Glee 222 Recap: New York State of Mind Control

I had this great idea for a business. See — I don’t really have any marketable skills and nobody’s interested in my English Literature degree. But there must be something I’m really, really, really good at, right? So I sat here and thought about what that thing might be. What am I good at?

Then it hit me!

I’m good at telling the powers-that-be how tofix their shit for next season. I’m good at doing this while sitting my Mom’s couch in my ex’s pajama pants as the waters of all the Great Lakes slowly flood her neighborhood streets.

[I was just bitching about recapping Glee to my girlfriend and she said “glee is a thing that i feel when i’m with you”! Isn’t that adorable?!]

Anyhow where was I? Yes. Here on the couch in my wet socks (I walked outside to observe Noah’s Ark), eating my tomato soup. Anyhoo, I’ve got a few BRILLIANT ideas for Will because SPOILER ALERT his team didn’t even place in the Top Ten at Nationals.

SORRY BUT IT’S TRUE!

Okay — let me start out by saying that I’ve got no show choir experience ’cause my singing voice sounds like Sookie Stackhouse’s screaming voice. But I am smart IN GENERAL.

So. Firstly, it helps to pick a song that really “matches” your group. It’s especially useful to look back on the numbers already performed this season for various insipid, perplexing reasons and select one to sing at The Big Contest. Why surprise yourself with a song allegedly composed in the hotel room where the Glee children were locked up and subsequently escaped to play instruments, kiss each other and eat hot dogs in the cool New York City day when you could pick one of the millions of songs you can access on iTunes, Amazon.com or even at your local record store?

Tip Number Two — Ever thought about giving solos to your most talented singers? I know, I know — I’M A GENIUS! — but spread me on a Saltine and stick me in a vintage lunchbox if I’m not onto something with this. Don’t select songs based on which will most effectively forward the (again, inane) plotline, Mr. Doofster, pick the right song for your SINGERS! Like maybe Kurt, Mercedes and Rachel? Santana? Give the people the solos they deserve!

But it’s a live performance with dancing, right? Well, how about featuring your most talented dancers? Giving Finn two seconds of aired dance-time was good for a laugh, but not for your success. Don’t match Brittany up with who she dated, match her up with the other male dancer in your squad, and leave ’em at the front to sport their stuff.

Just an idea.

We open in New York City – UH HUH – center of the universe – SING IT, GIRL! — where the entire Glee Club has conspired to eye-blast the entire citizenry of Manhattan via Bright Color Overload. Seriously it’s like GapKids and Gymboree had a baby and that baby invaded the tkts booth. Kurt’s foregoing the Bright Colors trend however. Kurt is dressed, as he so often is, for battle.

Rachel’s snagged tickets to Cats from some guy’s asshole and Quinn reminds her that it closed ten years ago badum-CHING! and instead of pooling their taffy money together to catch a matinee of Mama Mia!, the kids do what children are so wont to do and create their very own musical on the streets of New York City.

Not yet though.

Also? Lea Michele playing a character awestruck by the majestry and giant billboards of New York City is like seeing Brian Kinney play a virgin.

Back in the hotel room, all 12 kids are lying around thinking about ponies when Will bursts in to let them know they’re all on lockdown in the hotel until they write an award-winning song.

Will would help but he can’t because he’s gotta hit up The Hawaiin Tropic Zone restaurant and have a chili dog or go be in a Broadway Musical or sing a song from Matthew Morrison’s upcoming album. Something like that.

I sure hope nobody’s parents find out that Will’s not only leaving the children unchaperoned, but actually locking the children in rooms with beds, alcohol, food and telephones. Will wants two solid verses when he gets back. Brittany starts tracing her cup onto her notebook, foreshadowing Brittany’s upcoming performance — probably the highlight of the season — of a bouncy, lighthearted number about a thing we all know & love —  CUPS!

Brittany’s entry into the Nationals selection pool is called “My Cup.”

After confirming that Brittany looks great even in white pants and that the song is indeed about cups, they realize they cannot sit down to write until they’ve stood up to live. Puck especially, that guy has gotta be at least 32.

Quinn is feeling extra-lazy today — “We don’t need to write songs for Nationals, New York’s gonna write it for us.” Was that her big surprise for this week?

Puck points out that New York is the “artist capital of the world.” He probably just saw Factory Girl.

THEN!

To the confusing beats of a “New York, New York”/”I Love New York” mashup, the children galavant / leap throughout the city like flight attendants on amphetamines, passing a parade of New York City cliches on horseback carrying newspapers/frankfurters/briefcases/guns.

The New York City that Glee Club is selling is void of drug dealers, messy crowded overpriced apartments, overflowing trash cans and over-emotive hipsters. It’s void of nightclubs and adventures and drugs and sex and booze and dirt and all the ugly/beautiful things that make New York City the most excruciating and miserable place to live and therefore also the most exhilarating, thrilling place to live.

BUT AREN’T THEY SO FUCKING CUTE YOU WANT TO HIRE THEM FOR YOUR MOM’S BIRTHDAY PARTY AT THE JCC?

Yes, the children have fallen in love with the same itinerary given to the rich suburban kids on Teen Tour. Most impressive is, of course, Santana, who in her green mini-dress and yellow mini-jacket and black maxi-boots, steals every scene she’s in and even the ones she’s not in, except for the ones Brittany’s in, because sheI mean — duh.

It’s a catchy, earnest number reminiscent of the 50s musicals this episode was clearly inspired by. Also Brittany’s pulling off white waist-high pants, in case you missed that.

A huge chunk of this week’s episode is devoted to, SURPRISE, Finn & Rachel’s wormy little backless love affair, which is kicked into high gear when Finn’s bros tell him to stop asking me on formspring if the straight girl he has a crush on has a crush on him too and actually go ask Rachel out. They also agree with him that a Finn-Rachel Duet is the “way to win nationals,” I think they’ve all been glamoured by Pam.

“Anything’s possible here. You need to ask her out tonight,” says Puck. Is it possible that I might care about Finn and Rachel? NO!

Meanwhile on the girls side of camp, the girls have ravaged the feather-stuffed pillows of the hotel room. They’re beating each other with pillows and giggling psychotically as Rachel tries to write the next “Trouty Mouth.”

Finn texts Rachel and commands she meet him in Central Park for an emergency meeting of the Male Lesbian Support Group. Bring juice & flowers!

The potential love-birds stroll through the gorgeous Central Park ravine, probably talking about one of the 500 things they have in common, like finding water refreshing and thinking Breaded Fried Okra is the best Fixin on the Cracker Barrel menu.

It’s just like a romantic comedy. How do we know that? Because Finn & Rachel keep saying “it’s just like in those romantic comedies” over and over.

Patti LuPone drops in for a delightful cameo in Sardi’s, Kermit the Frog’s favorite restaurant and makes Rachel promise never to give up on her dreams. PHEW! I was worried she might end up barefoot and pregnant in the Pizza Hut parking lot or something.

Following their starstruck dinner, a motley crew of male actors stalk Rachel & Finn around an unspecified area of New York City (although Bedford, the street they pass, is in Brooklyn) singing that song from Lady & The Tramp.

Finn wants to talk about how he wants to be with Rachel since he basically dumped Quinn for Rachel and now his prospects are looking dim as Rachel explains she’s fallen in love with a CITY, sorta like Carrie Bradshaw in that one episode. You know the one?

Why can’t she be with Finn? Because after graduation, she will charge head-first into her Manhattan Destiny. What does this have to do with Finn? Nothing, really, especially considering Rachel Berry’s been pretty consistently interested in a Broadway Career since the pilot and that teenagers date one another despite divergent collegial plans every day right here in America. Anyhow, whatever.

Finn goes for the makeout but Rachel’s grabbing takeout — she “can’t” she says really dramatically, turning from him and walking in the opposite direction despite the fact that they’re staying at the same hotel.

The next morning the children are napping on top of their notebooks, because writing songs is exhausting! and Kurt gay-bullies Rachel into turning her frown upside down, taking off those Valentine’s Day Wrapping Paper inspired jammies and hitting the town! There are so many clichès yet unexplored!

We cut to Tiffany’s, where Kurt’s hair, looking seven kinds of 80s-new-wave fantastic, is hanging out with the Rest of Kurt and also with Rachel Berry.  Did anyone else grow up thinking Tiffany’s was a restaurant that served really good breakfast?

Rachel tells Kurt she’s gonna tell him a secret. Don’t get too excited, it’s not a lesbian secret which are the only kind we care about around here.

Her secret is that after graduation she’s gonna move to New York City to attend college and be a Broadway Star and then never come back to Ohio. LAME SECRET, BERRYFACE.

Anyhow, enough chit-chat, let’s break into the Wicked theater to fulfill our lifelong dreams of breaking in to Broadway.

A benevolent black man grants Rachel & Kurt access to the theater so they can do a pretty fantastic rendition of “For Good” from the musical Wicked. The original Wicked starred, of course, April Rhodes and Rachel Berry’s biological Mom. My Mom loves Wicked. She has a “Defying Gravity” t-shirt and everything.

Santana and Brittany need to make out in the bathroom but Quinn’s hogging it, probably looking at herself in the mirror again.

JK! Steely Quinn’s been crying her perfect little eyeballs out, wondering why everyone besides her has love/fulfilled dreams. It could be worse, Quinn. Some of us are dating lesbian men. Well. I guess Quinn was dating a lesbian man until very recently so she can cry if she wants to.

And she wants to.

Santana says she knows how to make Quinn feel better but despite 56 tumblrs that claim otherwise, Quinn says that she’s “flattered” but “really not into that.” Mhm. That’s what they all say. Anyhow, let’s skip gayly in that direction just the same.

Santana: “I think I know what’ll make you feel better.”
Quinn: “I’m flattered Santana but I’m not that into that.”
Santana: “No, no I’m talking about the haircut.”

ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLE HAIRCUT, MAYBE?

Close enough.

Glee 221 Recap: “Funeral”, or “Back to Black”

Well! What a doozie! I mean. Wow! JESUS CHRIST ON A CRACKER! I mean, what a FUCKING EPISODE, right?! Right guys?

Just kidding, did they make this episode just specifically to piss me off? (Sometimes I feel like Ilene Chaiken does that to me IN MY SLEEP!) Did they think “which storylines does Riese NOT GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT, let’s ONLY DO THOSE”? I mean. And then — and THEN! — “which plot device will, inevitably, still make her eyes water, and which songs will make her heart sing, so that she feels conflicted about wasting this precious time so close to Nationals?” well if that’s what they thought then they’re wrong. I’m not conflicted.

I found this Getty Stock Image that best explains how this episode made me feel:

The good news is that my intern, her name is Grace or “Intern Grace” for short, really handled my Devil Wears American Apparel graphic-related demands this week with aplomb. Did you know that Sue Sylvester walking down the hallway looks just like Frankie walking down the hallway?

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Did you know that Sue Sylvester sometimes looks like Bette?

The more you know!

So, the show! Actually before I begin I want to say that it’s really late on Thursday, I’ve been in flight all day, am currently in Michigan a mere 3 hrs away from the Lima, Ohio Cracker Barrel, and wordpress just erased 30 minutes of work on this thing just for funsies! So I’m sorry if it’s not funny.

It’s another morning in Lima Ohio where Mr. Shu has mixed up his weekly ritual of writing on a whiteboard and then underlining it by writing the word on the whiteboard BEFORE the children arrive and NOT underlining it! This week, the word is “NATIONALS.”

Will opens by informing the children that Jesse St. James, once again wearing a homosexual outfit, has been added to Glee Club as a “consultant.” Because you know, for weeks everyone in Glee’s been sitting at home in the darkness binging on tater tots, drinking wine coolers and crying WHY DON’T WE HAVE A CONSULTANT IF ONLY WE HAD A CONSULTANT WE COULD WIN NATIONALS WHERE IS OUR GOLDEN CONSULTANT.

Regardless, clearly McKinley High is so fond of inexplicable plot devices that the kid from the other school who fucked Glee at nationals last year and got into a fist-fight at prom last week is now on payroll.

How does The Glee Club feel about this last-minute addition to their “team”?

Jesse’s big idea is that they should center the show around their strongest performer, and everyone knows it’s Blaine. Just kidding it’s Rachel. Just kidding there’s a sign-up sheet on the door. Just kidding obviously it’s gonna be rigged because Jesse is dumb/evil.

Sue wants to fly the Glee Club to Libya so they’ll be swarmed and murdered by militants, and also, she fired Becky, and now Becky wants to be in Glee and Will says no, she can’t, because Nationals is coming up and they just can’t deal with a new member right now.

I’m pretty sure Will is gonna let Becky in anyhow and I’m mentally preparing myself for the “people with Downs Syndrome can sing too!” episode which undoubtedly would end with Becky covering We R Who We R backed by a 50-piece orchestra and Cirque du Soleil trapeeze artists.

Which — to be fair — would’ve been AWESOME.

Then Becky says, “I just want to belong,” which I mean. Crack my heart open with a screwdriver.

But Will stands his ground. Hm. Well played, Will. Well played.

(What’s the purpose of this scene, then? It must be relevant to a future scene which will undoubtedly irritate the fuck out of me.)

Will goes to yell at Sue about firing Becky.

Turns out Sue fired Becky because Becky reminded Sue of her sister and Sue’s sister died. Womp Womp.

Here’s the thing about teevee episodes involving the death of an immediate family member — a sibling, a parent, a child — if you’re one of the people, as I am, who’s lost a parent/sibling/child, the episode is always about you. Grief actually isn’t that complicated, and television generally does it about as awkwardly as we do it ourselves, though more contained, sometimes. But all that benign grief is there at the surface, you know? Bette’s Dad was my dad. So was Dawson Leary’s Dad, and Miranda’s Mom, and Nate/David/Claire Fisher’s Dad…. it actually doesn’t even need to be good to make you feel sad!

But also — I came here for Brittana.

So are you following? So far the girl with Downs Syndrome has been fired by Sue Sylvester and summarily rejected from Glee Club. Finn has upset Quinn with his love for Rachel and Jesse has upset Finn with HIS love for Rachel, which manifests as Jesse ripping on Finn’s singing/dancing skills. Then Sue’s totally nice sister died. Will has been in like every scene so far. We even had to spend time in Will’s bedroom looking at his clothing.

So basically everyone is sad or dead, including me.

Also, Finn has no confidence and won’t audition for Glee and Jesse fucked up all of his confidence in ten seconds. Lesbians are so insecure, probably because people were assholes to us in high school.

You know what Finn should do? He should put “at least mike chang can dance” on a white t-shirt, and go sing “Closer to Fine” on the stage while the rest of us eat our Jell-O and wonder why Brittany and Santana are not making out.

Also Finn and Kurt, aka Team Lesbigay, visit Sue to offer their Grieving Expertise or support or something. They’re like little cub scouts, Kurt is the smart one and Finn is the one everyone wants to talk to.

Somewhere in here they get the idea to throw her a funeral, because both of them are, basically, big softies who love feelings. Sue Sylvester is the opposite of that. And opposites. Attract.

I gotta hand it to Jane Lynch this episode. Much like being waterboarded, it’s not easy to play a ruthless semi-psychotic Darwinist bully trickster being in grief. But she does it. It’s shocking at first ’cause Sue’s always so dry — so that flat monotone is in full effect, but this time there’s no snap at the end, just a dry dull sadness.

Sue: “So how do you think you can help me? Are you here to tell me how to deal with this?”
Kurt: “Not at all–”
Sue: “Because if I’m being honest with you, Eddie Munster and Herman Munster, I don’t know how to deal with this. I can’t go back into that nursing home and start sorting through Jene’s things, and I won’t plan a funeral. If you boys would really like to help me you might start by trying to explain to me why it was her time and not mine. She’s the sweetest person I ever met. and as both of you can attest, i’m probably the meanest, so how come i’m still the one standing here talking to you?”

Jesus fucking Christ my eyes are watering again.

The Lost Boys return to Glee Club with grand plans for a … FUNERAL! Why would they wanna throw a funeral for that bitch Sue Sylvester, is the question. They argue that it’s outside loyalty — they’re not doing it for the “bitch”, it’s for the bitchin’ sister.

The kids still seem a bit wary, considering the funeral will probably take up valuable time they could spend having conversations in their bedrooms while looking in the mirror. These kids love mirrors.

(Does Will still write lesson plans? Kinda feel like the kids are constantly running the show these days, with all of Rachel’s announcements she oughta be promoted to Vice Principal or something.)

Jesse thinks throwing the funeral is a bad idea.

Jesse: Can I say something? When someone dies, yes, it’s a tragedy, but it’s also a part of life. And you can’t let death put you life on hold. Now, I don’t mean to be blunt, but I don’t think you should be planning a funeral the same week you should be focusing on the set list for Nationals.

Finn: Seriously? You… you’re serious?

Jesse: Actually, yes, I am. Do you know what Vocal Adrenaline is doing right now? They’re in their third week of 24-hour-a-day rehearsals. They’re on an I.V. drip. That’s how hard they’re working. Do you know what happens in Vocal Adrenaline if someone dies during a number? They use them as a prop, like Weekend at Bernie’s.

Well they’re definitely gonna lose because you can’t win if you’re sleep deprived. BAM!

It’s time for auditions and Jesse, the ambitious asshat that he is, lets Will know he’s practicing for a big career as a reality show judge, which I mean — duh Simon Cowell, I see how this is gonna be. They’ve got a lot in common, like big egos and a good resume for the job. Will will be a conglomerate of Randy’s cheesiness, Ellen’s kindness and Paula’s dim-witted-ness.

You know I just recognized Will’s haircut: Justin Timberlake. N’Sync. Quite some time ago.

I think Will’s got brain damage of some sort. Maybe from when that stranger offered him candy and a ride home from school and then decked him with a baseball bat.  Sue could’ve wiped his dumb ass onto the pavement in episode 111 (Hairography) just by setting up a few Home Aloney booby traps or just hired a wicked witch to lure Will into a gingerbread house.

Basically, what’s about to happen here is that Santana will blow it out of the ballpark, Kurt will climb the fence and grab the ball and throw it back into the stadium, and then Mercedes will catch the ball and score a home run. Then Will will clap softly and Jesse will hurl emotional tomatoes violently at the stage.

First up is  Santana, doing “Back to Black” which has been in my head ever since. She’s got this thing she does — like she’s dressaging her sexuality, like she knows just how to perform heterosexuality, how to play it, but she’s a little bit above it at the same time. She’s sassy but dark too. Classy. That rhymes. Raspy.

Following this incredible performance, Jesse juices up the enema and expels it into hate speech about the best two minutes of this program.

Don’t rain on that bitch’s parade, pretty boy. Don’t you dare. She will crack your barrel.

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Glee 220 Recap: Prom, Queen of the Desert

This week on Glee, a bunch of dudes had a lot of feelings, a bunch of girls wore prom dresses swiped from last year’s production of Bye Bye Birdie, and — reader. Until Tuesday night, I’d managed this long to completely avoid listening to the song “Friday” in its entirety. I saw the first two minutes or so of the video when it debuted, found it funny, but also ultimately boring. I’ve since avoided it. It’s easy to avoid things when the only thing I talk to besides myself is a stuffed dog I think will come to life one day, like Indian in the Cupboard.

That’s all. I just wanted to share that with you.

So wow what an episode, right?! I mean, prom! PROM! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Everyone gets to wear a SHINY DRESS! When I look back on my life, I regret not wearing something more controversial to prom.

Every time I see the Jewfro guy’s face, I know something stupid and annoying is about to happen.

This week, Jacob McDowner is there to let Puck know that Lauren has taken “his balls” and “stripped him of his manhood” and furthermore, word on the street is that “she’s the one who wears the pants in this relationship.” It’s true. Puck is the only pussy-whipped boyfriend in the history of high school, and furthermore this guy’s opinion is super-important to Puck, because this guy is super popular, and I’m super happy that he’s on the show.

Meanwhile, Lauren the Ballstripper is worried she’ll have to be the one who wears the pants to prom because Ann Taylor Loft, Filene’s Basement and six Forever 21s didn’t have a single thing that fits. Now she’ll have to make her own dress, like Cinderella but without the help of the little birds. Before we can talk too much about the world of possibilities at Jo-Ann Fabrics, Mr. Shu arrives to perform his weekly ritual of writing a word on the whiteboard and underlining it.

The word of the week is PROM!!

PROMMMMMMMMM

Prom is the fancy party which, according to a number of major television programs including Beverly Hills 90210 (OG) and MTV’s True Life: I’m Going to Prom, is the most important event ever. It’s more important than Vietnam.

You can get married as many times as you want, Quinn Fabray points out, but there’s only one Junior Prom. Well — there’s also Senior Prom, which I think is similar, but whatever, the hostess at Cracker Barrel said 40 minutes ’til my table so, let’s hustle.

Glee Club’s gonna perform at prom night because Air Supply canceled. Rather than hire a DJ or stick an ipod into a speaker and press “shuffle,” they’ve recruited a rowdy team of outcasts everybody allegedly hates to perform — LIVE — at prom. I honestly think the only place where live bands perform at prom is television and the movies.

Mercedes stages a personal walkout because girlfriend does not have a date for this dance because Glee is racist.

But Brittany doesn’t have a date either, Merecedes!

Good point but Mercedes has left the classroom and entered a McKinley High TIME FREEZE, which is when off-screen action is suspended (this will happen again later) in order for plot to be developed in another room, ideally over by the lockers. That’s where they get their special powers. The lockers.

Mercedes, for reasons which have yet to be revealed to us, doesn’t have a man. She wants a man, “the dress, and the damn corsage,” but she doesn’t have one. Why not, show? In the wise words of Autostraddle’s very own Gabrielle Rivera, who’s twitter you should probs follow…

Mhm. Anyhow, Mercedes tells Rachel what she wants. I think she read it in a greeting card somewhere:

Mercedes: “I just wanted to be Cinderella. Just for one night. One night where a guy would look at me under those corny crate paper streamers and say, “You look so beautiful”. And then he’d grabbed my hand and asked me to dance. Isn’t that what prom is suppose to be about?”

No, prom is supposed to be about getting wasted and not getting caught. Look what happened to Donna Martin. She almost didn’t graduate!

Blaine is afraid of the prom, because last time he went to a school dance he got his ass kicked. Kurt, annoyed by all this unnecessary last-minute backstory that really should’ve come up during one of their 567 chats about gay bullying earlier this season, is like “I’m wearing a Peter Brady shirt and a Great Jungle of Wal-Mart-Smock-inspired vest, so you better take me baby, or leave me.”

Blaine remembers that he’s crazy about Kurt, which is adorable. Seriously just photograph these two and cross-stich their faces onto a pillow already, I’ve got a twenty-dollar bill on my desk. It’s broken though, I have to buy tape and tape it back together. Then, I will buy the pillow.

Mercedes & Rachel corner Sam in the theater with a Prom Budget, they put it together just that very afternoon in their clubhouse after picking their favorite boys in school and playing with cootie catchers and making their own hair accessories out of flowers from their mother’s gardens. That’s actually what inspired the most INGENIOUS part of The Boxcar Children’s Prom Threesome Plan, which is to make corsages “from flowers in our mother’s gardens.”

I’m not sure why the only way these three humans can happily go to prom is if they strategically combine a guy who’s already turned down one of the two–TWO!– girls he’ll be taking, a very serious limited prom budget, earrings made out of macaroni and play-dough, and a twenty-dollar “loan,” but whatever, it’s Glee. Sam agrees, hopefully because he’s into Mercedes or something.

Anyhow Next thing you know, people will be bringing dogs to prom, and then having children with dogs who are half-dog, half-child. Those half-dogchilds will grow up and become Prom Sorcerers.

Kurt, wearing Nazi Boots, a bandana swiped from Amelia Earheart’s grave and the very same jumpsuit Dale Earnhardt was wearing when he won The Indy 500 on the moon, is participating in the Prom Fashion Panel, usually a girls-only affair, because he’s an effeminate homosexual man who enjoys fashion.

Lauren, giving an accidental tip of the hat to Shane by skulking out of the dressing room in Chuck Taylors and a giant yellow situation, laments “I look like a lemon mereinge pie.”

Kurt suggests she try navy, and his co-hosts practically come in their pants over this Andre Leon Talley-level genius insight. Even Lauren, who allegedly possesses not only her own ovaries but also Puck’s balls, thanks Kurt profusely for his wisdom as if anyone in this room has managed to go her whole life without being told that navy is slimming. Did you guys know that black is slimming? It’s true.

Lauren returns to the “dressing room” to Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo her way into Young Navydressland.

Next, Our Lady Lesbian emerges in her inspired-by-1995-Christmas-Barbie satiny red dress explosion. Kurt loves it. Loves it. Loves everything about it.

After unanimous approval, Santana asks to speak to Kurt privately, wherein she asks him to beef up personal security to enhance her appeal as the Eva Peròn Prom Queen. Interesting how Santana would rather look like a heartless asshole than admit her true motivations originate in a heart that beats just like everyone else’s, feelings and all.

Have I mentioned yet being happy that Kurt’s back at McKinley? Because I am. And not because I’m sick of Jason Mraz covers ’cause really WHO COULD EVER BE BARF

Rachel interrupts the stage crew probably fixing the set from the Great Rihanna Flood of 2010: “Members of the audio visual club, I possibly might sing this song at prom and when I’m done rehearsing I’d like your feedback — tell me if I was brilliant, or simply outstanding.”

Then Rachel Berry breaks into “Rolling in the Deep” AND HARK! … who’s that in the shadows of purple summer? It’s Jesse St.James (He should start his own Whiskey brand, right? “gimme a shot of Jesse St.James” you know?), played by Jonathan Groff (noted homosexual, best friend to Lea Michelle).

Actually what’s secretly happening here is that Wendla is calling into the mirror-blue night for Melchior to come discover the word of her body. She’s not really gonna sing this at prom.

After their sexually tense duet, Jesse sits Lea down to apologize for being a complete fucking asshole.  He admits spying on New Directions via Rachel in order to obtain their fourth consecutive championship was “a bum deal. For a first, maybe, but a fourth? No way. I’ve come to make amends.”

Looks like Rachel’s not totally fucked after all…

Finn cares that Rachel is going to prom with Jesse St. James and Rachel bla bla bla bla bla bla. Finn doesn’t know what kind of corsage to get, so he asks Rachel, who turns out to be obsessed with Quinn, you can see it in her eyes when this unfortunate conversation finally reaches its conclusion.

Meanwhile Santana is keeping herself in the closet by masquerading around the hallways with The Gay Guy in a red beret and shiny red jacket, protecting him from any bullies/closeted homosexuals lurking in the shadows.

Santana: “Teen gay! You may now proceed to the next checkpoint without fear of violence.”

Santana: “I’m the law and order prom queen candidate.”
Kurt: “I’m walking away from you now.”

I bet if Santana kept this up, she could un-closet some lonely lez currently crying over a plate of Hashbrown Casserole at the Cracker Barrel who’s desire to walk around with Santana all day would trump her desire to remain closeted. Well, this hypothetical lonely lez is out on the internet. She’s out on Autostraddle Social. But you know what I mean?

Lest you were concerned these students don’t learn anything besides how to sing thematically relevant pop songs without actually knowing how to sing, the occasional smidgen of Spanish and a little dollop of sex education, you’ll be pleased to learn they’re all enrolled in home ec, where they’re making a thing with eggs and Brittany’s confused:

And Kurt has issues with the curriculum, because he’s gay:

I’m ready for the part where Santana and Brittany spill flour on each other’s shirts, but Santana’s not in this class — well, neither is Kevin. And look who just rolled on the fuck in. GET OUT OF OUR LESBIAN STORYLINE, FOUR-EYES!

Kevin has a plan to get Brittany back. Surprise! It’s a song. Kevin intros “Isn’t she Lovely” with a speech I couldn’t listen to because he was speaking in that really unnecessary gravely-baby-talk voice he does all the time.

Clearly this whole number is gay and inspired by Finn the Lesbian’s love of lesbian folk-rock music. Everyone sings along and makes instruments out of kitchen utensils like it’s Sesame Street and Artie makes a lot of “demented bird” facial expressions and Brittany makes a lot of “to the left, to the left” facial expressions.

“I thought this song was about a baby,” says Mercedes. Someone get this chick a boyfriend.

Somehow this incredible interruption to what I can only assume was going to be egg drop soup doesn’t earn Artie his prom date back. Now that he’s got nothing to live for, he’s gonna help Puck spike the punch bowl. I know, right? Who cares.

It’s time for the new Glee spin-off Two and a Half Men, starring Blaine, Kurt’s Dad, and Finn, who is half-man, half-lesbian. It’s a good show, much better than the original. No really, this is cool, all the guys hanging out. Not like that. You know. I also appreciate how, much like Brenda and Brandon Walsh’s living room, the set-up of this house lends itself to impromptu fashion shows.

… and also to Alexander McQueen. Pretty sharp, clearly, but Mr. Dad and Blaine aren’t sure if they love it. However, Finn’s a big fan!

Dad’s like “Hey buddy, you look great in that skirt and all, but maybe coast on that ‘nobody bullying you anymore’ thing for a while before breaking out the kilt” and Blaine is like, “Yeah, totes,” and Kurt is like, WTF?!

Then Kurt gets teary and the little boy who always dreamed of wearing a kilt to his junior prom emerges:

He also points out that “prom is about joy, not about fear.” DUH! GOD WHY CAN’T ANYONE JUST REMEMBER WHAT PROM IS ABOUT? WHAT DOES BLAINE KNOW HE DOESN’T EVEN GO HERE!

Karofsky, with a beret atop his sausage-face, escorts Kurt O’Hummel down the hallways of McKinley high, like two Bros-in-Arms:

I wonder what ever happened to their PFLAG club. Anyhow, Brotofsky drops Little Drummer Boy off at the market/French Class and then has like five feelings all in a row and only two of them he knows by heart.

Kurt: “Have you noticed that nobody has bullied me this week?”
Karofsky: “That’s because the Bullywhips are protecting you.”
Kurt: “Maybe. But maybe nobody has been harassing me this week because nobody cares.”
Karofsky: “You’re dreaming.”
Kurt: “Okay, look — I’m not saying everyone in this school is ready to embraced the gay, but maybe at least they’ve evolved to being indifferent.”

Karofsky looks a little emo, so Kurt dives right into that open wound like a little gay guppy of joy and kiltish sensitive delight:

Kurt: “I see how miserable you are, Dave. I could just hate you when you were bullying me, but now… now all I see is your pain… and you don’t have to torture yourself over this. I’m not saying you should come out tomorrow but maybe, soon, the moment will arise when you can.”

[KAROFSKY STARTS CRYING]

[YEAH!]

Kurt: “What’s wrong?”
Karofsky: “I’m so, I’m so freaking sorry, Kurt. I’m just… so sorry for what I did to you.”
Kurt: “I know.”

If Kurt was my friend and he told me about this on g-chat, my response would be “!!!!!!!!!!!”

In the Princess Castle, Quinn is finishing filming the Diamonds are Forever commercial at her dresser and, as the last moments of Twinkle-Eerie-Twinkeltoes-Dreamstar Music fades, Mom calls that Finn has arrived. Quinn emerges and Finn suddenly realizes that his girlfriend is really really really really good-looking. (Tbh I’m not into the Dianna Argon thing but bcw says she’s one of the prettiest girls in the whole world, so.)

I wonder if Quinn likes that corsage as much as the Faberry shippers do.

Later, after, I assume, Soup, Salad, and the epinimous breadsticks, Quinn and Finn stop by the most awkward double date in history, wherein Jesse informs Quinn:

Jesse: Quinn, you look stunning. The ghost of Grace Kelly. Let me know if you get tired of your boyfriend stomping on your pretty little feet all night; i’ll be more than happy to cut in.

Isn’t that weird for Jesse to hit on someone else’s date? Why is Rachel just over there like she’s chilling in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood while Jesse spreads his seed amongst other wild giraffes of the jungle? Kids these days. Technology. Facebook!

Glee 219 Recap: Rumours are Super

Hello my little muffin hellcats, it’s time to recap that show you saw on Tuesday! I was gonna post this recap on Tuesday but then I was like, “what’s the point, they JUST saw it, they probably still remember what happened!” and thought I’d wait a few days to really extend the pleasure of your Glee experience, like chewing a really badass piece of gum.

Wow, so! Jeez. The 70s, right? Christ. Well — not Christ. Who needs Christ when you have free love and LSD and Fleetwood Mac? That’s the lesson we learn this week on Glee, except without the LSD.

Glee’s a hit-or-miss show these days but this episode was the kind we don’t see much. For starters, the weekly Guest-Star-Who-Has-Sexual-Tension-With-Will, Kristin Chenoweth, didn’t overshadow the action. Her song was well-chosen and, despite the fact that I had to look at Will’s face for more than two minutes because her face was so close to his face and I wanted to see her sing, well-done. The songs, all from the Fleetwood Mac “Rumours”  album (excellent to listen to while driving from Michigan to Lima, Ohio, to eat at The Cracker Barrel), served to advance plot and expose the individual characters’ emotional journeys. Until the last number, when I mean what is this Zoobilie Zoo, nothing was too hokey.

It’s actually been monumentally challenging for me to recap this episode because it wasn’t weird and Jenny Schecter wasn’t in it. I just don’t know why they dumped his body in the fucking OCEAN.

We open with the My Barbie Funhouse themesong to “Fondue for Two.” You know what’s great about this opening number? Much like staples and ex-girlfriends, this song never quite leaves your head. It may recede, it may take some time off, it may take a trip to the Dairy Queen, suck on a Dilly Bar and return to your cranium but it will NEVER ever EVER EVER truly stop playing in your head. It’s only one line, so that’s not complicated: “Fondue for Two.” Over and over and over again. Fondue for Two. Fondue for Two. Maybe this is what Brittany’s brain sounds like!

Brittany S. Pierce, like so many nubile blonde teenagers before her, is venturing into the deep vaginal canals of YouTube to seek fame by dipping sticks into a warm hot bowl of fondue and gossiping. After Tina tells us her boyfriend has a big penis, Brittany drops that Santana “plays for the other team,” which is a rumor she can 100% verify is true.

+

Mercedes and Tina are shocked — not shocked enough to follow up in the next scene or possibly ever again on this show — but shocked nonetheless.

Rachel gives Sam chapstick and asks him to prom and he says no. I feel sad.

Sue Sylvester has a plan which I can’t really listen to, my head is like a Samurai warrior situation flicking its wand back and forth around David Bowie (who is queer and I love) and Ann Coulter (whose fingers I’d like to stick in a lawnmower) and Jane Lynch, who is very tall and also gay. Anyway does it really matter what she’s talking about? No, she’s Lex Luthor, every week she’ll just try again. It’s a thing Sue’s gonna do to get rid of Will.  Surprise!

Guess who’s in this episode? Our best friend forever, Kristin Chenoweth!

Sue’s reviving the school newspaper, The Mudracker. Their motto is, “if you’ve heard it, it’s probably true,” so everyone’s talking super-loud so we can hear everything. Finn thinks Rachel’s talking about Quinn being trapped in a closet R-Kelly style when she freaks out but no, that’s Santana trapped in a closet.

Again — nobody cares. All he cares about is what Rachel tells him next!

Quinn is having secret MOTEL activities with Sam in the motel right by the Cracker Barrel? I’m not 100% positive that Sam is staying at the Travelodge in Lima — and let’s be real, he’s probs not, because it would be way more expensive than a house, but just for the purposes of getting back to the theme of this show, which is The Cracker Barrel, I’ve made this map for you:

Once inside the classroom, Santana’s a bat out of hell in an interesting shirt-like thing, barking at Brittany for saying Santana played for the other team on her “melted cheese show,”  but Brittany insists it was the Cheerios –> Glee, not Men —> Lezbos.”You couldn’t have thought of any another way to say that?” Santana yells. What do you think Brittany is, Santana, some kind of Thesaurus?

Santana’s like a sexy farmgirl and Brittany’s like a sexy grandmother or something. Again — note that nobody in the room really gives a shit if Santana’s a fuckin’ lesbo because this is Generation Me, and they can’t stop thinking about themselves long enough to even consider homophobia.

Baby, it’s cold outside but it’s warm up in this room (because of the fire), where Will and K-Chen are talking nonsense which eventually leads to Will’s Big Theme — they’ll all do songs from the Fleetwood Mac album “Rumours.” And who better to go first than Will and his lady-of-the-week?

Sidenote: This dude gets a lot of play.

Hey remember the last time they did Fleetwood Mac? Of course you do. You watched that episode like 10,000 times, you GIANT LESBO.

Artie confronts Brittany about bumping clams with Santana, but Brittany explains that it’s not cheating, it’s just talking with your tongues really close. Artie’s like “can’t you see she’s manipulating you?” Artie Artie Artie! If anyone noticed anyone else manipulating someone else on this show ever, the show’s foundation would crumble like a gingerbread house in a thunderstorm. (Which happens more than you’d think).

Artie’s unhappy — it’s crazy enough that she’s dating him in the first place (PREACH!) because his legs don’t work and her legs are buns/thighs/calves of steel and she’s so pretty (or because he’s been a misogynistic jerk sometimes).  I f Santana is providing anything for her that he can’t (TRIBADISM) then he will probably die of an anxiety attack just thinking about it so it’s better he wheel himself off into the distance, bringing his haircut and the various Scenic Landscapes expressed in his knitwear back out onto the open market, where he can breathe freely.

When Artie starts talking about her having any other love in her head I start to feel itchy and I think it’s because this is the longest line Artie’s ever had. I mean he just keeps talking. And then when Brittany says everyone thinks Santana is a bad person but she’s not, Artie, ALWAYS THE GENTLEMAN, goes “God, Brittany, why are you so stupid?”

Dick Move, Dick! Look at what you did to Heather Morris’s face!

You guys, amazing, right? Brittany and Arite have broken up, which means the road to and inside of Brittany is wide open for some hot grease lightning, let’s get this show on the road!

But first, Artie’s getting emo singing Fleetwood Mac, looking Dustin Hoffman in the first scene of The Graduate, followed by a large gaggle of boys playing guitars like the Pied Piper of Dumpsville. There are too many guitars in this song.

More importantly, Brittany must turn to Santana in her time of need. Luckily Brittany’s skirt is so short that they could probably consumate the relationship with a two second flick of the wrist, but look at Santana being all cute and friendly towards her sad friend.

Meanwhile, the young bird-like children are hunting for rabbits in the wilderness of Witch Mountain.

It’s like Olivia and Elliot doing surveillance on a suspected serial rapist. I hope nobody contaminates the DNA evidence and nobody involved has links to Elliot’s daughter on headbook.com.. Rachel and Finn have used their Spidey Sense to find the motel where Sam’s hiding out from the Mafia, the FBI or — OH WAIT HOLD THE PHONES — the GAY MAFIA?

Okay — time out! Please let me know if you also called the outcome of this motel situation subplot from the beginning.  You guys motels aren’t just for sex, they’re also for sleeping and watching teevee and drawing pictures in the Bible and hoarding remainders of that day’s Continental Breakfast for later. Because it’s always time for muffins.

Where are these kids, some kind of coffee shop? Seriously this looks like a set from another show. I wish Finn and Aiden from South of Nowhere could be girlfriends, because they are two of my favorite lesbians.

The Gossip Girls have a meeting to go over last week’s rumours and make projections for the remainder of this week. Quinn assures the group that Sam isn’t gay — she knows. You know? She KNOWS. How does she know? Who knows? Rachel mentions that they’ve all tonsil hockeyed the hell out of each other’s units, dropping some internet “shipper” lingo in the process that I’m sure delighted the tumblrs of those monikers on Tuesday night.

Rachel: Look at all the combinations we’ve had. Finnchel, Puckelberry-
Tina: McTina Cohen Chang-Chang
Artie: Arttideney*
Puck: Pizes

Have you noticed that nobody thus far in the episode cares who is gay and who isn’t? All that matters is who is attached to whom else and who might want to break that up. Like the only reason they care about Sam being gay is if that means Kurt is cheating on Blaine, the rest of it is just whatever. What I’m telling you, Santana, is that THE COAST IS CLEAR.

*really?

Brittany’s a sad panda, and when Brittany’s a sad panda, everyone’s a sad panda because Brittany can only really be Brittany when she’s dancing. Santana’s already scaled Landslide’s emotional mountain and now is prepared to go even deeper into the Fleetwood Mac cannon to express her feelings for Brittany — her private feelings.

Brittany: What about him? [pointing at the piano guy]
Santana: He’s just furntiure. [to the guy] Sorry, no offense.

Glee 218 Recap: Born This Way, Everyone is Gay

This week’s episode was super-long and extra-gay because baby we were born this way. I can barely even remember being born because it’s taken me so long to write this recap! I kept thinking “I need to write a really funny recap!” because you know, that’s what you’re here for, right? Laughter? But as I was writing it I was like, “whoa, this isn’t funny” and then I was like “but it’s supposed to be funny” and THEN I was like, “maybe I’ll microwave a thing and stick it in my mouth and that will somehow make me funnier” and THEN I was like, “FUCK!”

Then I thought ‘maybe I should be wearing a zip-up hoodie instead of an over-the-head hoodie’ and so I changed and then I thought ‘did I break my funny bone the other night when i was drunk/sober?’ and then I hung out in downward facing-dog waiting for a joke to emerge from my spiritual center and then I gave up and so now I’m like, “HERE IT IS”

Before we begin, let’s count the number of gay people in this show:

1. Kurt Hummel – gay
2. Blaine Warblersmithinsky – gay
3. Dave Karofsky – gay
4. Santana Lopez – lesbian
5. Brittany S. Pierce – bisexual
6. Sandy Ryerson – gay
7. Rachel’s Two Dads – gay & gay
8. Finn Hudson – lesbian

Okay, let’s begin now.

We open in — WHERE ELSE? — in Glee Club.

Will reminds the children that “Vocal Adreniline takes no prisoners,” and although the children sang so beautifully at regionals, if somebody were to ask the Glee Club “So You Think You Can Dance?” then somebody else would certainly answer, “No you cannot.”

So they must enhance their dance skills. Will calls this “Booty Camp.” (Coincidentally, “Booty Camp” was also the title of the porn flick that first introduced Will to the glorious world of anal strap-on sex, which he’ll never have with Emma, because let’s be real, if it takes her 40 minutes to disinfect an apple, she’d grow old, lose her hair, and die sanitizing an eight-inch stick of purple silicone.)

Only three seconds into Booty Camp; Finn, gangling through the jungle in search of berries & meat, clonks Rachel onto the cold cold heartless floor, breaking her nose.

Cut to the doctor’s where Rachel teases us with the prospect of her Two Dads’ impending arrival while Finn does his best Gallant to Rachel’s Goofus and is just as shocked as we are when a medical professional suggests Rachel get a nose job along with her nose repair.

Rachel’s concerned that it might be a little costly — JUST KIDDING IT’S GLEE WHERE EVERYTHING IS FREE EXCEPT SALTWATER TAFFY AND HANDICAP BUSSES — Rachel’s concerned that a nose job is a stupid idea, because it is. Finn is also adorkably opposed to the idea, but the Doctor presses on, because he is, clearly, an unethical asshole.

We return to one of Glee Club’s daily/weekly/hourly emotional processing meetings, in which Rachel floats the idea of a nose job and Santana, who’s just escaped communist Russia by snowshoe carrying only the cake-shaped pelt of her pet rabbit and half a bear coat, argues that everyone in the room is ugly and ethnic and needs to change.

Santana’s kicking her Brittany-related-desire into high gear with trademark bitchery and it’s brilliant. During her litany of “things you’ve all thought about getting done” she saves a particularly low blow (SEE WHAT I DID THERE) for Artie — “I’ll bet Artie’s thought about getting his legs removed since he’s not really using them anyways.”

Tina delivers a speech about why magazines make her feel pressured to wear color contacts, Mike mutters “Self-Hating Asian” under his breath, and Finn, who becomes sort of unbearably endearing this episode, says he wishes he could dance better. Don’t we all, Finn. Don’t we all.

Will, with his vocal intonations ten notches above Captain Kangaroo level, says he’s “shocked” that his club of losers & outcasts has such low-self esteem. He pulls this one out of his fortune cookie:

First the saltwater taffy idea and then this? Mr. Shue is out of touch and on Sudafred, probably. Mercedes takes on the burden of breaking it down for him, because that’s what Mercedes does:

Mercedes: “At this school… the thing that makes you different is the thing people use to crush your spirit.”

How will the children overcome years of insecurity and self-loathing? Through the power of screen-printing and song! They’re assigned to sing a song about self-acceptance, wear a t-shirt announcing their insecurity, and top it all off with a group performance of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” because Lady Gaga is “the queen of self-acceptance.”

In the hallways, Santana does some Bansky shit…

and then lustfully eyes Brittany, who’s with Artie STILL for some reason —

Santana: “I should be prom queen at this school. If I was prom queen I could get Brittany to dump that four-eyed loser and go for the real queen. She’s so gullible that I could convince her that by royal decree, I’d made her being with me the law of the land…”

In order to win the crown Santana realizes she needs more than fake tits and a lesbian fan base on tumblr, she also needs a “jock” to get the “jock vote.” That’s when Karofsky shows up in the hallway, like a giant slab of deli meat carved into the shape of a man:

Santana: “I’m a closet lesbian and a judgmental bitch, which means one thing: I have awesome gaydar.”

I wish I had a little sound file or animated gif with text of Omar Little going “indeed” to play at moments like this.

[Oh also? Santana just came out. So put THAT on your fucking clipboard.]

Later on in some other place, various characters including Mercedes, Santana and the already-cute-together Kurt & Blaine, are chatting about how if New Directions is number one then The Warblers must be number two and they’re gonna beat the whoopie out of you/already did.

Much like Santana it’s difficult for me to focus on anything happening in this room besides Brittany being with Artie instead of Santana.

When Blaine, being very toppy/protective, says he wouldn’t want Kurt back at McKinley because of Karofsky, Santana gets her bright idea for how to win Prom Queen. See Prom Queen is no cakewalk. You can’t just “be popular” or “be good looking.” You have to do things — big, complicated, dangerous, sketchy things — to win. You must scheme and plot and plan and betray.

Santana’s plan? Get Kurt back to Glee Club. Then everyone will love her and she’ll win over the largest most influential voting block in school — the nine or ten allegedly unpopular members of Glee Club.

Santana: “I’ve gotta gay — go. I’ve gotta go.”

The Prom Queen tiara is being stored in a glass case in the hallway so that young women like Lauren can stare at it wistfully, recalling their toddler pageant days and wondering when they’ll ever have another opportunity to stand on a stage in a fancy dress while people cheer.

“There she is,” Lauren says, eyeing future prom queen Quinn Fabray, who’s postering the school like she’s decorating for a baby shower. “A size-two teenage dream.”

Puck, the father of that teenage dream’s baby, tells Lauren this year is not like other years because this year they will eat unleavened bread and Lauren will be queen. He says this in a really determined voice and he’s the oldest guy in school, so that’s how we know he’s serious.

Rachel takes Quinn with her to the witch doctor to provide an example of the nose she’d like to have and Quinn goes along so that Rachel will vote for her for prom queen.

When the doctor arrives, Rachel almost stumbles on her words calling Quinn a “friend” — like she’s all mixed up and happy inside that Quinn is even going there with her, pretending to be her friend, despite the fact that Rachel probably wouldn’t mind if Quinn fell off a cliff and died. Such is the great, deep wells of lesbian love these two have for… Finn.

This leads into a little delightful mashup of “Unpretty” and “I Feel Pretty” that makes me miss TLC/the90s and also the original version of “I Feel Pretty” which goes “I feel pretty and witty and gay!” not “pretty and witty and bright.” God this show is so homophobic they won’t even say the word gay.

It’s frightening that Rachel would want to walk around with Quinn’s nose on her face for the rest of her life. She must really really really love… Finn.

Quinn’s pissed at Lauren because Lauren’s campaign is taking up valuable postering space and what the fuck is she even doing, Quinn must be asking herself, trying to create A VOTE FOR NADER IS A VOTE FOR BUSH situation? Or I mean A VOTE FOR LAUREN IS A VOTE FOR SANTANA? I don’t know, are there still actual popular girls at this school? Nobody goes to this school, they’re all at Cracker Barrel which is exactly where I’d be if I was in Lima, obviously. You guys I’m hungry. Do they have Boston Market in California? I’m serious.

Quinn, with her trademark icy bitchiness, tells Lauren if she wins that she’ll get creamed by pig blood JUST LIKE CARRIE and consequently “become more of an outcast than [she] already [is].”

Lauren: “Oh-kay. I don’t know exactly what your problem is, but you best bring it, Fabray. Because I’m hot as hell, I keep it real, and the people at this school want a prom queen that’s like them.”
Quinn: “No, they don’t. They want a prom queen who’s somebody they’d like to be.”
Lauren: “Not everybody can be born pretty like you, but just so you know, who you are inside, and who you pretend to be to the rest of the world? They’re two different people.”
Quinn: “You don’t know anything about me, Lauren, anything. But you know what? You’re about to. Because guess what? It just got personal.”

Unfortunately, Lauren’s not really afraid of anything. It’s hard to hurt a person who has no fucks to give, Quinn.

Cut to the best scene of the episode, notable both for its L-Word-level dominance of homosexual topics and for Santana being so fucking Sassy. Bitch holds her shit DOWN.

Santana’s invited Karofsky on a “date.” Karofsky gloats that he knew Santana would ask him out someday because he looks like a square-shaped brick pasted onto a potato wearing a Varsity Jacket. Santana does not have time for this shit. They’re not even at a bar. They’re like on the abandoned set of Felicity. Some date.

Santana: “Give it up! I know.”
Karofsky: “Know what?”
Santana: “That you’re gay!”
Karofsky: “What? Who told you that?”
Santana: “No one had to tell me. First of all, I saw you checking out Sam’s ass the other day. You know you really need to be more careful with your leering.”
Karofsky: “I didn’t. I was just seeing what jeans he was wearing.”
Santana: “Like that’s any less gay.”

Santana: “Second of all, I know all about you and Kurt. Remember last week before the benefit? About you being worried about “the truth” getting out. Guess what. It’s out.”
Karofsky: “Whatever they told you is a lie to mess with me. I’m going to kick their asses.”
Santana: “Why don’t you just settle down and let Auntie Tana here tell you a little story. It’s about you.”

Santana: “You’re what we call a “late in life” gay. You’re going to stay in the closet, get married, get drunk to have relations with your wife, have a couple kids, maybe become a state senator or a deacon, and then get caught in the men’s room tapping your foot with some page. and you know what? I accept that about you.”

They need each other, Santana explains. Why? Because “we play on the same team.” Santana specifies she’s not ready to eat jicama or get a flat top but (what’s jicama?) she might do it in junior college. Karofsky insists he’s not gay.

Santana: “I’m trying to help you out here. Have you ever heard of the term ‘beard’? It’s when a gay man and woman date each other to hide the fact that they’re gay. Like the Roosevelts.”

Otherwise, she’ll out him to everyone. He chooses the bearding.

Santana: “The only straight I am is straight-up bitch.”

Are you paying attention. I hope so because one day you’ll need to tell your grandchildren where you were the first time you heard the now-famous line “the only straight I am is straight-up bitch.”

Could Santana possibly be any more flawless? Yes, she could she could be fingerblasting Brittany and not racist, but beggers can’t be choosers.

Finn tells Quinn that she shouldn’t be encouraging Rachel to fix her nose, Quinn tells Finn he should stop talking about Rachel.

Then Finn and the Asian Guy do a Sammy Davis Jr number but watching Finn lumber around like a lesbian is just way too gay for me to handle today. I’m embarrassed for him and had to close my eyes.

Rachel — girlfriend loves to give an announcement, right? — wants to show everyone the photos of her potential new nose. She argues that the procedure will help her Broadway career, which is funny, because there’s this actress named Lea Michele who was a big Broadway star and she had that exact same nose Rachel Berry already has!

Tina admits this potential procedure has been a Hot Topic this week in the halls of McKinley High, they’ve got a facebook group called STOP RACHEL BERRY’S NOSE JOB. Also, Rachel’s self-hatred has helped Tina see the light and love herself, without contacts.

Finn, like the good strong hearty crunchy lesbian that he is, knows the only way to fix this problem is to affirm Rachel as a woman/womyn and  tell her how beautiful she is, which Quinn probs doesn’t appreciate as she’s trying to sell the room on her nose being atop someone else’s face as her nose is both superior and [expensive]?

Finn: “Rachel please don’t do this. You’re beautiful.”

Who IS everybody this week? Are they trying to make up for wasting my time last week? I bet Helena Peabody’s gonna show up in the next musical number, all fancy and ret-conned and shit.

If this episode wasn’t 90 minutes long and therefore a bitch to recap and if I didn’t find Mr.Schue’s very existence offensive to my very existence, I’d break my “skip the adult parts” rule to entertain this compelling storyline with Emma’s OCD. But it is, and I do, so. Sorry.

Karofsky has been pulled from class or football practice or lollygagging in the hall or whatever it is people do at this school to apologize to Glee Club. Sorry let me re-state that, but more clearly: Karofsky has been pulled from class or football practice or lollygagging in the hall or whatever it is people do at this school to apologize to Glee Club?

The principal is there too so Artie will have a sweater-vest to borrow later when this one gets mistaken for a paint-by-numbers and subsequently gets dirty:

The kids still wanna punch Karofsky in the face for bullying their homo-friend Kurt, which, as I said at the time, is one of this show’s greatest achievements — setting the example that standing up for your gay friend when he gets gay-bullied is the only reasonable response any real friend or peer could have. As is holding a grudge.

Karofsky wants to apologize for being such an asshole because now he realizes that when you’re an asshole, people fucking die, and surely his self-loathing should really only kill him, not rando gay guys just trying to wear bowties or fuck Blaine. Santana has shown him the light.

Karofsky: “She showed me all these stories online about kids jumping off of bridges and hanging themselves because they were being bullied so bad. I couldn’t believe someone could make another person feel that awful, but she helped me accept that I was one of those bad people, and I don’t wanna be anymore.”

Santana, dressed as nothing less than The Nanny from Flushing, Queens, joins him in front of the room in the area usually taped off for Rachel’s announcements about her personal life/feelings and Mr. Shue’s brilliant financial ideas.

Santana & Karofsky hold hands like two people who want nothing to do with one another’s private parts.

The gang is confused/disgusted/hilarious and also, are collectively dressed for Odyssey of the Mind, the Kentucky Derby, and a Britney Spears concert.

The most important reaction is, of course, Brittany’s, and without actually remembering what that expression was, I’m gonna guess, “disturbed and in love with Santana.”

The Bully Team will roam the halls in shiny red Little League jackets and berets, saving the district tons of money by policing the hallways so the staff doesn’t have to.

But seriously these outfits. I mean, can Glee Club try figure skating because this shit is hot and needs ice.

When Z tells a kid that finding new pants to wear is an “YP–your problem” not an “MP-my problem,” the Stellar Santana/Karofsky duo break that shit up.

Hahaha.

Glee 217 Recap: Night of Neglecting Viewers Expecting a Good Show, Lesbian Action

This week on Glee, nothing happened, which is unfortunate, considering all the things that could have happened. The episode was titled “Night of Neglect” because it neglected to do the following things:

1. Tie its ludicrous micro-plot (device) into any larger themes or storylines
2. Further Santana’s journey into the world of lesbianism
3. Further Santana’s journey into Brittany’s jazz pants
4. Further Santana’s journey into Brittany’s leggings/legwarmers (regardless of limb placement, we’ll take a hand and/or ankle in the vadge at this point)
5. Further the Quinn-Finn-Rachel love triangle (not like I give two shits, but whatever)
6. Further Kurt & Blaine’s homo-homo-homogay revolutionary birdsong relationship
7. Further Puck’s journey into Lauren’s pants
8. Present even one track for me to spend the day deliberating if it’s worth the money downloading from iTunes.
9. Provide any reasonable excuse for cluttering our potential lesbian minutes with old guest stars.
10. Justify its existence.

One might say the writers “neglected” to write an actual episode, probably should’ve spent the money spent writing this episode to actually fund The Arts, which would’ve brought it RIGHT back around since the theme of this episode –  and also, it’d seem — the theme of this entire week, is fundraising!

We open in Glee Club, a motley crew of children who like to make out with each other and all look about 25 but are supposed to be 17.

Mr. Shu has done an unofficial poll of the over-40s and under-12s in the Mackinaw Island, Cape Cod and Niagara Falls area and has concluded that the best way to save Glee Club is to sell saltwater taffy to students, who typically have no access to saltwater taffy at all whatsoever (like crack!). Though honestly if they live in Lima, as I’ve mentioned, there’s a Cracker Barrel there, which sells saltwater taffy.

If you eat too much Saltwater Taffy it removes your teeth from your skull and if you eat it while pregnant then your baby might turn out like Brittany, who is hot and can dance and didn’t tell Santana she wanted to be her girlfriend but also says things like “I love saltwater.” True story. Don’t drink & drive!

Santana says nobody’s gonna buy tooth-extracting-taffy from Gleeks ’cause nobody likes Gleeks, and despite Santana being a very pretty/witty/gay lesbian with perky breasts, even she, SANTANA, gets slushies tossed in her face when she’s just trying to fantasize about Shane and go to class.

We flashback to the incident, wherein Katstiasgayguy steps into the frame and says “I’m So Sorry” in a weird voice that makes him sound like Patrick Swayze in To Wong Foo.

You know, one time working at The Olive Garden I spilled a Strawberry Daquiri on this woman’s leather jacket and we had to pay her dry cleaning bill, which means The Olive Garden is better to its patrons than McKinley High is to its students.

Anyhow, the Asian Guy gets super upset ’cause he’s neglected — he’s not selling taffy until somebody sends him a some-e-card about how the Just-Now-Invented-for-Unclear-Reason “Brainiac” Club won the Big Champion Prize last week on the teevee.

We flash back to the games, where Brittany eats Dots, probably culled from the Halloween candy baskets of every kid in the universe because who the fuck wants Dots, it’s worse than Good ‘n Plentys or Mounds or whatever, and answers a series of questions about cat diseases which she aces. Cats = Lesbian.

The final round of the Trivia Olympics is about white rappers, and Artie reacts like I would if I was in this show and the category was white r[ec]appers. Also, Sunshine Corazon – that character they dropped like it was hot after the first episode of Season Two – has reappeared on the opposite team.

So the point of this is that Glee Club might need $5,000 to go to The Regionals/Finals/Bicentennial but the Cranium Club needs money to go to their Big Game or whatever. I’d suggest the advisor of the Brainiac Squad handle that one his or herself, but this is Glee, and nothing is real, and it only costs $250 to ship all four of them to Detroit for finals and let’s be real here: Detroit is a bargain. I grew up in the area and am obsessed with the history of Detroit, we can discuss this at another time. Mercedes could just sell her yellow shoes on ebay.

Sue Sylvester has assembled a legion of evil to destroy the Glee Club by, I believe, heckling? It’s like Pinky & the Brain-meets-one-of-those-movies-with-superhero-teams-like-The-Incredibles (or that neglected movie I saw 15 times, Meteor Man).

In honor of 420, we learn that Sandy now sells medicinal marijuana. Furthermore, Cheyenne Jackson’s character is straight but Sandy’s gonna hit on him anyhow, because he’s “predatory gay.” Did the writers forget that there are straight people watching this show and you can’t tell the jokes you can only tell around your gay friends.

Holly Holiday talks Mr. Shu into ditching the taffy idea in favor of a benefit concert entitled “A Night of Neglect” in which the children will perform songs by neglected artists. It’s a totally illogical ridiculous idea that will never work, but provides a weak structure upon which lines can be written and songs can be sung.

What neglected songs will the children be performing? Tina, who’s clearly never been to Astoria or Williamsburg, picks Lykke Li. Mercedes and her pink hat, who have clearly never been to the Motown Museum which is, conveniently enough, located in Detroit City (I’ve been several times and highly recommend it), wants to sing Aretha Franklin. Rachel, who’s clearly never been able to hear in both ears, wants to do Celene Dion. More specifically — “My Heart Will Go On,” which is, essentially, the worst song of all time.

Mike just wants to dance. Thank God. Mike’s dance skills have indeed been neglected, so.

So then Sunshine Corazon, sporting a lesbian beanie from The Real L Word and a Wheres Waldoey tube-top/dress thing pops up, just like the sunshine itself does every morning in Whoville.

Sunshine wants to be in the show too because she has been neglected by Glee in general for never serving a useful purpose, including now. She has 629 Twitter followers which guarantees a trending topic/packed house. Listen, I’ve got like 2,000 Twitter followers and you don’t see me busting my ass into the March of Dimes.

Unfortunately — because she kills the song, I mean this girl is super good, and I’m 75% sure Brittany Spears herself woke up from her prisoner-coma to design that microphone — Sunshine is very wrong to claim that All By Myself is a neglected song.

Need I remind you of this:

Rachel says Mercedes will get “bumped” if Sushine joins in so that Rachel can maintain her headlining position, which I’m 75% sure is racist.

Also can I mention that Rachel has been to Hilton Head with Ian Thomas, stole the velvet fabric lining off the walls of the Ritz Carlton Cigar Room and turned it into this horse-covered frock situation that almost — ALMOST — distracts entirely from her being like Beyonce and Mercedes being like those neglected girls in the movie Dreamgirls, which is the only film I saw in all of 2006.

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Lauren is concerned that Mercedes isn’t asking/demanding enough respect ’cause she so willingly took back seat to Rachel. Also, look at Mercedes’ shoes:

Lauren: “Respect isn’t something you can ask for, you have to demand it, and you deserve it.”
Mercedes: “You don’t seem to have trouble in that department.”
Lauren: “Right, but you know what, neither does Aretha or J-Lo or Maria, you know why? Because they get proof every day. I heard Mariah makes appointments at 9, shows up at 4 in the afternoon, because she knows people will wait.”

Lauren will fix this by becoming Mercedes’s manager. I know, it doesn’t make any sense. Just wait for the gospel choir.

So Uncle Jesse is annulling his marriage with Emma ’cause they never fornicated. Then Emma directly addresses her OCD for maybe the first time ever, idk because usually during scenes featuring solely Mr. Shu and another Rydell High Staff Member, I head out to make toast or fix another drink. I don’t even know why I’m sitting here.

Anyhow, for the first (or maybe tenth time), Emma GETS REAL.

Emma: “I actually believed that I’d have a handle on my OCD by now, it’s just been so long, and I’m so tired.”

God, and isn’t that the fucking truth? As much as we’re in love with our sadness/ destructive tendencies sometimes, when push comes to depressive/obsessive/manic shove, it’s just — it’s just “I’m so tired.”

Mercedes is making demands about M&Ms, as M&M selection is a thing journalists are obsessed with when talking about celebrity’s dressing room demands.

I’m excited that all signs are pointing towards the Mercedes number we want at least twice as much as Mercedes herself does, but must we get there via this weirdo plot?

Finn & Quinn approach Rachel in concern, Rachel says that stars obviously make demands b/c they need what they need and everyone knows Blue M&Ms are GM foods manufactured by someone who probably exploits something, somewhere. Rachel says she’ll take care of it.

Holly Holiday is being a Person From History who had big hands, like a lesbian. It’s not me, and it’s not Samantha Ronson, and it’s not the Jolly Green Giant, and ultimately I don’t care/know what’s going on here. She should have a fisting war with SamRo inside Lindsay Lohan’s uterus.

Also she’s dressed like Star Trek Generation meets Memoirs of a Geisha meets the late 80s. I love it.

Cheyenne Jackson arrives to hit on her. Ryan Murphy is doing his part to prove that gay actors can play straight, one gay Broadway dude at a time. Cheyenne has a thing in his ear, probs so he can communicate with the other Old Navy Team Members.

Cheyenne tells Holly that Will has small hands. This is the most lesbiany part of this episode so far, unfortunately. WHERE THE FUCK IS SANTANA’S LEZBOVADGE.

Mercedes/Rachel demands things like if she doesn’t get to headline everyone has to carry her around like Lady Gaga in the egg / somebody at their wedding / babies before they can walk.

The Winter of Our Lesbian Content: This is a Glee, Skins & Pretty Little Liars Megapost

Remember that beautiful week — when was it? It seems like so long ago. Was it only two weeks ago? Were we ever so young? Were we ever so teary-eyed and wet-pantsed and surprised and shocked and touched and awed and optimistic about everything in the whole wide world?

Reader: we were. And we had reason to be. You couldn’t fly a crop-duster through a Burbank backlot without hitting the head of a lesbian/queer/bif-ckingcurious storyline.

Now that your triweekly serving of Lez is officially over (for the time being) and we still don’t know who A. is or which conventionally attractive lesbian Emily will take to next year’s Winterdeath Ball or whatever it was, it’s time to look back on the season that was. It’s time to dwell excessively upon the clear-pored Sapphic or semi-Sapphic humans who graced the screen of my laptop this past winter (because I don’t have a teevee, but you probably do, so this might just feel totally different for you than it does for me).

Am I watching “Landslide” again as I type this? Maybe.

This past season has been unquestionably the most lesbionic TV season of all time. This must be how gay men felt for the 356 years Will & Grace was on the air, along with Queer as Folk, Sex and the City, Dawson’s Creek, The Office, Entourage, Noah’s Arc, Degrassi, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under OR MAYBE even how they feel right now with Modern Family, Glee, Nurse Jackie, Shameless, Gossip Girl, 90210, Lost, Weeds, Big Love, Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Greek, Mad Men, True Blood, The United States of Tara and basically every single show on Logo.

I talked about why we’re getting so much gay TV at the end of my Glee recap and so I’ve only got this to add: This season we were permitted to dream.

This had not been the case before now. Much like the feeling of ordering from Burger Fresh in the early 90s, we don’t expect the people in charge to get everything right. We don’t expect a homoerotic ‘ship to sail or sexual tension to get a follow-up episode or parents to “come around” to their gay kid. We expect at least one dead and one converted lesbian.

But, again like the feeling of ordering from Burger Fresh in the early 90s, we tuned in just the same because TV provides convenient at-home delivery. That’s right, Burger Fresh delivered. In MICHIGAN. So what do you want, a cheeseburger with the-wrong-kind-of-cheese and extra unordered-bacon-even-though-you’re-Jewish delivered to your doorstep? Or do you want to look into your freezer to see what’s worth re-heating from last year? You follow?

This season we felt slightly less like Lesbo Bevis & Butthead or desperate superfans because the little things we picked up on — Mini’s attraction to Franky, Sanatana and Brittany’s chemistry — actually got fleshed out, even just a little.

We’ll be rating these shows on a Lesbo Rating Scale from “Angry Lesbian” to “Happy Lesbian.”

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Skins UK (e4)

[all our posts on skins]

Queers:

Franky – genderqueer and pansexual (relatively confirmed)
Mini – bisexual or a lesbian (suspected)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

Oh, f- you in the ear Matty, you dark brooding super-complicated emo quasi-rebel, Avril Lavigne is darker than you are in your darkest hour. Courtney Love would smash your face in in a fist-fight and Jordan Catalano would be a better boyfriend. You thrive in the land of vulnerable women because you wear black a lot, which is edgy, and also you’re SO SO loyal to your OH SO COMPLICATED heart and its OH SO COMPLICATED feelings and you think if you curl your lip like that then somehow your reckless disregard for the subjects of your emotional attention will pass as genuine confusion rather than selfish, fickle, and pretentious. UGH UGH UGH.

I do think it’d be interesting to see our favorite genderqueer pansexual fawn Franky to date a dude so I’m not even mad about the fact that she seemingly ended up with Matty instead of Mini for gender reasons.

Just — Lawd do I hate this character. Everything he did made me groan.

In the End:

In Skins‘ Season Five finale, our suspicions that Mini has a Big Fat Lesbian Crush on Franky are confirmed, mostly because she does that thing that you did to your best friend in high school where you pretend to be Dr. Phil (“you deserve better, don’t go be with that boy”) / Oprah (“You’re my best friend! I protect you from the world!”) to cover up that you’re actually Ellen (“I like girls! Be with me! SURPRISE!”) . But also because Mini stores photos of Franky in her cell-phone spank-bank, tries to kill Matty, and constantly wants to touch/hold Franky. Oh, and Liv calls Mini out for her “girl crush.”

What precisely transpires in the poppyfields of Somewhere in the United Kingdom where Rich and Grace are going to get married is unclear — Franky thought 9/11 was beautiful, Franky just wanted to be normal for once, she takes a lot of drugs, freaks out when Matty tries to have sex with her which might be because she experienced some kind of sexual trauma earlier in life. Franky runs away, there’s a scene in a church basement where Liv starts to kiss Franky’s back to appeal to Matty but it doesn’t, Liv and Matty break up, and then, at an impromptu wedding reception with a Midsummer’s Night Dream theme, Franky arrives, texts with Matty about being a glorious headfuck thing, and then runs into his arms and is held. This could be a friendly hug or a love-forever hug, hopefully not the latter because as aforementioned I find Matty irritating.

Rating:

Skins was, per always, an excellent television program this season, which earns bonus points. Also extra for trotting out TV’s first genderqueer pansexual and for making aforementioned genderqueer pansexual so f-cking cute!

Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family)

[read all our posts on pretty little liars]

Queers:

Emily – lesbian (confirmed)
Maya – lesbian (confirmed)
Paige – lesbian (confirmed)
Samara – lesbian (confirmed)

Dude I Hate Who Coincidentally Ruins Everything:

A., Ian, Officer Garret, Ezra, Aria’s Dad, Caleb, Lucas, Noel Cahn and basically every male character on this show who took up minutes of the finale that should’ve been spent on Emily making out with girls.

In the End:

The final episode of Pretty Little Liars was super-busy with all of this “plot” and “murder mystery” nonsense and contained only one lesbian reference in the whole entire thing. Where was Paige? What if Paige is A and we didn’t even know about it?! What if Sounder killed Jenny?

Emily’s Mom wants to move to Texas to be with their Dad, but there’s no way they’re taking Shay off the show so let’s not even bother with that besides to say that Hanna teases Emily regarding if Texas “beauty queens” are her type. Which is super-adorbs.

Emily is e-mailing Samara so that love connection is open, Paige is nowhere to be found and Maya is apparently completing her 16th week of the Most Intense Marijuana Treatment Program of all time. When she comes back she’ll probably be allergic to everything.

Ultimately Emily’s storyline was a refreshing departure from expectation. Emily stood up to her Mom (who eventually came around, somewhat), felt liberated after her secret was revealed, and even refused to participate in someone else’s closeted antics.

The last lesbian scenes of the season are expounded upon in our recap of the second-to-last episode of Pretty Little Liars.

Rating:

For TV’s most admirable lesbian character, a “9.”

Next: Skins US and Glee

Glee’s Santana Is A Confirmed Lesbian, Kurt & Blaine Do Prom

I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Glee is on hiatus for the next four weeks and will return mid-April. The good news is that yesterday was Glee day at PaleyFest, the annual event where television writers and actors gather panel-style to chat about their wondrous contribution to pop culture. Much like Comic-Con, tons of spoilers and casting info comes out of the fest and boy did this one not disappoint.

Let’s cut right to the chase. Santana is officially 100% gay, as told exclusively to AfterEllen:

“Santana is now out, internally. Whether she’s dating somebody or not, we don’t know. But we think we’ve made a big step in giving the world that character. Whether her and Brittany will work out we don’t know. (Lesbian visibility) was our intention. We want to make sure everybody is included. Santana is a lesbian. She might not be ready to come out yet, but she is.”

Writers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk explained that while they love the Brittana dynamic (and who doesn’t?), the focus will now be Santana’s solo journey as she comes to terms with her sexuality. I actually think they are on the right track with this one — by having Santana deal with her identity independent from a relationship, it will probably come off as less of a gimmick and treated more seriously.

“A lot of people are very interested in that relationship. We now have a major character on one of the top shows on TV who is a lesbian. Whether she’s dating someone or not is not really what we’re getting at just yet. What we’re trying to do is explore that character and what it means to be that character. We’ll use Brittany as part of it, but we’re more interested in seeing who Santana is and how hard it is for her to accept who she is. That doesn’t mean they’re not gonna be together, but we’re more interested in the individual part of that relationship.”

AE also got a hold of Chris Colfer and he has a few ideas that could change the perception that gay men and lesbians operate on different planes: “They’re both very bitchy characters so I feel like they could bond. Maybe Kurt could teach her to be a little bit nicer — and a little bit more out.” Elsewhere, on the Kurt and Blaine front, there is sure to be some Klaine (is that a thing now?) angst when Kurt returns to McKinley High and the two fight to attend prom together. That’s awesome, but will it top Justin & Brian’s “Save the Last Dance For Me?”

Ya’ll up for some more Glee spoilers?  Good.

Close your eyes, ears and other portals if you wish to remain pure:

+ The “Born This Way” episode focuses primarily on the Karofsky bullying storyline.

+ Gwyneth will be back after the current four-week hiatus and hopefully again in season 3, adding that, “Gwyneth is sort of the muse of the show. I’m friendly with her. And Brad has become quite friendly with her. She’s also somebody who I write on the weekends and say, ‘What do you think about this for an episode even if you’re not in it?’ She has opinions. She’s great.”

+ Murphy says the show’s creators have long wanted to do an episode devoted to an album as opposed to an artist, and their wish has come true: Glee has been granted the rights to Fleetwood Mac’s epic record, Rumors.

+ Kristin Chenoweth returns later this season performing the original song , “It’s 10 am, I’m Drunk.” (She returns to pester Mr. Shu after her all-Caucasian production of The Wiz crashed and burned and she’s now performing in a one-woman show called Crossroads.)

Hey, what ever happened to Anne Hathaway guest starring as Kurt’s lesbian aunt?

Glee 216 Recap: “Original Song” or “The One With Gay Boys Kissing”

Do I even need to say it. Do I even need to tell you where to put your children (far away, like in the cellar if you have one, or maybe at soccer camp or viola lessons or something) and where you need to hide your television (far away, like in the cellar if you have one, or alternatively you could bring me your teevee because I can’t afford my own) and what to do with your ears (blast them out of your head with dynamite)? I do not. We all can see, plain as the day Quinn’s baby was born and subsequently disappeared into the vortex, what’s happening here.

IT’S THE FULL FRONTAL ATTACK OF YEAH YOU KNOW IT YOU GOT IT

Last week we saw all varieties of homosexual activity on three — THREE! — different prime-time television programs. Except one of them was in the UK, where everyone is drunk and a communist and happier than we are, so you know. Whatever.

Anyhow, before I launch into this guaranteed-to-be-halfassed recap which will certainly leave out most of the heterosexual business, primarily because I am still unable to separate Lea Michele, that-girl-i-knew-who-was-friends-with-all-my-friends, from Rachel Berry, the character, and therefore I feel dorky/strange/stupid writing about her in any substantial way and by “substantial” I mean “fangirlish” because that’s the language recappers are supposed to speak (I realize this sounds like a namedrop, but I’ve been asked why I don’t talk about this or that Rachel moment, so there’s your answer, end of conversation! Ta-da!), let’s cut to the part  that I still honestly cannot believe happened on my teevee:

The thing about gay kisses on teevee is that they tend to be pretty tepid, almost comically so — like everyone super-glues their lips together and then stuffs their glued-up face in another girls face and holds it there, lips still tightly affixed, for 2-3 seconds. Like this:

If you want tongue, try Showtime. Or, you know, Pretty Little Liars. But Kurt & Blaine actually parted lips, possibly even wiggled some tongues down some throats and warbled their way to couple-ville this week, which seemed improbable as I imagined Blaine was coming to find Kurt as insufferable as I currently do and they’d never get together under these circumstances.

But I underestimated the power of an acoustic Beatles tune to bring a homo to his knees.

The episode opens at Dalton Academy, where The Warblers have done the impossible and managed to choose yet ANOTHER song that’d make me walk right out of GapKids no matter what was on the sale rack in a size 18. Apparently these Warbler children who did, to be fair, gave us plenty of clues that they were merely imaginary lemmings sprouted from Blaine’s ID, believe their best/only shot at winning anything ever is to have Blaine sing a song while they make doo-wop noises in the background like little musical soldiers. Kurt, READING OUR MINDS, points out —

Kurt: “Can I be really honest with you? Because it comes from a place of caring: Been there, done that. Look, Blaine, your solos are breathtaking. They’re also numerous.”

Mhm. If they wanna wow the crowd, they can’t just cover Train and Maroon 5 and all those other pussy guys while Blaine does sign language. WHAT WILL THEY DO? WHO WILL HE SING WITH?

Cut to Kurt in his room looking at himself for no reason when his pet bird Pavarotti, who I may or may not remember ever existing prior to this episode, drops dead. That’s unfortunate considering Kurt could’ve used the money he spent on that Burberry birdcage cover on saving a child from the devastation of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis currently happening in Japan or even saving a child who lives nowhere near Japan and has never heard of Japan but nevertheless is, as they say, “hungry.”

But Kurt is also hungry. Hungry for “me-time” which for Kurt means “everybody-look-at-me-time”! He decides to express his feelings about Pavarotti’s death through song — BLACKBIRD. Jeezus there are no words for my love of this song.

Reader — I cried. Mostly I was thinking about George Harrison, though. No JK, I was thinking about John Lennon.

This is the moment that Blaine will reference later when he confesses to Kurt, after having encouraged his cult to allow him and Kurt to do a duet together and gotten the sign-off on it:

“Kurt, there is a moment when you say to yourself, ‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you forever’. Watching you do Blackbird this week, that was the moment for me, about you. You moved me, Kurt. And this duet would just be an excuse to spend more time with you.”

I expected Kurt to literally cry tears of joy, but going in for the makeout ain’t so bad either. I’m hoping sex will losen Kurt’s collar a tad and remind him to show us some genuine “glee” again. In other words, I expected this. What are the kids at World’s Only Coffee Shop gonna say when these two boys stride in holding hands? TIME WILL TELL!

I’m happy that by the end of this episode we saw Kurt expressing shards of GLEE, the feeling, and I hope to see more of how this relationship makes Kurt happy.

Over at the lockers of our Discontent and Thwarted Desires, Brittany cutely edges up to Santana’s locker: “Hey, can I ask you a question? We used to be really close, and I really miss being your friend.”

Santana’s got the ice wall up in full effect — the rigid jaw, the cold, menacing stare — “Still waiting for the question,” she retorts.

“Did I do something wrong?” Brittany asks, sad as a sad puppy.

“I don’t know, did you?” Santana turns and almost — almost betrays her steely exterior but she ultimately powers through that moment where she’s forced to nearly look Brittany in the eye and wants to die again and lands safely on the other side of it — where Santana’s feelings still belong to Santana and nothing hurts.

Santana continues — “All I know is you blew me off to be with Stubbles McCripplepants. But it’s your loss. Because now I get the chance to write a heterosexual song about Sam, that we’re going to sing at Regionals.”

G-d DAMN.

Nicely played. See ladies — watch and learn. This is how one maintains one’s cool trashwhore exterior. Firstly: never make yourself vulnerable. One must keep the upper hand, one must have complete control, one must relish in the power of being the one less in love. Failing all that, one must at least APPEAR to have the upper hand/control/be less in love.

Let’s diagram.

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1.

All I know is you blew me off…

Retrospectively downgrades the significance and importance of Brittany rejecting Santana’s desire to be with her despite the incredible stakes by referring to “breaking my heart” as “blowing me off.”

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2.

…to be with Stumbles McCripplepants…

Here she swiftly invalidates Artie’s adequacy as a partner and as a man. This is CLASSIC! It’s transparent but the beauty of these transparent low-blows is that they’re too low for anyone to call you out on being transparent because they’re still recovering from the fact that you actually said what you just said. Also serves to re-establish Santana as existing ABOVE Artie in the food chain of love despite being (as she sees it ) rejected for Artie.

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3.

It’s your loss.

Standard. We all say this, it’s like our last mad dash towards a strand of pride.

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4.

…’Cause now I get the chance to write an awesome heterosexual song about Sam…

This is a hit at Brittany for favoring her het relationship over lovegames with Santana. Santana is mocking Brittany’s participation in this farcical sexuality by rubbing its normativity in her face and sarcastically restating its inherent superiority.

Also an attempt to make Brittany jealous that Santana loves someone else, even though I mean, obviously she doesn’t, but she has to act like she does in order to be on top, like Tyra wants everyone to be. You gotta be on top. You know the song.

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5.

…that we’re going to sing at Regionals.”

And by the way we’re going to win it all in front of everybody and that could have been me and you up there in front of everybody singing “Like the Way I Do” but alas, you’ll have to watch me sing with Trouty lips!!

It’s shitty to have all your feelings out there like that, to put them out there and let someone else decide what to do with them. You’ve got to get that shit BACK. And that’s what Santana is doing. Here’s hoping that they’ll work their shit out in a month — in song! And also naked.

Brittany, who probably also doesn’t know what season it is, is like, “wait, you’re still dating Sam? But you told me you were in love with me.” Brittany wants it back, that love, or maybe she wants Santana to admit she’s no more ready to leave Sam than Brittany is to leave Artie (which is untrue), or maybe she realizes being in love with each other and loving their boyfriends are mutually exclusive and she should leave Artie and his sweater vests behind in JC Penny and jet off into the future , which I imagine to be like Candyland, but rated NC-17 and with no boys.

Santana icily replies, lying clearly to save face: “I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. Look, can you stop staring at me? I can’t remember my locker combo.” That last part I think is because when someone stands that close to you, you can totally smell them and that makes you want to crawl inside them forever and ever.

Then Sue Sylvester arrives, calls them “Tweedle-dumb” and “Tweedle-fake-boobs,” says crazy things about them leaving Cheerios for Glee, and then as she departs, they open their lockers and piles of dirt pour out upon them, thanks Sue!

Brittany: “I don’t even remember putting that in there.”

Glee 215 Recap: HomoSexy

Before watching this week’s episode of Glee (I watch it online ’cause I don’t have a teevee), a few eager fans decided to spoil my surprise homoparty by telling me, via formspring, that SANTANA IS A LESBIAN. I thought, “Is this a joke?” and then I thought, “but Santana is like the slutty one who sleeps with all the boys, there’s no way SHE’s the lesbian, this must be a trick of some kind,” and then, much later than I’d like to admit, I remembered that I, too, was the slutty one who slept with all the boys.

And so here we are.

I get it. I mean I get Santana — where she’s coming from. I mean I think I’ve been there too. I didn’t figure myself out gradually and then suddenly or even just gradually. I figured it out suddenly, all at once, like Santana does here, and a million puzzle pieces fell from the sky and over time, found their place in the f*cked up scattershot damaged resources of my once-incomprehensible memories and desires. Like Santana, I didn’t think making out with girls meant I could ever want to “be with” one.

I’ve never really related to a teenaged-teevee storyline before.

I didn’t, like Paige McCullers, enjoy my date with a boy until he kissed me (the kiss was fine, too). My family hadn’t been waiting all my life for me to tell them what they already knew, like Kurt Hummel. I hadn’t been consciously living a lie because I was afraid of my family’s reaction, like Emily Fields or Emily Fitch. I hadn’t known since I was 12 and fell in love with my future girlfriend like Naomi Campbell. I didn’t just know/accept it all along (or eventually reneg on it) like Tea. I wasn’t coaxed out of the closet by an already-ok-with-being-gay paramour, like Paige Michaelchuck or Marissa Cooper or Spencer Carlin was. But Santana — Santana I get.

And isn’t it amazing? That we have a choice now? That Willow is no longer speaking for the entire group?

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Episode 215: Sexy

[thanks to gleekstorm and gleeky for leading me to many of the graphics/gifs used below. original gif-maker credited whenever possible]

Gwyneth Paltrow, playing Cameron Diaz playing Holly Holiday, is back at McKinley (I almost called it Rosewood!) to teach Health or whatever educational hybrid works best for this week’s plotline.

Emma, fresh out of a not-productive Celibacy Club meeting with Quinn and Rachel, squeals that sex “is not for kids and not for adults” ’cause the only way to get KY Jelly between Emma’s legs is to tell her it’s hand sanitizer. Also, outfits like these don’t make for quick-release nudity:

Meanwhile in the hallway — WERE WE EVER SO YOUNG — Santana’s Black Panther Blazer is interested in sheltering Brittany’s bird-related sweater set via cuddle puddle and incest porn.

Santana: “Hey, Brit-Brit. So, how about you and I pop in some Sweet Valley High this evening and get our cuddle on?”
Brittany: “Look, I’d love to get my sweet lady-kisses on, but I haven’t been feeling sexy lately. I think I have a bun in the oven. Please don’t tell anyone, okay, especially Artie.”

Santana begins telling everyone before finishing telling Brittany she won’t tell anyone. Anyhow, false alarm! When Will asks if Brittany’s gotten a doctor to verify the impending birth of what will surely be the weirdest baby ever, we learn that Brittany mixed up “the voyage of sperm up her vaginal canal” with “the voyage of birds flying through the sky, landing and building nests outside her perrywinkle window.”

As Brittany explains her predicament, the reaction shots are priceless:

Will, wearing denim-on-denim (not really, but it does look like denim-on-denim, so), is ready to get “deep into their setlist” in anticipation of Regionals, that massively competitive season-ending event oddly attended by no more than three other musical groups, one of which is always a gimmick (old people! deaf people!) BUT unfortunately, Will now sees he’s got a bunch of future genital warts crowding up the music room and it’s time for sexual education.

This education will not take place in sexual education class, where we’ve already flash-backed to see Mercedes have AIDS panic over Cucumbers (the same thing happened to me once but instead of cucumbers it was this gun-toting, stab-wound-sporting, small-time boxer who I met at The Olive Garden) but instead, in Glee Club.

Since nobody dates outside of Glee Club, at least you’re taking care of all these couples as packages and LET’S BE REAL Glee Club is actually a pilot music therapy program for kids at risk. In this case it’s all the best looking kids in school at risk of growing up and becoming Republicans if you don’t keep ’em humble and slushied and singing like a bunch of homosexual pansies every week.

Speaking of packages, Holly Holiday’s sex ed concept is that you’ve gotta “hide the vegetables” just like Jessica Seinfeld suggests in her cookbook about making sure children eat vegetables. Apparently the fact that “sex ed” is already pre-packaged in “sex,” which I believe is already pretty fucking interesting, especially to teenangers, is not enough. In order to REALLY REACH THE KIDS, Holly knows sex ed should be wrapped in sex and also SINGING AND DANCING, which, to be fair, is how everything should be wrapped. (But really did anyone fall asleep or fail to pay attention during sex ed? Condoms, WHAT A SNOOZER, let’s get back to The War of 1812 already! No. The problem with sex ed isn’t that it’s boring and kids don’t listen — it’s that most schools DON’T HAVE IT. I’ll stop now before I get incensed.)

Holly: “Sex. It’s just like hugging, only wetter.”

Holly, who picked up her jacket either from the future or The Hard Rock Cafe, calls out the kids for being sexually misinformed, like how Finn believed in pregnation via jacuzzi jets (although in a pinch, it beats a turkey baster) and Holly says this misinformation will end “right here, right now.”

How? By everyone acting completely inappropriate and singing Joan Jett while thrusting their tits into the air like spastic zoo animals. Beats chlamydia every time.

Although it seems like Holly got an excessive amount of screen time in Brittany’s dance number, what with all her singing and dancing and lead vocalizing — THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS — I’m not mad at this scene. Will resists the urge to get all molesty and instead holds up a sign reading “TOO MUCH?” which Rachel should probs snag for safekeeping to whip out next time Will gyrates his way into a school assembly.

She ends with some words to the wise:

Holly: “Just remember, when you have sex with somebody, you’re having sex with everybody. And everybody’s got a random.”

Sue magically finds Kurt (“Porcelain”) and Blaine at the Coffee Shop, where she prepares herself a potion of sugar packets, vanilla syrup and heavy whipping cream while informing the boys they’ll need sex appeal to win at regionals, which is utter nonsense.

Meanwhile at McKinley, where nobody’s got time for lattes or syrup, Lauren lights Puck’s loinfire by suggesting sex is in their future. I hope so, I’ve had enough of this chatty foreplay and am ready for the dramatic relationship part and subsequent Ballads to begin.

Lauren: “Puckerman, today is your lucky day.”
Puck: “You’re finally gonna let me motorboat those twins?”
Lauren: “Remember when I told you I had a master plan? Here it is.” [DRAMATIC PAUSE] “Can you think of a celebrity who released a tape of their intimate relations that DIDN’T make them more famous?”
Puck: “If this is going where I think it’s going, I may need to sit down.”
Lauren: “Rachel Berry wants to be a famous singer. I just want to be famous. Doing that number for Glee Club was my first step towards being a star. I wanna be like a Kardashian, I want a TV show and a fragrance. It’ll be called Zizes. And the slogan will be “you just got zized.”

I will buy ten bottles of Zizes and I will stir-fry my breakfast in it. I will baptize my baby in Zizes and I’m not even Christian.

Meanwhile in an abandoned warehouse I swear just got busted with $16 million dollars of cocaine on The Wire episode I saw earlier today, The Warblers are putting on a private performance for a bunch of schoolgirls from their “sister school” to see if The Warblers are sexy enough to wow the adult judges who will be assessing the team based on vocal abilities, dancing and choreography.

The passion in the warehouse reaches foam-party proportions and Kurt makes sexy faces that remind me of karaoke on the Rosie Cruise but Blaine isn’t a fan/is an asshole.

Blaine: “Are you okay? You kept making those weird faces during the whole song.”
Kurt: “Those aren’t weird faces, those are my sexy faces.”
Blaine: “It looked like you were having gas pains or something.”
Kurt: “Great.  How are we supposed to get up on the stage at regionals and sell sexy to the judges when I have as much sexual appeal and knowledge as a baby penguin?”

This image exists on the internet:

Holly catches Lauren & Puck checking out online sex tapes as they plan for One Night in Zizes and lets them in on a little secret we all recognize from the Parents Television Council — that shit be child porn and they best not do it. Holly throws “my sex tape with JD Salinger was a disaster” out there like it isn’t THE BEST LINE EVER.  Someone oughta run into the rye and catch that sucker and put it on a t-shirt.

In Santana’s noir/reggae-themed Boudoir, Brittany tries to bring up feelings again. Last time Brittany wanted to talk about her feelings for Santana, Santana knocked Brittany’s idea of doing a duet to Melissa Etheridge, which drove Brittany STRAIGHT into Artie’s arms. So.

Brittany: “I need to talk to you. I really like it when we make out and stuff–”
Santana: “Which isn’t cheating because –”
Brittany: “The plumbing’s different.”
Santana: “Mhm.”
Brittany: “But when Artie and I are together we talk about things like feelings.”
Santana: “Why?”
Brittany: “Because with feelings it’s better.”
Santana: “Are you kidding? It’s better when it doesn’t involve feelings. I think it’s better when it doesn’t involve eye contact.”
Brittany: “I don’t know I guess just don’t know how I feel about us.”
Santana: “Look. Let’s be clear here — I’m not interested in any labels, unless it’s on something I shoplift.”

Santana doesn’t even buy clothes. Clothes just want to be on her.

Brittany: “I don’t know, Santana, I think we should talk to somebody — like an adult. This relationship is really confusing for me.”
Santana: “Breakfast is confusing for you.”
Brittany: “Well sometimes it’s sweet and sometimes it’s salty. What if I have eggs for dinner. Then what is it?”

Between the storks and the Novocaine, there’s a little Buddha in Brittany’s sage cerebrum.

Holly brings the girls into her chamber/sushi bar to sit on the floor. Why are we sitting on the floor, they ask. “Because we’re in Japan!” Holly jokes, ruining a recapper’s opportunity to make fun of them for sitting on the floor like they’re in Japan.

Truly embracing the hokiest, most unappealing aspects of the lesbian experience, Holly christens this event as  “the sacred sharing sexy circle,” which again, is better than any joke I could ever make about it, and Holly begins by asking the girls if either could be lesbians. They shrug and say they don’t know, which is beautiful, because they didn’t say OH MY GOD NO EW which is I think the required response according to the FCC rulebook.

Santana says she likes girls and guys, but also — “I made out with a manequin. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was in the shape of a person.”

Holly recalls her sweet sapphic swing parties at her all-women’s college and admits she “still feels a little tingle when I hear Ani DiFranco,” and these two little girls (this little girl breaks furniture, this little girl breaks laws) are about to learn that love is a piano dropped from a four-story window.

Brittany doesn’t know how she feels ’cause Santana won’t talk about it. Although Brittany is an easily-manipulated sponge, Santana isn’t exactly fondling these homosexy desires.

I know right, this is like America’s Next Top Model when they’re trying to make you think Lisa’s gonna be eliminated but it’s really Kim.

It seems like — with respect to coming out stories — most girls saw a door. Maybe you had gone in but kept it a secret, maybe you stood it front of it every afternoon debating whether or not today would be the day you’d enter. Maybe you opened and closed it constantly, or gayly dashed back and forth through it. Maybe your family or friends were blocking the door.

But some of us never even saw the door, even with nobody blocking it, and once it was opened we fell straight in. A friend opened that door for me. I never, ever, ever in ten million years, would’ve opened it myself.

This scene, I think, is when Holly opened that door for Santana.

Blaine tries to teach Kurt sexyfaces but instead reminds Kurt that he’s awkward, and also really bitchy when made uncomfortable. Blaine consequently steps into an alternate universe where it’s appropriate to go ask your friend’s Dad to tell your friend about boners by confronting said Dad at the auto-shop to suggest he give Kurt a little sex ed talk. Kurt’s Dad gamely considers the suggestion because he’s AngelFather of the Year.

The girls have chosen to work out their feelings via song. They’ve chosen “Landslide,” which is a bona fide eternal tearjerker. I’d cry to Landslide if they played it in the middle of The Office.

So this happens, and I cry like the end of Brokeback Mountain crying.  It wasn’t Beaches crying, or even necessarily My Girl crying, but it was a little more than when Justin’s Mom came to PFLAG. I don’t even know what happened I was too busy crying and projecting.

I believe there were some vague undefined glances from Brittany to Santana and from Santana to Brittany just uncertain enough to give you a door into projecting the hell out of this scene.

For me it begins with how you don’t ever want to want anything ’cause you don’t want to get hurt. Feelings are uncontrollable, messy. Why would I put those in someone else’s hands when that someone else has made it clear they’re not interested in carrying it. You just don’t even GO THERE. Santana hasn’t even CONSIDERED IT. You can see that all over her face. Like I said, she was too busy sucking the chrome off Sam’s Cadillac to see the door.

Then something happens that forces you to extract your feelings from your gut and stare at them: your potential paramour actually leaves her wife, or confesses that she likes you, or you consider, for the first time, that you could be bisexual or gay for real.

Then this door swings open and you run through it and realize on the other side is a possibility brighter than anything burned where you just came from. It’s been there all along.

So you sit up there in front of everyone and think “what if I was with this person.” You think “everyone’s looking at us and it looks okay so far.” Santana is presenting herself in a suggestive context and as of yet no hell has broken loose.

It’s like sticking your toes in the pool.

When the song ends Brittany asks, “Do you really feel that way?” and Santana nods and they hug. This is the first moment Glee has ever felt real to me.

Brittany seems to usually be thinking “I like chips,” but here she’s giving off an “I like Santana” vibe. I mean this scene was so intense I didn’t even notice that 1995 had been calling Brittany that whole time regarding that LL Bean/Blossom dress they’d like returned to its rightful century.

Rachel: “Can I just applaud this trio for exploring the uncharted world of Sapphic charm? Brava. Brava.”
Santana: “Look, just because I sang a song with Brittany doesn’t mean you can put a label on me. I want to make that clear.”

Police label anyone attacking Santana as a Code 45-11…. a suicide.

The Celibacy Club, dressed in uniforms snagged from the employees of Disneyworld’s Frontierland banana stand, perform “Afternoon Delight” in front of a giant photographic montage of Old Country Buffet’s dessert bar while the audience snickers because “Afternoon Delight” is about sex, not about coconuts!

Brittany stands up and claps. I think that means she’s gay.

Kurt’s Dad decides it’s time to have the sex talk.

Kurt’s Dad: “Believe me, I wanna do this even less than you do. It’s gonna suck for both of us. But we’re gonna make it through together and we’ll be better men for it.”

Was this scene written by gay men who wished their fathers had known it was indeed possible to discuss sex with a gay teenage son? Because he kinda knocks this one out of the ballpark. Kurt accepts these pebbles with a bitchy sneer but respectfully tosses his Dad a genuine “thank you” at the end.

The Scene

It’s easy to get fan-fictiony on this scene and get all flowery and sentimental in hopes of touching your heart on a very simple, trite level and I don’t wanna do that. I’m trying not to do that.

From the comments on our quickie last night it seems like everyone related to it for a different reason — like a lot of you realized your sexuality ’cause you fell in love with your BFF. Like Santana, I did have a girl BFF I made out with sometimes, but I never wanted more than that, really. So I relate in my own way (more on this in a minute) which isn’t necessarily your way. This is why we need fiction and why I’ll never “get” reality TV — we read novels and watch scripted television because a good story can mean something to everyone. There’s no absolute truth because it’s not real. We can all keep this scene in our own way.

Was Santana always written this way? No clue. But it’s also not impossible in real life for a human to hop suddenly from one storyline to the other. Sometimes there is no gradient. There was one life and then there was my next life and the switch was sudden and extreme. In the first life, I had sex with boys. A lot of boys. It seemed that having slept with such a significant number of male humans certified my sexuality was, beyond any shadow of a doubt and beyond any emotional attachments to female friends and beyond any enjoyment gleamed from sometimes making out with girls, straight as an arrow.

There’s two major types of sex, and then a bunch of subcategories, obviously, but the two types are With Feelings and Without Feelings. And Sex Without Feelings isn’t really very similar to the other kind. Liking it, for some people, has nothing to do, ultimately, with your sexuality or love or anything. Focusing so much on Sex Without Feelings to decide Who You Are isn’t always effective/efficient and it seems like that’s what Santana has been doing all this time.

There’s this fear — “what would people say about us” — and you’re afraid to take it out and look at it so instead it just sits there in your subconscious, making you bitchy.  There’s a fear of fear. An understanding that if feelings are never discussed, you’ll never be pressed to act on them.

Yes, your friends and family will still love you. But it’s difficult to admit that you care about your enemies, too, and what they might say about you, especially when you’re used to being the quickest, sharpest tongue in the brawl. That’s what we do, those of us who are afraid to feel, because that attitude functions as a shield and a warning.

I realized watching this that this was my second television-induced sobfest this week because on Monday, Paige on Pretty Little Liars said her thing about how “if I say it out loud — if I say ‘I’m gay’ — the whole world will change.”

And then I thought — well, if you count Betty and Tea, Maya and Emily and Paige, and now Santana and (to a degree) Brittany — there are a shit-ton of queer girls on our teevee right now. There’s also Franky being all genderqueer over in the UK.

We owe this prevalance, I think, to what happened in September and October. We had to die for them to realize our stories needed to be told (by someone besides Ilene Chaiken). ‘Cause we all deserve our own Young Nelson. There have never been more teenaged characters struggling with their sexuality on television than there are right now.

We have voices now. We had to die first. To make it politically incorrect for anyone to vehemently protest seeing gay kids on TV. Because how can you do that, when they’re being bullied like that, when it’s killing them. Just let Santana and Brittany make out, you know?

There’s a part at the end of “Landslide” when Santana and Brittany hug and they flash to Quinn right quick and her face says “The feeling of Finally” and that feeling is a smile. That was a nice moment, too.

I could be mad here that Brittany says she can’t break up with Artie for Santana, but instead I’ve chosen to believe that eventually, she will. I feel like this is how those things turn out. And Brittany’s too stupid, I think, to realize that, regardless of what you’ve built your life around and how afraid you might be, it’s worth it to change everything for TRUE LOVE. Isn’t it?

SANTANA IS A LESBIAN !!! WE WIN ALL THE THINGS! IT’S GLEE, THE FEELING GLEE!

Did you see Glee? Oh cool, me too. I’m gonna write a recap here and all, but I thought maybe y’all might have a feeling or three about tonight’s ep?

Also I know this is weird, but I personally relate more to Santana’s speech about how she came to realize her sexuality/feelings for Brittany or whatever than any other coming outish scene I’ve ever seen. And trust me, I have seen all of them. Look. I have my character now. Sometimes I think of lesbians popping up on the television like Pac-Man or something.

[Also a disclaimer: Yes, we’re aware Santana can’t be “labeled” as a lesbian and isn’t necessarily a lesbian but fuck us in the ear if we can’t employ hyperbole because it’s more fun that way. Anyhow, she’s not a real person — she’s a character. We can feel however we want to about her because she’s not real and therefore our opinions of her will not impact her life because she’s not actually alive. It’s much funnier to say SANTANA IS A LESBIAN than it is to say SANTANA LIKES BRITTANY, BUT DOESN’T WANT TO BE LABELED]

Glee 214 Recap: Blame It On the Alcohol, For Real

This week’s Glee episode was entitled “Blame it on the Alcohol.” I had nearly vomited for the 45,667th time when I focused my hungover eyes on the episode title area of my computer screen circa Too Early O’Clock with vague intentions of a) Recapping Glee, b) Recapping Pretty Little Liars, c) Sticking my head in the oven, d) Cleaning the oven and THEN sticking my head in the oven.

Blame it on the Alcohol?

I almost thought Hulu was punking me, but it turns out not EVERYTHING is about me (although, as I’ll explain shortly, it is, because we are all connected, like as a human family etc).

See, typically I view Glee on Tuesday night via an illegal pirating site to gather my preliminary thoughts/feelings. But not this Tuesday night. On Tuesday February 22nd I was drunk and vomiting while imploring my sleepover buddy to play me songs on her guitar, which she did, because she’s gay, and so am I, just like Blaine at the end of this episode and Brittany in my imagination.

In any event, I blame the lateness of this recap on — you know — the alcohol! FOR REAL.

Now that I’ve told you all that, let’s just address the elephant in the room: if you imagine the universe to be a jigsaw puzzle of a tiger’s face, then today it became clear to all of us that the tiger has eyes. THEN Obama made his announcement and the tiger had an ear. You follow? You will. The answers will be revealed to you in the Pyramids.

Oh, because I am too hungover to think (and also because the WordPress Media Library broke mid-cap, preventing me from uploading my own shit), I stole some photos from the tumblr Gleekstorm, and I thank them for their vulnerability and accessibility.

So! This week we all remembered that all these kids are over 21 ’cause bitches got drunksexy.

Much to the surprise of no one who has ever waited 45 minutes for a table at the Cracker Barrel in Lima, Ohio, this episode opens with the revelation that the children of McKinley High have been turning to the drink and getting drunkity-drunk-drunk. “Not wasted on learning, wasted on booze,” the principal tells Will, because bla bla the media glorifies drinking and markets alcohol to children. Have you ever had an alcoholic slushie? Don’t. Also, Will and Emma are friends and Sue Sylvester pushed a homo down the stairs and took over Glee coaching duty for rival school “Aural (Oral) Intensity.”

Puck saddles up to Rachel — who is wearing a dress with puppies on it — and suggests she throw a party ’cause her Dads are in the Stardust Theater on the Rosie Cruise listening to other Broadway actresses sing Mama Who Bore Me.

OH WAIT! Speaking of the universe being connected — Rachel’s Dads went on the Rosie Cruise, which made me SO jealous because the Rosie Cruise is essentially heaven, and also annoyed that we’re never gonna see the parents of this We R Family EVER; ALSO, Lea knows Rosie from Fiddler and later Rachel mentions playing “Celebrity” – which is a game Broadway people love to play for some reason, I think because it offers them a chance to talk and gesticulate while everybody looks at them and smiles. And where did I (yes, me again!) play “Celebrity” for the first time? On the Rosie Cruise, muthafunkas.

Rachel Berry has dug deep deep deep into her solar plexus and extracted a song about her headband, which she earnestly sings to Finn while doing this hair-strokey thing that makes him do that awkward smile thing and eventually he’s gotta break the news: her song sucks.

Luckily, Rachel’s got a plan to transition from “Little Princess” to “Natural Woman” (a la her new heroine Carole King) by getting drunk and making out with chicks. JK! Rachel wouldn’t do that.

In fact, NOBODY will do that on this show. COME ON MURPH SHOW US SOME MUFF-DIVING, it’s like L Word Season 4 up in here.

Oh right I was saying — Rachel’s going to drink to write songs, just like Lady Gaga. Thinking about whiskey right now makes me feel like Kurt Hummel in a Nazi foxhole in World War II, but I’m only saying that because of his outfit in the next scene.

Let the Rachel Berry Trainwreck Houseparty Extravaganza begin!

Rachel Berry’s sporting this Little House on the Prairie / Are There Mormon Underpants Under Dem Jeans get-up as she guides the children, with lunatic Stepford flair, into her homosexually decorated rec room which comes complete with a stage for her impromptu “performances for neighbors” and the “annual Oscar party.”

“Hey girlfriend,” Rachel says to Quinn, setting a thousand ‘shippers a-sailin’ into the Mirror-Blue Night. Santana’s autostraddling her mute boyfriend, aka Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, so Quinn’s having a terrible time. Rachel’s got drink tickets “to stop things from getting out of hand,” which kinda makes you want to hug her and I’m not just saying that because I think her dress would look better as a Snuggie.

When the crew threatens to ditch, Rachel laments, “How am I supposed to write ‘Both Sides Now’ if I Can’t Even Throw a Party.” I think you need to date Bob Dylan or something. Or anyone who’s not dumb as rocks.

Blaine, drunker than Darren Cris at the The Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Wrap Party, wants to ride Finn’s big tall hobby horse into football heaven but Finn’s straight and sober. Not Kurt. Kurt is gay and sober and practicing the dance moves he’ll do if Mr. Shue ever makes them all ride wheelchairs again.

Santana’s got a dead animal wrapped around her Jem & the Holograms mini-dress, Puck’s sporting Lauren’s glasses, Artie’s dressed like Camilla the Chicken and Brittany is for all intents and purposes naked. Good party!

Rachel tells Finn she’d do ANYTHING for him which inspires him to introduce her to the “Archetypes of Drinking”:

A.

Finn: Exhibit A: Santana, the weepy, hysterical drunk.

Santana: You like her more than me! She’s blonde and awesome and so smart. Admit it. Just admit it!

+B.

Finn: Lauren Zizes and Quinn… the angry girl drunks.

Quinn: I can’t believe what you did to my body. I used to have abs!

Lauren: Who told you that hair style was cool? Geronimo?

+

C.

This is the best kind of drunk.

+

D.

Just kidding, this is the best kind of drunk.

Then there’s “the needy girl drunk,” Finn tells Rachel. “Hanging all over me, being overly lovey. It’s not cool.” Um? Something’s missing. Where is THE BI-CURIOUS DRUNK? And no, I’m not talking about Blaine.

Rachel leaps up and declares that it’s time for the World’s Shortest Game of Spin the Bottle, because it was playing Spin the Bottle with Herbie Hancock that inspired “The Circle Game.”

This would be a fantastic opportunity for Brittany and Santana to make out and also for me to stare at my screensaver for three minutes, like I just did, because I still feel terrible and blame it on the goose.

Instead, Rachel and Blaine kiss. “This is outstanding!” Kurt exclaims, which is funny. Their duet is spectacular for reasons including but not limited to the brief moment of the Bitch-of-a-Living hop:

In the party’s aftermath, New Directions feels terrible & hungover, and Artie is offering Bloody Marys. I always hate those motherfuckers with the Bloody Marys, what is wrong with you? I would rather sever my left arm, which is a different kind of Bloody Mary because my name is Marie and I would be bloody.

Tina: I need to close my locker and it’s gonna sound like a gunshot.
Mercedes: I have had the worst hangover since Saturday and it’s Monday.

Normally I’d say THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE GLEE YOU’RE STUPID, but it’s like 24 hours since I finished drinking and I still feel terrible, so who knows. Anyhow just like Rachel predicted, this naughty behavior inspires a great musical number that seems like something that would happen if Ryan Murphy adapted Less Than Zero to the stage.

It’s Sudafed episode redux and the kids have a full-fledged habit at this point. Also, they have never looked hotter than they look in this episode. Rachel, Brittany, Santana, Lauren, Quinn, Tina, Mercedes : I applaud your beauty.

Rachel: Mr. Shu, first of all that vest is very cute. You are all kinds of awesome. But maybe there are no songs about the dangers of drinking because there’s really none as long as you have a proper designated driver.. [To Mike]: Have I ever told you how great you are?

Mr. Shu: Driving drunk is dangerous. And have you ever heard about alcohol poisoning? It kills about 400 people a year.

They’ll spend tomorrow thinking of an anti-drinking song for the assembly. It’s just another ZANY day in Magic High, where “class” is an abstract concept, “Glee Club” meets at undetermined hours, Sue Sylvester roams the halls committing violent misdemeanors in a tracksuit, football is either always or never in season, and a magical band of dancing elves sits furiously creating costumes out of garbage bags and sequins for the children to wear on the stage.

Blaine and Kurt are out for the fifteenth mocachinno of their friendship – it’s like Central Perk or something – when Rachel calls (she’s at home in her pajamas drinking Lily Pulitzer wine out of a Strawberry Shortcake glass listening to Carole King) to ask Blaine out on a date. The exchange happens very quickly, which just shows how CONNECTED they are. Kurt laughs chuckles of jealousy and confusion.

Kurt: Wait a second — why’d you say yes? You can’t lead her on.
Blaine: Who says I’m leading her on?
Kurt: You can’t be serious.
Blaine: When we kissed, it felt good.
Kurt: It felt good because you were drunk.
Blaine: What’s the harm on going on one crummy little date?
Kurt: You’re GAY, Blaine.
Blaine: I thought I was, but I’ve never even had a boyfriend before. I mean isn’t this the time we’re supposed to be figuring this stuff out? Maybe I’m bi! I don’t know.
Kurt: “Bisexual” is a term that gay guys in high school use when they wanna hold hands with girls and feel like a normal person for a change.

Wait — did you hear what I just heard? That was the door to my heart slamming shut to Kurt. It takes a lot for me to hate a gay character not written by Ilene Chaiken. I’m sorry Chris Colfer, you seem awesome even though you won’t give us an interview, but Kurt — you and me are dunzies.

Blaine: Why are you so angry?
Kurt: Because I look up to you. I admire you for how proud you are of who you are. I know what it’s like to be in the closet and here you are about to tiptoe back in!
Blaine: I’m really sorry if this hurts your feelings or your pride or whatever, but however confusing it might be to you, it’s actually more confusing for me. You’re 100% sure of who you are. Fantastic. Well, maybe we all can’t be so lucky.
Kurt: Yeah I’ve had a lot of luck, Blaine. I was really lucky to be chased out of high school by a bully who threatened to kill me.
Blaine: And why did he do that?
Kurt: Because he didn’t like who I was.
Blaine: Sort of exactly what you’re saying to me right now.

No it’s not.

Blaine: I am searching, okay? I am honestly just trying to figure out who I am and for YOU of all people to get down on me for that? I didn’t think I’d hear this from you. I’d say “bye” but I don’t wanna make you angry.

Kurt goes over to Rachel’s to help her clean up after the party they had LIKE FIVE YEARS AGO. Kurt asks Rachel about the date.

Rachel: The date was lovely, we saw Love Story at the revival theater, we even dressed up as the characters!
Kurt: That’s not gay at all. Did you kiss?
Rachel: No, our lips spent the evening mouthing Ali MacGraw’s dialogue. Frankly I did expect a little snog as the date drew to a close, but I guess the timing just wasn’t right.
Kurt: Or the blood alcohol level.
Rachel: Look, I know that you have feelings for him, and I’m sure you think I’m crazy for asking him out. But Blaine is obviously conflicted, and if he turns out not to be gay well then, I guess I will have done you a favor!
Kurt: And I’m doing YOU a favor by telling you that Blaine is the first in a long line of conflicted men that you will date that will later turn out to be the most flaming of homosexuals.
Rachel: Blaine and I have a LOT in common.
Kurt: A sentiment expressed by many a hag about many a gay. Look – I don’t doubt that you and Blaine would have a JOLLY good time shopping at Burberry and arguing over who would make the better Rum Tum Tugger — I don’t dispute that. But there’s something you and Blaine will never have, and that’s chemistry.
Rachel: Fine. Then I’m gonna prove you wrong. I’m gonna take the beer goggles off and kiss him and if the spark is still there I’m gonna take you down to the bakery for a piping hot slice of Humble Pie.

I want to vomit. That’s actually unrelated to the show. You guys. I don’t think I can drink anymore, but what can I do about the media glorifying alcohol, showing beer commercials during Nascar, marketing likker to tiny children and shoving its fist into my mouth except by “fist” I mean “beer bong”?

Actually TBH I find this whole Rachel-Blaine-Kurt thing to be really tedious and boring and I cannot even summon myself to feel any rage about it. If this was rock-paper-scissors, “nausea” would cover “rage.”

Kurt’s Dad is pissed that Kurt had a boy sleepover and Kurt wants Dad to know that they had all their clothes on. For some reason Kurt withholds the vital information that they did not make out or anything. Why? I have no idea. There must be a point in here somewhere, maybe it’s in the soufflé with the fancy eggs.

Kurt: It’s not being gay that upsets you, it’s just me acting on it.
Dad: I don’t know what two guys do when they’re together. You know I sat through that whole Brokeback Mountain, and from what I know something went down in the tent.

Oh good, I’m glad we’re dedicating twenty seconds of this episode to a really common problem with how people think about gay people (that somehow because gaysex is a mystery, it’s offensive and therefore not allowed) even though it has NO relation whatsoever to the very reasonable request of a parent that nobody of the gender-you-are-attracted-to can sleep over without permission.

Kurt: I won’t have sleepovers without anyone that might be gay without asking you first.

Good thing that Blaine is bi now! Also though, here’s the thing about high school: sometimes you don’t have the gay revelation until the sleepover is already underway. You hear me? YOU HEAR ME LADIES.

Kurt tells Dad to educate himself so that he can talk to him like straight sons can.

But Dad just said that he watched Brokeback Mountain and that’s the only gay movie ever ever ever to ever happen in the history of movies and look what happened to those boys? One of them died, and the other one had to fake-date Taylor Swift. 

Got it Dad? You better join up Grindr and get learning so that you can have graphic sexual discussions with your child, just like straight sons and straight fathers are doing all over the country right this minute. I hate this scene. The man is making brunch in an apron, for crying out loud.

Rachel practices her French in the Eternal Coffee Shop and not only does it make Blaine say “oh my god, I’m gay, thank you for clearing that up for me” and then run to the bathroom to jerk off thinking about that guy from The Gap, but he completely loses interest in his coffee order. I’m sure Kurt knows it.

Rachel is thrilled because now she has experienced the pain necessary to write a song. It’s going to be called U R So Gay But You Don’t Even Like Me.

The principal gets all the zingers this episode ’cause he says Ke$ha how Ke$ha is supposed to be said — actually seriously as I type this I am feeling nauseous just thinking about Ke$ha. I look into her eyes and think “somebody get a bucket.”

At the final assembly, the kids drink jungle juice, which is probably how Ke$ha became Ke$ha (well that and a bucket of to’up glitterbombs), and throw up gray paint onto each other. This miracle of nature/special effects is heralded as an effective anti-alcohol message (DUH) and Sue does something insane to Will that is really just so stupid that as a writer I feel it’s my duty not to encourage this kind of thing by telling you about it.

More importantly, Heather Morris (who plays Brittany) dances in an off-the-shoulder paint-splattered t-shirt and Daisy Duke cutoffs and cowboy boots and everyone is acting super sexified — hereby marking the first (and probably ONLY) time in my life I’ll ever, ever, EVER be able to tolerate a Ke$ha situation.

In the end they have a somewhat mature and honest conversation about alcohol and we all sign pledge forms to not drink until after sectionals. I think I will sign it too.

Quin: There’s a fair amount of pot calling the kettle black in that statement.
Brittany [whispers]: Oh my god that’s so racist.

Ultimately I feel satisfied by this episode.

The moral of this story, and also of this recap, is that drinking is super fun, but also sometimes bad. That’s right my little cabbage patch kids, just because you CAN drink a quarter-bottle of whiskey in one sitting doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

I was gonna try and write a thing about how I have a lot of feelings about how much I enjoy seeing a super-butch heterosexual football coach and a sassy smart stylin’ fat chick on my teevee. I have a lot of issues with how Beastie and Lauren’s characters have been handled sometimes. But really, come on: I think if we can agree on one thing, it’s that in general this show does not know how to handle its shit. But then again, this:

Anyhow now I’m not, because I still feel like shit. DON’T DRINK YOU GUYS. It’s bad for you. It’s bad for all of us. (UPDATE: Just smoked a joint and feel slightly better)

Glee 213, “The Comeback”: An Entire Episode Dedicated to the Lesbian Lifestyle

Last night was not the gayest episode of Glee ever. It was the most lesbianist episode of Glee ever, even though there weren’t any lesbians in it. Seriously I bet you my $238 remaining dollars of MasterCard credit (at a 29.9% APR) that tumblr is going to crash tonight because of this episode and the animated gifs it will inspire amongst tumblr’s most passionate demographic.

For starters, Rachel and Mercedes did a “Diva-off” to “Take Me or Leave Me,” the best lesbian song of all time — no, not just the best lesbian song of all time — to the very cherry on top of the invention of music and the rise of leather pants in the mid 90s. “Take Me Or Leave Me” is a belt-it-in-the-car like you’re Britney Spears in a wig escaping from the police ANTHEM that echoes with a vaginal vibrato stretching from the thighs of New York City through the starlight Midwestern drama-camp air and all the way into the hearts and heads of every lesbian with ears to ever exist ever of all time.

Furthermore, Justin Bieber, the perplexingly popular lesbian icon who isn’t actually a lesbian, although many lesbians look like Justin Bieber, was a central icon of this week’s episode. The Biebs — the man who launched a thousand parodies just as cloyingly charming as the actual songs he sings — yes, it was all about the Biebs and the American Apparel hoodies lesbians enjoy wearing so so much.

Then Lauren summons the fury of a thousand suns to do this glittersassy version of “I Know What Bois Like,” while Brittany and Tina dance around her like psychotic lesbian schoolgirls. There’s a lot of touching and everybody owns it. RISE, WOMEN — RISE FROM THE ASHES AND SING!

The finale featured everyone in PLAID FLANNEL. It was like a thousand-strong army of magical singing dancing lumberjack LESBIANS. From the back row, Rosie O’Donnell was probably drinking a beer and laughing her ass off.

Also, Sue Sylvester says the words “pocket lesbian” in reference to Justin Bieber.

Also? Everyone wears legwarmers on their arms, which is what lesbians do to make sure their forearms don’t freeze off which would render their limbs unable to properly fingerblast.

Also there’s a touching moment at the cancer ward where giving back to the community and humbling oneself to the very real tragic needs of human children breaks Sue’s icy-cold sue-icidal heart. That’s a human thing I think. But lesbians are humans, SO.

Oh and also — somewhere near the end, Santana growls “Check out dwarf Dianne Warren,” at Rachel Berry, who is on some hippie singer-songwriter kick where she wants everyone to win their very own Tony, and I am 75% sure that Dianne Warren is a lesbian if I’m not getting her mixed up with someone else. Even if she isn’t, she produced a song for Haviland Stillwell’s album, and Haviland Stillwell is a lesbian, so — LESBIAN.

Surprise of the episode? Finn is a lesbian, like Aidan in South of Nowhere, like Jonathan Taylor Thomas, like sea lions, like Maureen & Joanne, like hummus, like Justin Fucking Bieber, and like this website.

I don’t think I can cover any more lesbian news until March, unless Brittany and Santana make out.*

* which they won’t because Ryan Murphy hates lesbians

A Very Glee Christmas Recap: Glee Christmas Special Very Christmassy, Special

Oh, Christmas. It’s a magical time of year. I wonder what’s going to happen this week on Glee, our favorite madcap caper musical show! See, every week someone tries to FOIL Glee, and then our ragtag team of unlikely heroes finds a way to save the day — usually through song! Also, some of them are gay, and some are cute, and some are in wheelchairs and some are “fat” and some are sort of stupid and some are “slutty” and some are Asian and at the end we all HOLD HANDS and sing in the wintery wintery blustery snowpantsy baby its cold outside WONDERLAND OF CHILDREN AND MUSIC AND SWEATERS!!!!!!

Christmas is early this year because of the Israeli Calendar. The Cheerios are celebrating by pretending to be in a Christmas special from the 70s. They’re singing weird songs, dressing like a Gap ad and saying weird things that I think those wooden toys said in that one Christmas movie.

I half love Christmas and the other half of me wants to stab it in the eyes. Actually, I totally love Christmas but tend to spend it alone or in airports. Except when I was a child. Sorry, I just became Will Shoeface for a second, waxing nostalgic about my woebegone youth in the hinterlands of Ohio that nobody cares about.

You know what else is in Ohio? This show. I was really glad someone said “Lima” out loud this week so I could prove that it’s pronounced like Lima bean, not like “rhymes with tina” as someone else has argued.

Want to know what happened Behind the Scenes?

A few notes:

1) My viewing companion correctly ID’ed kd lang singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” which is pretty gay.

1a) Hey were you aware that kd lang performed in Pee-Wee’s Christmas Special when we were children? She wore a denim dress situation, it was astounding.

2) But not as gay as Kurt and Blaine singing a Baby It’s Cold Outside to each other in like, Harry Potter outfits on the set of Clue: The Movie. Which was obviously super sweet – I felt love radiating in my own heart, culled from the hearts of every little gay boy in the whole world.

Chris Colfer sexes it up in a ratio similar to Dakota Fanning’s sexualitah in The Runaways. Approved.

It was so gay it’s gone all the way past gay and back to straight again. Rolling it forward.

3) I’m a big fan of The Christmas Special, like, as a genre. I had to remind myself halfway through the episode, ‘Riese, think of this as a CHRISTMAS SPECIAL.’ Because it gets really special.

There are “moments” and “sentimental speeches.”

4) When are the following couples going to MAKE OUT ALREADY:

a. Kurt & Blaine

b. Brittany & Santana

And no I am not being selective and only picking the homogays. Everyone else who really ought to kiss already HAS, I mean look at the trouble it’s gotten poor Finn into! Oh, Finn. Your dopey grin will keep Broadway’s Lea Michele warm all winter long, until February when the show returns.

5) MOTHERFUCKERS WHY DIDN’T ANYONE PLAY ALL I WANT FOR CHIRSTMAS IS YOU. FINE DO I HAVE TO DO IT MYSELF:

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Remember this part:

Brittany: “last year i left my stocking up over christmas vacation and an entire family of mice started living in it. their christmas gift to each other was rabies.”

6) This episode was probs a big enabler for Eddie Bauer addicts.

7) Why were we robbed of a Mr.-Shoeface-and-Kurt-Go-to-the-Mall montage? They could have sung “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

8) I also want sweet potato fries.

MERCEDES: I’ve been a very good girl, Santa. I want a pony, and a doll that laughs and cries, and… one of us smells like McDonald’s.
LAUREN: I would like Puckerman to love me. He’s a fox. I would also like sweet potato fries.
SANTANA: I want bling. I can’t be any more specific than that. Okay wait, hold up, please tell me that is a roll of Certs in your pocket.
QUINN: Do you have anything for stretch marks?
SAM: Chapstick. Lots of chapstick.
MIKE: I want Channing Tatum to stop being in stuff.
TINA: When does Asian Santa arrive?

9) I thought for sure Brittany & Artie were going to break up because Glee characters love getting self-righteous about the dissolution of their relationship based on some abstract moral platitude, and I thought Artie was gonna be all like, “she doesn’t love me for who I am, she loves me for who I am but not in a wheelchair,” but that didn’t happen.

Instead Tiny Tim got his legs back:

10) Seriously, lambs worked overtime to make all the wool necessary to outfit this episode of Glee.

It made me want to go to the mall or something.
11) Cindy Lou Who. EXCELLENT CHOICE.

12) Okay I lied, I had to bury my head in my pillow for a lot of this episode because it was so corny and special I thought I was going to die in a cheesestorm. But in retrospect, it was excellent. Sue Sylvester was on point! I’d share some of her quotes with you, but to be honest, I have to go to sleep!

DISCUSS.

Furt, A Very Special Episode of Glee: Straight Jocks Defend Gay Boy, Attract Hot Cheerleaders

I don’t know what people are gonna say about this episode. It was different. You know… less singing and dancing, less teenaged-romance storyline development. This episode included an almost unwatchable four-minute situation involving Jane Lynch, Carol Burnett, and a song on a stage. I remember about two of those four minutes, during which I was reminded of earlier in the evening when I thought I was dying of stomach cancer or a liver/kidney thing and went to the free clinic only to discover that we’d arrived too late to see a doctor (7:55 PM, btw). Because that pain was a similar sensation to what I felt during the aforementioned Strange Song Scene.

But I don’t really care about all that.

Why not? Because MOTHERF-CKERS THE HOMOS GOT A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE LAST NIGHT. (EPISODE 208: FURT.) I mean, it wasn’t officially called “a very special episode,” but let’s face it, it was a Very Special Episode. I don’t even know if they do Very Special Episodes anymore, was that an ’80s/90s thing? Probably all the issues have been taken care of already, like by Diff’rent Strokes (which I’ve actually never seen) and Blossom. Everyone had an abortion. Drugs were inhaled. Cars careened drunkenly into trees.

And last night — all the excess melodrama, sentiment and emotional fireworks we associate with a Very Special Episode were reserved for us. Glee saw an issue that needed to be discussed, and did a fucking ISSUE EPISODE.  You know, the kind where by the end you’re like “okay, I get it, I need to use a condom or else die of AIDS!” Our dead horse was beaten and it WAS GLORIOUS.

However, it could’ve used:

1) More singing and dancing starring the nubile teenagers we’ve tuned in to watch

2) More Brittany and Santana making out

We owned that shit. I’m intentionally using graphics I found on various tumblrs like gleekstorm and gleeky, because that’s where the children are, and this reflects their various enthusiasms.

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The Very Special Episode of Glee – Gay Bullying Edition:

In which the following things happen, in opposition to everything we’ve come to expect from episodes about gay people– most notably, there was no room for a debate about the ethics of homophobia here. It was assumed that all the football players, Gleeks and their friends would automatically be opposed to homophobia and its manifestations.

1. After Compassionate Teacher takes Gay Boy to report bullying to Bullyish Principal after seeing Gay Boy get confronted by Bully, Gay Boy calls out Bullyish Principal for calling him “Lady” — “that’s bullying too.” Bullyish Principal apologizes.

2. Cheerleaders & Miss Perfect & Glee Kids rally together to use their feminine wiles to lure their boyfriends into protecting Gay Boy. This is a very special episode, so we can forgive them their gender roles and just roll with it, just like we will later when punches are thrown.

3. Miss Perfect tells Hunky Jock boyfriend that his decision to not rally with his friends to defend Gay Boy has made her more disappointed than she’s ever been in him. Hunky Jock’s resistance to the plot is not homophobia, it’s football team politics.

4. Four football players, one in a wheelchair, confront Bully about harassing Gay Boy, telling him that it has to stop. When the Bully fights back, Dreamy Football Player throws punches and eventually the whole thing is broken up by their Female Football Coach.

ARTIE: Stop picking on Kurt.
KAROFSKY: You mind? I’m changing.
MIKE: We’re serious. This is a warning.
KAROFSKY: Oh yeah?
ARTIE: From now on, you’re going to leave him alone.
KAROFSKY: Look, if he wants to be a homo, that’s up to him. Don’t rub it in my face.
ARTIE: We’re not asking.
MIKE: Yeah. We’re done talking about this. Just back off, alright?
KAROFSKY: You back off!

5. Following aforementioned incident, Hot Cheerleader #1 tells the Boy in the Wheelchair that his participation in The Defend the Gay Boy Project makes her “so hot” for him right now. There is indication that Dreamy Football Player’s defense of Gay Boy may actually get him a ticket into Hot Cheerleader’s pants.

6. Then Compassionate Yet Dorky Teacher walks into the room. They explain that Football Player stood up to The Bully. They explain that the boys from the football team stood up for The Gay Boy and sent a warning to The Bully. They explain that Hunky Jock did not, which Miss Perfect has already told us is the most disappointed she’s ever been in him. Everyone expresses scorn towards the Hunky Jock.

Mr. Shoeface walks over to the Gay Boy, says “Kurt, are you alright?” and puts his hand on Kurt’s knee, and Kurt says yes.

And that, I think, might be the Most Tender Homosexual Television Moment of All Time. It happens so quickly and with characters (Mr. Shoe) you’re often lukewarm towards, but it’s right there. Like a little plush toy is kissing your heart. Oh just let yourself have feelings for chrissake.

7. When Gay Boy’s Father finds out that The Bully has been threatening The Gay Boy, Dad attacks The Bully. Father then reprimands Hunky Jock AGAIN  — this is like not Finn’s day at all — for his failure to protect his New Brother.

8. Principal Expels Bully for Bullying the Gay Guy. The group departs for their lovely autumn wedding:

9. Gay Boy and Hunky Jock Do Homosexual Dance Together, the crowd cheers and has never been so happy.

10. Gay Boy leaves public school for a private academy. His parents are foregoing a vacation to fund his escape from the school that refuses to adequately protect him. He says he is going to Dalton because we want him to kiss Blaine, but actually really because of their “zero tolerance bullying policy.”

You see that? You see what they did there? That’s putting the words “zero tolerance policy on bullying” on the teenaged tongue-tips the world over. Add a little singing and dancing and I think we had ourselves a heartwarming little experience tonight.

Oh, and this is what Rachel Berry had to say about that:

And that, my friends, is what we elderwomen call a “very. special. episode.”

This is a “Recap” of Glee Episode 207, “The Substitute.” Gaygaygay.

Tonight’s GLEE made me feel really sad that I didn’t go to the ATM/make a living yesterday because maybe if I had, I could’ve been as high as the person who wrote this episode. Also, I forgot to assign “write Glee recap” to one of my minions this week, which means I have to do it myself and I don’t even have a teevee! So much regret already, you guys. This is gonna be a boatload of nonsense.

Firstly, I’d like to address a personal problem: from here on out, I’m going to start calling that guy with the hair “Mr. Shoe” because I don’t know how to spell and I get confused about the ch/h thing, as Jenny Whateverster and Shane McSomethingorotherton can attest.

Secondly, I’d like to draw your attention to last week’s episode of my favorite teevee program, The Office, which featured a “Glee viewing party” this week. Kelly had some wise words:

KELLY: That show. I mean, first they say that Mr. Schue doesn’t know anything about choreography, and then like three episodes later he’s this fantastic choreographer? Pick a lane, people! … And what was with Jesse’s sudden turn on Rachel between Dream On and Funk? Where the heck did that come from? Honestly, that show… it’s just – it’s irresponsible.

This week was incredibly entertaining, slightly bizarre, and totally light on Brittany & Santana. Why. WHY DOESN’T ANYONE WANT TO GIVE US WHAT WE WANT.

Also hello Gwyneth Paltrow, relative of Kate Moennig and 90s superstar! I nearly forgot about you as you’ve been super busy giving birth to produce with the man responsible for Coldplay. I’d say “I didn’t even know you could sing!” if I hadn’t accidentally already seen you sing in a little classic film known as DUETS starring Gwyneth Paltrow and HUEY FUCKING LEWIS.

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Sidenote; Margot Tenenbaum was my fashion icon for approximately six months circa 2002 (?). This has nothing to do with the episode, I’m just getting nostalgic for my barrettes/polo-dresses/bob/youth/hope.

So. This week on GLEE, everyone is sick with the Bubonic Plague or something and Mr. Shoe hallucinates that all the Glee kids are like, toddlers, in really inappropriate outfits for toddlers. It’s totally irrelevant and doesn’t make any sense, but then again, that’s sort of Glee’s MO: who cares if this or that is irrelevant or inconsequential to any kind of narrative structure? IT’S JUST SO MUCH FUN TO WATCH!

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Seriously this couldn’t be any cuter if it was Ulysses S Grant’s great-great-gay-grandson and the conductor of The Polar Express:

Oh what the hell, let’s check them all out:

Because of the Cholera epidemic, Margot Tenenbaum/Holly Holiday takes over Glee Club and Sue Sylvester appoints herself principal, which enables her to deliver several choice detail-packed monologues. Per ushe, Sue’s attempts to get someone/something fired/underfunded work temporarily and fizzle by the episode’s end, at which point we’re all still wondering who killed Kenny.

Sue (to Will): Figgins has been fired and I’ve been formally offered the position. So why don’t you go home: rest. Watch some TV. Die. It doesn’t matter.

Holly Holiday, in the grand tradition of blonde female guest stars of Glee episodes past, is cute and enchanting but eventually proves incapable of holding her own. Oh, women! Also, you know how I feel about jokes made at Lindsay Lohan’s expense:

Here’s the first musical number, something called “Forget You” by Cee-Lo, starring Gwyneth and The Children:

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Meanwhile, Mr. Shoe is holed up sick at home and therefore his ex-wife returns to pierce our eyeballs with uncomfortable, slightly terrifying moments, including about 10 seconds of baby talk that felt like 10 years and a nyquil-menthol-rub which morphed, AS EROTIC MASSAGES OFTEN DO, into a sexual-type scene during which I closed my eyes and screamed and considered licking the floor of my new apartment for any possible MDMA dust left here by a prior tenant. I don’t even know what MDMA is. I’ve just watched a lot of Skins. Is it lickable? Regardless, Mr. Shoe’s back is NOT lickable and really ENOUGH OF THIS PLOT ALREADY.

Later on, Kurt & Blaine go to Breadstix with Mercedes, and she falls asleep, predictably, as the boyz are making the same argument against Prop 8 we’ve already heard/repeated about 750 times since 2008.

Kurt: I’m just saying that drunk people who get married to someone they met an hour ago by an Elvis impersonator, I mean that’s a bigger insult to marriage than two gay guys getting hitched.

Blaine: Totally, if marriage is so sacred they should just outlaw divorce!

Kurt: I know right?

Blaine: What do you think Mercedes?

Mercedes: Oh about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?

Kurt: No we’re on Prop 8 now.

Mercedes: Totally for it.

Kurt: Against it.

See that? At first that convo was MEH and then it became BRILL. Kurt’s a little curt with Mercedes this episode, but seeing as he’s riding the high of meeting Blaine, we’ll let him have it.

At different points throughout this episode of the hit TV show GLEE, there were song-and-dance numbers that made my heart sing. Rachel Berry and Holly Holiday had a very memorable number:

The children enjoyed it as well:

There’s also some sort of hallucination song-and-dance sequence to “Make ‘Em Laugh” starring Mr. Shoe and Mike — any opportunity to see Mike dance is good, really.

Furthermore, Sue exerts power by removing tater tots from the school cafeteria, which leaves Mercedes jonesing hard core. She even starts a revolt in the cafeteria. Here’s a screencap of Jane Lynch:

Which leads us to Mercedes arriving at that terrible/inevitable adolescent crossroads: the moment your gay BFF calls you out for being a fag hag. It happens to the best of us sassy females, but it’s still hard to watch it happen to Mercedes, especially as she’s holding a tupperware container stuffed with enough tater tots to fill sixteen pairs of Napoleon Dynamite’s cargo pants.

Kurt: “You are substituting food for love Mercedes. And more importantly, you’re substituting me for a boyfriend. Look at me. Two weeks ago I thought there was no way I’d ever find someone like Blaine and there he was. You will find somebody. But until then you’ve gotta take care of yourself, and treat yourself with a little respect.”

Mercedes, looking defeated/making me sad, says he’s right and she’s going to go hit on this guy Anthony.

Speaking of guys who hit, our favorite future Republican Senator is back in the house, WITH DEATH THREATS!

Bully: Question for ya. You tell anyone else what happened. How you — kissed me?

Kurt: YOU kissed me, Karofsky. And I understand how hard this is for you to deal with, so no, I haven’t told anyone.

Bully: Good, keep it that way. Because if you do, I’m gonna kill you.

The look on Kurt’s face after this encounter is heart-breaking.

Brittany, per ushe, is the highlight of the episode. During a “Bring Mr. Shoe back” montage, she confesses that “Mr. Shoe taught me the second half of the alphabet. I stopped after M and N. I thought they were too similar and got frustrated.”

The ending number, an “Umbrella”/”Singin’ in the Rain” mashup, was pretty much all I could ever ask for from Glee, besides Brittany and Santana MAKING OUT FOR CHRISSAKE. For once Mr. Shoe, who I’m 95% sure is too old to compete in sectionals, finally danced with someone his own age. Also, “Umbrella” is like my favorite song ever. Seriously.

At the end of the episode, I felt a really serious craving for Tater Tots, on top of a slight wave of nausea from the Carafe of wine consumed at a Thai Restaurant several hours earlier, when I was still young. It’s like a digestive mashup.

In conclusion, I liked this episode. Thoughts?

[Want more GLEE FUN? Follow Gleekstorm on Tumblr!]

Glee Episode 206: Never Been Kissed But Often Been Assaulted by Anti-Gay Bullies

Glee Episode 206, “Never Been Kissed,” was monumentally homosexual, and we’re saying this about a show that put on a performance of Rocky Horror two weeks ago for no apparent reason and regularly features boys with Justin Bieber haircuts dancing to mashed-up 90s pop hits.

More importantly: Glee Episode 206 did not feature anyone quitting/getting kicked out of/considering quitting Glee Club/Cheerios/Football. Instead, Glee got complicated, dealt with some heavy issues and doled out some tired gender stereotypes in an otherwise enlightened episode.

i. Everyone Wants To Get Some!

Firstly, this episode reminded the People of America that it’s not just adolescent boys who have sex on the brain! The pulse of sexual desire does not burn solely in the loins of Finn or Puck…

Other People Who Want Action:

And, also, clearly, as we already knew, these girls:

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ii. Kurt Tackles Gay Bullying

This is the week that Kurt gets slammed into a locker one time too many and begins to notice that as an actual human person, he deserves a clear walkway down the hallway of his high school without being physically assaulted. 99% of GLBTQ students feel the same way, we imagine. Bullying is obvs a really timely storyline, and between Kurt & Bieste, Glee is tackled this from several angles last night.

Early in the episode, after locker slam #45, 678, Will asks Kurt if there’s anything he can do to help Kurt’s shitty daily existence:

Will: Is there anything I can do?

Kurt: No, this is my hill to climb alone.

Will: Can I be honest? I think this stuff is getting to you.Usually this stuff kinda rolls off your back. But lately you’ve been beligerant, angry, pushing people away —

Kurt: Can I be honest with you? You, like everyone else at this school, are too quick to let homophobia slide.

Kurt’s big ray of sunshine/teachable moment for the episode comes when he heads over to the all boys school to check out The Warblers, aka the competition for their upcoming sectional/regional/national/whatevertional competition. The Warblers are an acapella group from The Magical School for Bright-Faced Boys/ Dalton.

More importantly, we meet BLAINE.

Please note that the children are galavanting down the hallway like two princes in a godd*amn Taylor Swift music video.

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You know those kids who always act like they’re in a musical and are making facial expressions exaggerated enough for the entire auditorium to witness their joy/despair even though they’re right up in your face and you already know how they feel? That’s this guy. Love Blaine. Also the actor is a University of Michigan alum, which gets him bonus points around here.

SIDENOTE: Can I take a minute to appreciate The Warblers covering Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream? Admit it, you love that song because it’s damn catchy, but you hate it because you feel guilty for liking Katy Perry. What better way to fix that situation than to have a bunch of guys sing it a capella with gay overtones?

Blaine instantly understands Kurt’s true mission at Magicpants Academy and also true self. Instead of being pissed at Kurt for posing as a new student to spy on the group, he brings Kurt into the Library of Ages for a little heart-to-heart about gayness in high school.

Blaine says that he ran away from his bullies and found acceptance at a progressive boys’ school. But, that option isn’t possible for everyone ’cause it’s super expensive. So even though it can suck to be a gay in public school, it’s also an opportunity to CHANGE THE WORLD!

Does this remind anyone of the critiques of It Gets Better? This is a really complicated message for a sitcom to be discussing, but it’s something that needs to be said. Yeah, you can move to San Francisco or Manhattan and find plenty of people just like you and never get bullied again. Or instead of waiting for it to get better, you can work on making things better right where you are.

Kurt takes Blaine’s words to heart and talk back to his bully.  It goes about as you’d expect, with some intimidation and an even harder push into the lockers. But Blaine, the sweetheart, knows just what to tell Kurt: “courage.” (Via text message, it’s cute).

Then the bully frantically grabs Kurt’s face and kisses him. You may remember this twist from Queer as Folk and it’s a gigantic nod to the fact that anyone who loathes homosexuals that much is probably a homosexual.

Later, the football dude predictably shrugs off Blaine & Kurt’s attempts to get him to talk about it. And then… Kurt explains he had never been kissed before the bully kissed him, which’s sad. And although part of me wanted Blaine to immediately make out with Kurt, I’m glad they’re dragging it out. Then it will be WORTH IT.

Check out this interview Glee creator Ryan Murphy, who says the bully character was based on a guy he used to know.

iii. The Rest:

We witnessed several of Will’s patented Terrible Decisions (telling Beiste what all the kids are whispering about) and Bizarre Boundary-Breaking Displays of Empathy (giving Beiste her first kiss, which we pray to gay Jesus will not lead to an obsessive crush as these things often do).

Puck made his triumphant return from juvie (aka being punished by the show for contract violations), where he lifted weights. He’s decided to care for Artie as his community service, which involves pushing his wheelchair around, performing Bob Marley to a courtyard of (probably) not-stoned children to make bank, schooling Artie in How to be an Asshole and encouraging him to dine/dash at Breadstix.  It’d be funny if the Asshole Plan backfired but it doesn’t, ’cause Brittany and Santana instantly fall for it.

Unfortunately Artie isn’t enough community service to get Puck out of trash-on-the-side-of-the-road duty.  In the end he and Artie strike up a deal where Puck does trash duty and Artie tutors him in geometry. I’m not sure how that deal even works because it doesn’t seem like anyone benefits, but whatever, it’s television.

Like any good musical, all wounds are healed by a bit of song and dance at the end of the day. The boys perform their mashup and dedicate it to Coach Bieste. It was weird.

Am I forgetting anything? OH YEAH! This!

Thoughts/feelings? Also, check out the tumblrs that make some of these pictures possible: Gleekstorm & Gleeky.

Glee Episode 205: Rocky Horror Glee Show, Extra Genderf*ckery Edition

Hi, this episode of Glee really affected me personally in my soul because I LOVE ROCKY HORROR. I knew it was gonna be epic when it opened with the signature Rocky Horror lips singing Science Fiction (Double Feature). I think it was Santana singing that one, and it wasn’t the only time the show flipped the gender of the performers.

“There’s no way I’m playing a transvestite in fishnets and high heels wearing lipstick,” says Kurt when granted the role of Frank N. Furter by Mr. Shue. Mike Chang stepped up for a hot minute but his parents ixnayed that “wearing a bustier in front of the whole school” idea. BUT MERCEDES KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE PARK. Don’t Dream It, Be It for real.

It was an interesting choice but a perfect one — Mercedes’ attitude and soul was way more important than whether Frank is a man or a woman. That’s the Rocky Horror spirit, and I’m glad Glee didn’t care too much either. A reinterpretation instead of a remake!

Also omg Barry Bostwick cameo’ed! Barry Bostwick interacting with Jane Lynch on my teevee was the realization of a dream I didn’t even know I had.

So did Meatloaf, I guess, but he was unrecognizable — Aging Republican Senator or Aging Rockstar? — and also, he’s Meatloaf.

The first number — Hot Patootie (Rest My Soul) — offered an opportunity for Brittany and Santana to dance together. Do you follow On Wednesdays, We Wear Pink? Because you should. They have animated gifs there like this:

Song selection was well-played: we got the soundtrack essentials like “The Time Warp” (obvs) and “Sweet Transvestite” and left the weird tracks out.

Oddly enough, they also used Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me, during which Emma and Mr. Schuester basically had simulated sex. It was weird and unnecessary and I don’t really want to talk about it.

Thank god Brittany and Santana kept popping back up in the scene … and went home all riled up. That’s more like it.

Sidenote, who knew John Stamos could sing? I should’ve paid more attention in Full House, because apparently Uncle Jessie had a band. Through some tenuous logic by Sue, Stamos ended up playing Eddie and was kinda good, though he could lose the sideburns.

There was a big focus on male body image issues in this one, interestingly enough. Usually Glee takes on issues that are either cutting edge or so five years ago, then handle said issues with something vacillating between totally-offensive, groundbreaking or totally pandering.

Generally, when they do the cutting edge, they have a tendency to make me uncomfortable — not that male body insecurities are super cutting edge, but it’s rarely touched upon. Anndd…. I didn’t feel weird about this one. It was well-handled.

Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of weird for a guy with the figure of Cory Monteith to be the one with issues. But that’s how it happens in real life. Because EVERYONE has body image issues. Even the guys with six packs — I’m lookin’ at you Sam/Rocky.

In the end, the kids weren’t allowed to perform Rocky Horror for the school, for reasons that should’ve been PAINFULLY OBVIOUS TO WILL when he hatched this whole scheme to impress Emma. That was an uncommon bow to realism on the part of the writers. I guess not even those guys could explain how a public school would ever allow that musical.

I’ll leave you with the Brittany Quote of the Week:

Kurt: So what are you gonna be for Halloween this year?

Brittany: I’m going as a peanut allergy.

Glee returns in two weeks with promises of Livin’ On a Prayer. Oh, and if you’re interested, the Glee Christmas album is available for pre-order on iTunes! You can also get the soundtrack from this episode: Rocky Horror Glee Show.

Remember When Brittany and Santana Were Making Out on Glee Episode 204 “Duets”?

Remember last week when Glee ended and I retreated into a blissful, relaxed moment of self-awareness, absorbing the loveliness that comes from knowing somebody else is writing about Glee and that person is not me. But unfortch our recapper has a feeling I know well, and it is as follows: “I enjoy Glee on a basic level, but I no longer have the strength left inside to find that tiny needle in the haystack of shit.”

I mean to be honest, Glee has yet to introduce a compelling storyline — we don’t tune in to see what happens next with Rachel and Finn, we tune in to see who is going to sing what and who will be dancing and what will happen with Brittany and Santana and what Heather Morris might say that’ll be super funny or if Kurt is going to have Tender Gay Moments (sidenote: anyone else feel like the Rachel/Kurt moment by the lockers was added in after the tragedies of last week?) etc.

Anyhow, what you really want to know/discuss is what happened with Brittany and her bff/crush Santana: they make out and maybe have sex in cheerleading uniforms. Then Santana says she’s only doing it because Puck is in jail (really? when did this happen?) and you can tell Brittany feels sad. Later she tries to seduce Artie to make Santana jealous, idk.

FEELINGS ABOUT THIS?:

Here are the words:

There was also another fantastic moment in which Brittany motioned to Santana that she would be getting no titty action.

Facepalm count: 3

Minutes into the show I picked up my laptop: 19

Number of times I tried to imitate the way Finn handles his chest and arms while singing and nobody noticed/politely pretended not to notice: 1

Number of times the entire room squirmed at shots of Mr. Shue’s creepy facial expressions: 4

Number of times we observed discrepancies in character continuity: 2

Number of times we alluded to the BLM lesbian experience: 2

Also, Taylor enjoyed Kurt’s performance and noted that “Brittany made noises when Santana was touching her neck which was basically a musical sequence.”

Glee Episode 203 Recap: “Grilled Cheesus” Don’t Tease Us

Last week on Glee, I was stumped by the cultural relativity of Ms. Britney Spears, so when the sneak peek of this week’s episode revealed that it would be about spirituality, I thought, I’ve got this shit covered. I’m from Alabama – the only thing I did more often growing up than going to church was attempt to get other girls to show me the training bras under their shirts. RELAX, I WAS STILL WEARING A TRAINING BRA TOO.

As it turned out, I was wrong. I did not have this shit covered, because the episode opens with Finn burning a grilled cheese sandwich and finding the scorched face of Jesus on the bread. I make a grilled cheese sandwich at least once every other day – why don’t my sandwiches have an image pressed into their burn spots? WHERE IS MY BURNED IDOL?! Granted, if there’s going to be a burned religious figure in my bread, it’ll probably be Buddy Christ, or more realistically, Adam Lambert.

Finn cuts off the non-holy portion of his sandwich, then prays to the remaining bit for a football win since his team sucks.

Meanwhile, Kurt brings his dad, Burt, breakfast at his job. I have no idea what Kurt has brought him, or what Burt says he plans on eating instead of whatever good-for-you concoction Kurt has likely brought but I’d probably prefer Burt’s meal myself which may be why I am a walking advertisement for a Wilford Brimley-style diabetic supply infomercial today.

Burt reminds Kurt about their weekly family dinner, in place since before Kurt’s mom died. Kurt does not want to participate in this all that much anymore because he has way more hip places to be! The hills are alive with a Sound Of Music singalong, after all. Burt reminds him that he’s stood by him always, even buying him a Maria-style bonnet as a kid (BEST DAD EVER) but this doesn’t sway Kurt. He’s ready to roll around in some edelweiss, family dinner be damned.

At Glee Club practice, Finn announces there’s a new man in his life. Sadly for many of us who would enjoy the onset of any sort of gay love on this show besides somewhat implied lesbianism, it’s not Puck, new football player Sam (who, as I mentioned in last week’s recap, will from this point forward be known as Justin Squared), or any other eligible bachelor on this show. No, Finn has to hook up with this dude in sandals who doesn’t even have a texting plan and is saving himself for a marriage that isn’t legal in a crapton of states and many nations where this dude hangs out: Finn is now intensely involved with the Lord, and wants to sing all about it.

The Glee kids have a mixed reaction. Mercedes and Quinn go all “shout to the lord… ”

Will Schuester wants to direct them less toward God and more toward personal spirituality since he needs this job to pay alimony.

Puck goes all profound and logical and shit and I kind of love him a lot and not just for this, but especially when his personal ode to spirituality is Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young,” a charming tune about getting in the pants of that girl we all knew in high school who was so religious she didn’t even believe in wearing pants, but in a knee-length skirt kind of way, not in a Donald Duck kind of way.

Back at the Hummell garage, Burt is with a customer when he hits the floor and loses consciousness.

Kurt is unleashing some sixteen-going-on-seventeen-style oh-snap about his The Sound of Music singalong on a jock in French when Will & Emma come to get him to tell him that his dad is comatose in the hospital, and what follows is a teenage boy begging his dad to hear his voice and know he’s there and to squeeze his hand if he hears him, and even I’m not cold enough to make a joke about this. My girlfriend would tell you all that I am actually a Cadbury egg, hard on the outside and gooey on the inside. On a recent trip to Florida she had me crying over Dumbo’s mom and we weren’t even watching Dumbo and now anytime I start to get emotional she Twitpics me a photo of a Cadbury crème egg.

Finn has been busy spending his time praying to Grilled Cheesus in the hopes that Rachel will let him grope her, and thus is pissed that no one pulled him away from his slowly hardening, stale idol to tell him about what happened to Burt who is apparently now a father figure to him without us, you know, resolving last year’s blowup between them or anything like that. I’m distracted, however, by Brittany’s earnestly written book report (produced in crayon!) about heart attacks, a gift from her to Kurt to pass on to the hospital.

Mercedes comes to Glee wanting to sing about God, coming up with a rendition of “I Look To You” that is both oddly filmed and oddly edited from a musical standpoint and really, I have no real issues with religion itself but if we’re gonna go inspirational can we pick a good song that’s going to make me pay attention instead of trying to figure out if I can see Mercedes’s bra through her shirt? She does things to me, ladyfriends. She’s kind of exactly my type.

Kurt loses his shit on the kids, hauling into a rant about how God is a fairy tale and he’s like Santa Claus and also perhaps an elven wonder. Brittany wonders if God is an evil dwarf. I always picture God to be a combination of Zeus and Bowser or some shit, like a spike-covered white-bearded turtle in a bed sheet.

“I appreciate your thoughts, but I don’t want your prayers,” Kurt tells them, and yet somehow this still does not make sense to these kids.

Sue drops in just in time for our lesson on separation of church and state! Auto Correct in my word processor changed “lesson” to “lesbianism” in that previous sentence which I believe is AutoCorrect’s way of giving a shoutout to the kickass Jane Lynch. Shut up and let me have a fantasy. She pulls Will and Principal Figgins in for a lecture on how this spirituality segment is screwing with our civil liberties. Sue recommends anyone who wants to sing for Jesus should attend Sweet Holy Mother of God Academy on I Love Jesus Street. I think I might have seal-clapped here but I can’t remember because I aspirated some sweet tea in the process.

Rachel pulls Finn into her bedroom for a conference on the state of their union, which means she’s putting on her controlling hat and Finn’s getting an eyeful of boobage. She wants to make sure his recent conversion to Christlike living doesn’t mean that he thinks she’s going to allow him to let him choose their future mountain of babies’ religious beliefs. No way! As a reward, he gets to touch her boobs. CHEESUS IS REAL.

Sue is Super Damn Serious about keeping religion out of schools and wants Kurt to help file a complaint about Glee’s choice of lyrical topic for the week, which leads to the banning of spirituality week, which leads to people ragging on Kurt for speaking up, much like non-televised non-fictional people sometimes push their religion on others! Brittany gave Kurt a card that says heart attacks are just from loving too much. This root cause is also to blame for my poor grades in freshman math and possibly the grinding sound my old vibrator made before I replaced it.

Emma is pissed – pissed, I tell you! – about the complaint that Sue and Kurt made, and wants Sue’s reasoning behind attempting to use common sense and logic barring those poor Glee kids from expressing their religion in a state-funded public setting. SUE GETS REAL, Y’ALL. She prayed for years for anything to help her sister, Jeannie, to make people see how amazeballs Sue thought and still thinks she is, but instead Sue’s prayers went to the dead letter office in heaven and Jeannie still had Down syndrome, so Sue doesn’t believe in God either. Emma basically has no argument left so she says that’s arrogant and and the Sue Sylvester Hand Of Verbal Bitchslapping comes down with a righteous clap to let us all know that it’s nowhere near as arrogant as trying to force religion on someone.

Finn prays to Cheesus in the locker room! Seriously, is he carrying Cheesus around in his backpack? Does Grilled Cheesus have his own special pocket in there? If there’s a cheese-proof pocket in a backpack somewhere, I need to know of this thing’s existence for immediate purchase.

Puck walks in and admits he’s praying for Kurt’s dad, and Finn says OF COURSE HE IS TOO, YOU GUYS, except he’s really been praying for boobs and football and now to be quarterback again.

There’s no more religion or spirituality allowed in Glee, so Rachel holds Finn hostage in a park so she can sing “Papa, Can You Hear Me,” which does sound quite pretty but is indeed cringeworthy when the scene changes and Rachel is singing it to Kurt’s dad while a third of New Directions is huddled around Burt’s hospital bed. WHAT THE HELL, YOU GUYS. THIS SHIT IS CREEPY. Kurt is feeling my WHAT THE HELL sentiment just as strongly as he brings in an acupuncturist to try to help his dad and tells everyone to stop with their meddling prayers and to get the hell out of Burt’s room.

Justin Squared finally shows up! Thank Cheesus; everyone else in this episode is giving me a headache other than Puck. He’s in a football huddle talking about some move called “naked bootleg” during the football game and sadly this is not a euphemism for gay boy shenanigans. Much to my football-loving girlfriend’s chagrin I am clueless about this football crap so whatever it is, it gets Justin Squared hurt, which means Finn’s the quarterback once more. CHEESUS STRIKES AGAIN.

At the next meeting of New Directions, Kurt announces his dad isn’t any better but he has a musical number prepared, which is always the way to go in the event of adversity. He explains that when his mom died he wanted Burt to say something to make it better, but he couldn’t, so he simply took Kurt’s hand. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is interspersed with flashback-like memories of Kurt’s childhood. His kickass dad is out there with a small Kurt looking like a wee version of the Eleventh Doctor in a potentially tweed jacket and bow tie as he learns to ride a bike as well as Burt having tea parties with his tiny son, pinkies in the air, and at the cemetery when Kurt’s mom died.

Kurt is crying. Most of New Directions is crying. Everyone on my Twitter feed is crying. I am not crying. Why am I not crying? Because my dogs are whining to go out. AGAIN.

After the meeting is over, Mercedes talks to Kurt in the hallway and says he’s both pushing her away and closing doors without consideration, which is both valid but also extremely irritating when it comes to religion because everyone is a horse of a different color in this manner and when the horse in question sprouts a coat of bright gay rainbow flag. Mercedes wants him to go to church with her, promising he can wear a hat. Kurt is apparently easy for hats. I have been known to enjoy the company of a good hat but solely on other people’s noggins. I come out looking like Dr. Seuss’s worst damn nightmare in a hat.

Finn confesses to Emma that he and Grilled Cheesus have been on a high school crime spree which started so innocently. He only wanted to win a football game, and then it derailed into a life of high crime involving touching a real human breast and getting Justin Squared hospitalized. Emma tries to steer this guidance counseling session in a logical way, directly contradicting the speech about religion and spirituality and shiny ponies of faith she gave Sue earlier. God doesn’t spend a lot of time talking to us via sandwiches, especially one that is probably five seconds away from being a health hazard.

Finn is disillusioned.

Finn is distressed.

Finn is losing his religion.

Finn is losing his religion to the point where he storms down the hall and into the library while singing “Losing My Religion,” because we didn’t have to just make this the most uneven wasted-potential episode ever but we had to bring the holy name of Michael Stipe and R.E.M. into this and it’s just… there are no words, people. It’s just bad.

Finn stares at Kurt creepily through a library bookshelf. I want to crawl under my couch and die except my couch is a futon and unless I become Polly Pocket there’s no way I’m fitting underneath that bitch so instead I just cradle my dogs close to me and dream of a better tomorrow when I no longer have to try to recall this episode in detail.

Kurt goes to church with Mercedes in a hat that I would like to wear on my head if I didn’t have a head with the proportions of a real-life Cabbage Patch Doll, and Mercedes asks the congregation to pray for Kurt’s dad while outing him as a nonbeliever and going all “Bridge Over Troubled Water” with a choir. I think I’ve watched too much American Idol because I did not even recognize this at first.

Sue goes to see Jeannie. They talk about God and why Sue doesn’t believe in one – but Jeannie does. She wants to know if she can pray for Sue. Sue says yes. Even with the unbalanced residual WTFery of this episode, Jane Lynch is still amazing here, and I bow down to her epicness.

Kurt goes to see his dad again, all alone this time, and talks to him about their first family dinner after Kurt’s mom died and how the chicken was raw and they laughed before wondering if it was okay to laugh yet. Kurt still doesn’t believe in God after the disdain of his choirmates and Mercedes taking him to church, but what he does believe in is the relationship he and his dad have.

Burt squeezes Kurt’s fingers. There is more crying. I try to refrain from Cadburying it up.

New Directions takes the stage to sing “One Of Us.” I remember when this song came out and it was considered blasphemous and everyone was all YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT GOD and OF COURSE GOD DOES NOT GO TO SONIC FOR REESE’S BLASTS and things of that nature and now it’s like the most tame thing ever.

I spend the duration of this song staring closely at the white t-shirts the girls are wearing to see who has a visible bra.

Finn eats Cheesus, his falling napkin on the former altar of the paper plate closing out the episode, meaning to speak volumes about his faith or whatever. Next time: Finn gets food poisoning and expires belly-up like a lab experiment. Just kidding. Next week: duets? For the love of Cheesus, please be funny.