Starsweep to Lima, where the Left Behind Club is officially the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard of. Kitty thinks the End of Times is coming and has somehow built a club around that. I don’t know about you, but my high school didn’t allow religious clubs. I dunno, I guess we were just old fashioned about “separation of church and state” or something.
The club meets after school at Breadsticks where, despite it being the school week again, Santana tags along to see what crazy misadventure Brittany has gotten herself into.
The club meeting actually, technically includes tricking a girl who’s “on the fence” about the whole Rapture Thing into believing she’s actually been left behind by staging a whole faux-rapture. See, as it turns out, Kitty isn’t just a rehashed version of Quinn. Instead of being self-absorbed and obsessed with small town success, she’s actually just batshit crazy. I have to applaud whomever came up with this idea, as long as it was originally written as a creative TV show bit and not as something the kids are actually doing these days.
Completely unimpressed, Santana says she and Brittany should leave, suggesting that perhaps this whole End of the World thing isn’t good for Brittany. But Brittany doesn’t want to leave the club because… um she doesn’t want to get left behind in the rapture because it hurt so much when Santana left her behind and went to college…? Yeah the logic here was a bit flawed. But regardless Santana realizes how upset Brittany has been about her leaving.
Back over at McKinley, it’s either later in the day or the next day — who the fuck knows. Potato Head wanders into Mr. Schue’s office and Will reacts like we give a shit about either of these characters. And Finn starts to cry just like he did that time he thought he’d knocked Quinn up. Statistically speaking there are 1,302 things I’d rather see on Glee than this brofest. Side note: why isn’t Potato Head crying into his mother’s arms? Or his step-father’s arms? Remember all that time spent building up those characters who I like a gagillion times better? Let’s use those characters.
So obviously instead of utilizing any of those characters, Finn just sits in on Glee Club rehearsal.
Finn: Why did you do that to him?
Blaine: I don’t know. There’s no excuse.
And here I think Blaine’s character is realer than ever. In high school shit just happens. Every girl you cheat on. Every girl you don’t call for weeks and weeks. Every girl you breakup with for no reason and regret it immediately. In high school it just happens. Things fall away from you and you’re too young to know why and you’re too inexperienced to know how to fix it. In high school, unlike the rest of your life, I think that’s actually okay. We’re allowed to do a few shitty things while we’re still learning who we are.
But Finn isn’t in high school anymore. So why the hell is he ignoring his girlfriend like a child and hanging around in the choir room?
So what is Glee Club doing today? Preparing for Sectionals right? Shit no! They’re planning the Fall Musical, which they somehow commandeered from the rest of the school. Obviously Finn saves everyone from everything ever by suggesting they do Grease. Do I lie and say I don’t love Grease? Nope! I totally do! Besides, nothing says Glee like a musical that was originally about working class kids in Chicago dealing with budding sexuality, rock music and religion/class conflict being watered down time and time again until all that’s left is upbeat music strung together by a drivel-thin G-rated plot line. I think it’ll be great.
If Santana doesn’t sing “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” then I quit.
Later that night, Will comes home and announces to Emma he’s won some arts thing he wanted and now he’s going to go to DC for a little while. Will wants Emma to come because they’re engaged and apparently she has some sort of imaginary High School tenure at her job. Instead of having a remotely mature conversation that you might expect out of two engaged grown-ass people, they get in a huge fight that makes no sense. I get when the kids act like kids, but I can’t care about the adults if they’re also going to act like kids.
Elsewhere, in New York, Kurt receives flowers from Blaine and dramatically drops the note in the trash in slow-mo. It’s a metaphor.
Back at McKinley, Santana still hasn’t returned to college for some reason. Instead, she sings Brittany a Taylor Swift song. For a second, I thought that this was going to be Satana’s big moment to be the big ‘ol lezzy she is and say that the two of them need to always care about each other because they’re each other’s one true love. But, um, then it started raining all over their faces and shit turned kind of dark.
Brittany: Sad songs make me really sad and I don’t want to be sad.
So instead of proclaiming her eternal love, Satana breaks up with Brittany.
That’s right.
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Santana and Brittany break up.
At least it’s like the most mature break-up ever. Ever. I don’t think I had a break-up that was this mature until I was twenty-four. Actually, I want to revise that: I’ve never had a breakup this mature. Obviously I sobbed.
Santana: I haven’t been a good girlfriend to you. I can’t come home on the weekends and pretend things are the same as they were because they aren’t. And I don’t want to be like all those other long distance relationships [read: everyone else on this show] that hang in there for a few months and then break up when someone eventually cheats and then things get weird.
Then Santana explains that she had what she actually calls an “energy transfer” with a girl who looks basically a ton like Paige from Pretty Little Liars.
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Santana: I had an attraction. And you may have had one [read: last week with Sam] or you might have one and… that happens. Let’s just do the mature thing here, okay? This is not an official break up, but let’s just be honest. Long distance relationships are almost impossible to maintain because both people are rarely getting what they need. Especially at our age.
I want to write that down somewhere and read it every time I have to break off a relationship because someone is moving. Excuse me while I go sob for another minute or thirty.
Back over with the new characters we don’t care about, Boring Punk breaks up with Psycho Quinn but still doesn’t want to be with Oak Tag Personality.
Back over with the old characters we don’t care about, Rachel shows up to Lima to confront Finn on the McKinley High stage. My first thought was, “Holy shit, she fucking flew all the way to see him and drove around town trying to find him? That’s ridiculous.” As it turns out Rachel had the same thought.
Rachel: Yeah I would have just come here first, if you would have picked up your phone or answered my text messages. Instead I had to get on a plane and then drive around town looking for you like an idiot.
Rachel explains that when Finn left originally, she thought that by having her go to New York he was setting her up to have the big fulfilling life she always deserved. Rachel uses the phrase “This is how a man loves” about the whole situation, but that makes me want to find the nearest trashcan and heave. Instead, Finn was a childish little baby , and Rachel tells him so. She tells him she doesn’t need him to protect her from things or save her from things or help her make choices; that’s she’s a grown woman.
Rachel: We’re done.
And it’s brilliant. It’s like the old Rachel is back, but instead of being driven about what solos she should get and what titles she deserves, she’s driven about what she deserves in a partner. Yeah I said partner. It was that real.
Cue Coldplay’s “The Scientist” for instant emotions and relationship flashbacks.
So basically everyone broke up, except maybe the grownups who are just acting like children for a hot minute. Part of me wants all TV high school couples to be together forever, but a big chunk of me wants to grab them all by the shoulders and shake them. I want to shake them until their relationships physically fall apart from my shaking, because that’s what they need. Because in their new big cities and jobs and colleges– even in their old high school– they need to live every day. They need to meet new people and forget about other people and discover things about themselves they never knew were there. There is so much life after 18, and you can’t get a fresh start or even a fresh ending waiting by the phone, feeling incomplete and refusing to meet anyone new.
Maybe people can live their lives that way, but it sure makes for shitty TV. The reason this season has felt so goddamn stale is that the five characters I give a shit about are paralyzed by their relationships.
Even though I specifically hate hate hate that I was just dragged through Brittana’s breakup, it will be okay if Glee rewards us with Santana finding a new hot college girlfriend. Yes it’s important for us to see a hot girl-girl high school couple in a loving committed relationship, but it’s also important for everyone to remember that you don’t have to stay with your first love. Your high school girlfriend doesn’t need to be your wife just because you met her first. You will meet other girls and they will be amazing beautiful shiny stars whose hair smells like lemons, too. Or maybe pomegranates.
So while this all sucked, at least now the show can move forward. Blaine can get into some fraternizing with the enemy Sebastian and cause some major drama with New Directions. Kurt and Rachel can hit every gay bar in New York as they live their own little mini Sex and the City show-within-a-show. Finn can be the useless and directionless potato we already know he is, to make up for all that time we had to watch while he gave everyone advice like a fucking putsy know-it-all. Santana can bang faux-Paige from Pretty Little Liars and maybe even get an alternative lifestyle haircut. Who knows, maybe we’ll have some new characters to obsess over. And Brittany, sadly, will probably go back to one-liners in the back of the class.
But we can always hope for better.
As for this week, my keen nose for obvious plot lines says Finn is going to direct the musical under the guise of helping out, which will either lead to him being a complete control freak and breaking down about his failed life or inspire him to become a music teacher.
