Last night's episode was mostly a waste of time in that nothing that happened seems to have any effect on the larger stories. To paraphrase a quote from future episode director Joss Whedon (via Willow Rosenberg): I think this eps mostly filler.
Sue got a boyfriend, and they broke up. It seems that the anchor on the evening news has a little thing for Sue and after just one date she's so smitten with him, she's a whole new Sue. Suddenly she's getting swing dance lessons from and laughing with Will and treating Quinn with compassion. That is until she walks in on Anchor Man writhing on the news desk with Anchor Woman and then she's demanding the set list for Sectionals from Will lest she buy him a kitten to cuddle and love and then PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE, and giving Q her pink slip from the Cheerios for being pregnant and therefore "a disgrace."
There was a whole thing with Ken and Emma needing Will to mash-up each of their first-dance song choices - "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady for her, "The Thong Song" for him - and give them dancing lessons that only leads to more of the uncomfortable flirting between Emma and Will that makes me cringe every time poor Ken is on screen. I found both Will and Emma a lot less despicable when she wasn't dating Ken to keep from being lonely and when he was just oblivious to her flirting as opposed to overtly flirting back every chance he gets. And they really never learn. After Ken confronted Will about the flirting, Will said he doesn't "knowingly encourage" it but that he doesn't discourage it either and that won't happen again. Then this:
Anyway, Ken is rightfully pissed when he finds Will and his betrothed giggling and gazing into each other's eyes while laying on the floor during a failed dance lesson, so he lays down the law with his football players by scheduling a mandatory practice at the same time as the standing glee rehearsal forcing Finn, Puck, Kurt (he's the kicker remember?), Matt and Mike to choose between football and glee.
The pressure on the boys (except Kurt because...obviously he's not going to choose football over glee) is coming from more than just Coach Tanaka though. The hockey jocks and their own team-mates are giving them a rash of shit - and faces full of slushies - over their participation in glee club and it's perceived gayness and dorkiness. So the choice isn't just between football and glee, it's between popularity and ostracization.
Meanwhile Puck's mom is pretty distraught that he never dates any Jewish girls and he'd like to make mom happy so it occurs to him that Rachel is Jewish and hot and apparently desperate so he makes a play for her. First with a slushie delivered in a glass with a straw instead of splashed directly in her face for a change. Then by just asking her to make out which she goes along with because Puck is ridiculously hot.
But Rachel is just imagining that Puck is Finn and she starts to feel a little guilty about that so she tells Puck that she can't have a relationship with him, despite his correct assertion that they're ta couple of hot Jews, unless he mans up and sings lead once in a while. So Puck wins her over with an awesome rendition of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline".
The relationship is going pretty well until a slushie to Puck's pretty face leads to a fairly hot scene in the bathroom where she's cleaning him up and he first apologizes for all the times he slushied her (and honest to God, it was a really sincere apology, not an "I'll say anything to see you naked" apology), and then confesses that the humiliation is too much for him and that he'll need to choose football over glee...and therefore over her.
But when the time comes, Kurt (duh!), Matt, Mike and Puck all choose glee over football, making Finn the only one too spineless to follow his heart. That's when Kurt has to step in and fix Finn. I know that Will totally thought it was his little speech that did it but I think it was Kurt. See, Finn is supposed to slushie Kurt for having bailed on the team - and done so with an announcement in the shower no less - but he doesn't want to because their friends and also he knows how particular Kurt is about the products he uses on his face. But Kurt takes one for the team and slushies himself before telling Finn to think about whether or not any of his football friends would do that for him.
Kurt is awesome.
With absolutely no warning, Rachel dumps Puck in a heartbreaking scene where he pretends he doesn't care and they confess to each other that their hearts belong to Finn and Quinn and they say some kind of hurtful, kind of true, but also totally not things to each other and then he lies that they were never friends and walks away.
In the end, Finn tells Coach Tanaka that he's got to be a man and he can't choose between football and glee and Ken knows he's right so he cancels Thursday practice. Finn comes back to glee with apology slushies for everyone and they all indoctrinate Mr. Schue into the ranks of glee dork when they nail him in the face with the dozen slushies he so richly deserves.
You see, we end up in the same place we started so in addition to the editing being all over the place and some shit happening for no apparent reason at all, this episode was just a waste of time. I mean, I still love the show and there were certainly parts of the episode I liked on their own, but what would have been the harm in stretching some of these stories out over a few episodes?
No comments:
Post a Comment