shawl all around me like a dress, and I would march down the aisle and she would hum the wedding march and then she would ask me what guy I was gonna marry that day. My whole life I’ve dreamt of my wedding with her sitting in the front row bawling. And believe me if I could get into her head and bring it into this century, I would, and I would forgive her and have her here, she’s my abuela, you know, the lady with the big plates of rice and beans…. but having her at my wedding means not marrying you. And I’d choose you over everyone.
Brittany: I choose you too!
It’s like Trainspotting! I choose life!
Cut to Abuela’s house, where Brittany has shown up in one of those costumes Emily and Spencer wore to creep around the hospital and look for missing files. She’s there to pretend to be Abuela’s new nurse.
Brittany asks about her stool, calls Dr.Walgreens, speaks deft Spanish and eventually makes her way into Abuela’s heart by suggesting they break for some telenovelas.
Abuela notices Brittany’s ring and starts asking her about her fiancee. She assumes, of course, that it’s a man, and she wants to know everything: when they met, how they met, if they’re having kids — a bittersweet reminder that if she knew who Brittany was marrying, she’d not want one single solitary detail on the whole affair.
(Also noted: Brittany says she popped a hip once during sex. THE HAZARDS OF SCISSORING!)
Brittany, however, has just sold everybody’s second-favorite Melted-Cheese-Focused show, Fondue for Two, to Univision, and is pleased as spiked punch to invite Abuela onto the show as her first guest. If Lord and Lady Tubbington could stop messing with the pinata and somebody could get a baby carrot into my mouth, we could get this show on the road.
Tonight’s show is all about weddings and maybe Steven Hawking. Abuela talks about meeting Hector Lopez in Vietnam, but then he died, and then she met Pedro Lopez, who she liked much better. This inspires Brittany to share her own American History story:
Brittany: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had a best friend, Lorena Hickok. They vacationed together, wrote over 3,000 letters to each other and legend has it, Eleanor kissed Lorena’s picture every night before bed!
This delightful tidbit of Sapphistry doesn’t register with Abuela, but Brittany wondering if she and Santana should just elope (Ideally to Disneyworld, this show really needs a Disneyworld episode) inspires Abuela to threaten to skin Brittany alive!
Abuela: When two souls unite as one, it is a day of celebration. You should be surrounded by your loved ones, especially tu familia. Friends come and go, but family is your blood. And they need to share in your joy.
Cut to Santana in a coffee shop, tuning in live on her laptop. Abuela’s most recent declaration is more than she can bear, though, and thus she shuts it down.
It’s that tricky thing homophobes do, how they focus on the family with all their might while refusing to accept anybody’s definition of family besides their own. The kind of family that Santana needs — hell, that all of us need — isn’t conditional or judgmental, it’s pure and open-armed. Brittany has that with her parents, and she just wants Santana to have it too.
