Oh right there’s this whole tedious Sue Sylvester is running for Senate or something storyline happening. She’s doing shit like this…
… and although Sue’s lines are all brilliant, I’m only recapping the kiddos ’cause I have a family to take care of.
But I think it’s time we introduce the Santana Moment — in the spirit of The L Word recap’s “Jenny Moments” — and this ep it comes during the meeting when Sue tells Becky and Santana they’re gonna be Cheerios co-captains.
Santana Moment:Â “Let me tell you how this is gonna be, if I may. When I look at a person I don’t see someone who looks a certain way or has this or that amount of chromosomes. I just see someone I may or may not have to destroy. So if you ever tell me what to do, I will end you.”
Sue can’t let this Glee thing go, though, and needs Santana to fuck some shit up.
Sue:Â “You like playing for both sides, don’tcha? Which side are you playing for this year — losers or winners?”
Santana:Â “Team Sue.”
Because tracksuits are way hotter than sweater-vests (until Blaine wears one later, you’ll see).
The Gleeksters are trying to eat their tater-tots in peace but Rachel’s having a Polly Wants a Party Moment. Against all evidence to the contrary, she thinks an idea had by Mr. Shu involving singing/dancing in public is a really great idea that’ll bring them heaps of new members.
Finn, because he’s succumbed to the lesbian urge to merge: “Rachel’s right, how’s anybody supposed to believe we should go to nationals if we can’t even believe in ourselves?”
Thus “We’ve Got the Beat” touches down in the McKinley High cafeteria. And to be honest? It’s kinda awesome.
Brittany and Santana are dancing like Gidget Goes to a Strip Club, Rachel’s doing that “I’M AT A BEATLES CONCERT!” face and dancing like she just learned how to put a tampon in, Mike’s slapping his own ass, Puck’s doing push-ups on the table and Artie is, you know, wheeling around. All things said, it’s kinda fucking awesome/weird. And then what do you know, Brittany is dancing on the table and if you don’t love this even a little bit then you are probably way cooler than I am.
Those extras are a tough sell, though, and Jacob BenIHateYourFace starts a food fight, because the four adult employees of this school are in the teacher’s lounge talking about E Coli and clearly nobody appreciates this:
These kids are addicted to Boyardee.
Back in Glee Club, the kids, looking like escapees from The Olive Garden Neverending Pasta Bowl, once again beg their leader to stop humiliating them in front of the entire school.
Thank Jesus these two are back again into their old ways and Brittany hasn’t touched Artie yet all episode.
This random boring-looking chick in red capris, wedges and alfredo sauce, enters, says something awesome…
Sugar Motta:Â “Here’s the deal, I’m awesome, and I wanna be a big big star, and when I saw you guys singing and dancing in the cafeteria I thought, I am so much better than them!”
… and then said she has self-diagnosed Aspergers and can say whatever she wants.
She belts “Big Spender” which just-so-happens to be the song I sing when demonstrating how I can’t sing.
Her Dad was the one who donated the pianos to the school. We know this because Kurt tells Mercedes “her Dad donated those pianos to the school.”
Rachel, because she is A Star, knees Mr.Shu in the back to shut him up and tell Sugar “we’ll be in touch.” She asks for them to text her schedh.
Rachel and Kurt, after their trip to New York, are hopelessly cooler and more sophisticated than the rest of the club and also, clearly, the two biggest dorks in the entire school by far, which is why, if you’ve ever in your life been ridiculous, you can’t help but kinda relate to them every now and then. Whatever your stupid dorky hobby/passion was, you know?
Cheerios Auditions — not, unfortch, the Bring It On parody I’d anticipated.
Mr. Shoe, ’cause he’s a pussy and he knows it and he’s gotta stop showing it, ducks in to glitterbomb Sue while Emma films on her flipcam. It’s cute, almost. Sue Sylvester can do no wrong.
Look who’s here!
Blaine, because he’s cheesy and attentive like that, visits McKinley but Kurt doesn’t think anything of it because definitions of “class” and “school” and “space” and “time” are just all out of whack in this place, where would you even begin deciding who ought to be where, when .
Kurt:Â “Wait what are you doing here, shouldn’t you be at Warbler practice putting the fine-tuned touches on a Katy Perry number?”
That’s a nod to you, Internet.
About a second later, Kurt gets it and pretty much dies of happiness. I think Blaine has softened him — Kurt was verging on the edge of bitchy for parts of last season and now we’re back on funny-bitchy-track.
So Blaine immediately trots into the Outside Set and launches into “It’s So Unusual” which may or may not be a throwback to Carlton in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (which in and of itself was a throwback, so), but whatever, it is.
It’s a fun number — flocks of cheerleaders in short skirts with significant quadriceps and Blaine leaping around like young Richard Simmons in a Gap Khakis commercial.
The kids scowl like it’s unusual for the Homo Club to turn lunch into Main Street Disney every Tuesday and they haven’t already acclimated to this kind of brouhaha.
After Blaine and Santana’s cute Dance of the Lesbian and the Gay, Â Quinn Queen of Darkness tosses her cigarette onto the piano which lights on fire. That’ll probably inspire lots of people to join Glee Club. “It’s just like on MTV!”
Back at the Manhattan Academy of Advanced Theatrical Institute Mixer-Thing (no really, what’s this thing they’re at?), taking place at The Ramada but without tiny melon balls, Kurt & Rachel walk in on a group who’s been chilling at the Ramada listening to Carousel since they were fetus baby stars.
They’ve got this FANTASTIC NUMBER they’ve been working on since their outfits were last in style (1933 or 1992, depending on who we’re dealing with) and Kurtchel have just got to see the fuck out of this number.
Dandy:Â “As my future husband, Robert Pattinson always says, it’s refreshing to get new blood.”
Glee Project Girl, in full Fleet Week regalia and flocked by fey dandys with expressive eyeballs, unloads a cavalcade of Showtune Showmance Showmanticstravaganza upon the unsuspecting judgey bitches.
The look is “Gymboree for Adults Goes to Paris with a Newsie.” It’s all the rage at Tisch.
Following this number, Kurt and Rachel realize that they’re only everything because everything else is nothing — or maybe that’s not true, but they’ve got no way of knowing what’s true just yet. They’re stuck in a crappy Ohio public school (despite, apparently, Rachel living in a mansion) without musicals or continuity or graduation.
Rachel: “We just have to move to another town and just erase our identities and resign to a sad life of community theater, Nunsense, Love Letters, The Vagina Monologues — face it this is our future. Not everyone’s dreams come true.”
Not everybody is Lea Michele and Chris Colfer, in other words.
At some point a crew guy woke up, realized two actors were crying in a car, and flipped on The Rain Machine, because on this show when someone is crying in a car, the whole sky cries with them. They pump each other up and hug pinkies.
This is actually a really special and touching scene because it conjures up all kinds of complicated emotional quagmires for these two that maybe they’ve never had anyone to talk to about before. I’m interested to see how/if this develops.
Blaine, in his totally sweet vest-and-gingham ensemble, gets up there like he’s speaking to a group of people not formerly described as “used” and “in need of repair.”
Blaine: “Thanks so much everyone. I’m so thrilled to be here. It’s gonna be a great year, I can feel it. We’re all gonna go to nationals!”
!!
Finn throws out some butthurt lesbian nonsense about Blaine lighting their piano on fire, and Santana chimes in that it was an act of political protest.
Mr Shoehorn: Â “Santana, you need to leave, it was you and the Cheerios who set fire to our piano. How could you do that?”
Santana: “Mr Shue, Sue made me!”
Mr Shoehorn: “Brittany didn’t do it.”
Brittany: “Well yeah I was gonna help but I don’t know, I’m a water sign, so…”
I’m excited for next week, when Santana will be back in Glee Club.
Okay, we’re almost at the end! Kurt & Rachel wanna do a musical but not a controversial or expensive one.
Oh fantastic, another diva-off. I hope Kurt also wants to be Maria so we can have a Moment about Gender Roles. Also Finn can’t be a Jet or a Shark, it’s just embarrassing.
I just want to point out, if you’re not already aware, that if you haven’t seen Alex Vega dance to “We Can’t Stop the Beat” with imaginary drumsticks in a giant apartment then your life has not been as blessed as mine has.
Everyone’s wearing purple because it’s gay, just like the pianos and purple skittles.
Quinn just had an abortion in the alley, injected heroin into her neck and got her septum pierced in the dressing room and is watching them and thinking holy shit, what a bunch of dorks.
Honestly I think this took me so long to write because the episode itself was just so MEH. I didn’t think about it much afterwards and found little to say about it as I wrote this. Nothing of interest really happened besides Quinn’s makeover, and the few things that did happen we know will only be temporary, anyhow, ’cause that’s how the show is. But at the same time these characters are really cute and it’s like each actor is a one-man show, which helps. Also, Â there’s singing and dancing, and in between the singing/dancing is a thing they call “story” except it’s the same story every time. I guess basically it’s like porn, but with singing and dancing instead of sex.
Next Week on Glee:
