May 26, 2010

Marry Me, Burt Hummel

A really strong episode of Glee last night cemented forever my deep love of Mike O'Malley's Burt Hummel.



Figgin's believes vampires are real and is therefore scared of Tina's goth aesthetic so he forbids her from looking like herself at school. Simultaneously, Rachel has uncovered a plan by Vocal Adrenaline to perform a big Lady Gaga number at Regionals and since he has no good ideas of his own, Will tells the New Directions kids to do the same.



Insane costumes and a deeply entertaining number from the girls plus Kurt follow.



Rachel, Mercedes and Quinn spy on Vocal Adrenaline practice and Rachel realizes that the coach is her bio-mom. Rachel and Mercedes tell the team about it and everyone worries that Rachel will go sing with VA leaving them screwed but Rachel assures them that won't happen.



Burt has asked Finn and his mom to move into the Hummel house and Finn is suddenly homophobic. I guess it's not completely ridiculous for a teenage boy to be bothered by the idea of sharing a room with a gay boy that he knows has a crush on him, but Finn's always been kind and accepting of Kurt and his homosexuality so his sudden-onset awfulness was really unsettling for me.



Anyway, his home-life homophobia bleeds into his school life so he tells Schue that the boys would prefer to do something other than Gaga on the grounds that Gaga is to gay (he might not have said those words, but I heard them just the same). The boys put on wigs, a mess of spandex and 2000 metric tons of makeup and rock out to a Kiss song. So much less gay.


With Kurt and the girls spending the entire week in their Gaga gear, those ape jocks have got their menacing faces cranked up to a billion and repeatedly threaten to beat the stuffing out of Kurt. Kurt hurls insults back and refuses to fear them. Kurt is awesome.


Later, at home, Finn and Kurt have a fight about moist towelettes. And then the next day, after Kurt has thoughtfully transformed the room into something even gayer than it was before (but he thinks it's masculine because he doesn't actually know from masculine), Finn has a complete meltdown. He screams at Kurt about how uncomfortable this arrangement makes him because he sees Kurt staring at him and flirting with him and blah blah blah. Then he yells about the "faggy" nature of a lamp and a blanket. Burt hears the F word and springs into action.

Finn insists that he didn't say it about Kurt and that he didn't mean it the way it sounded, which he might think is true but Burt tells him that there's only one way to mean it and he knows what that is because he was a homophobic teenage boy once too and it took him many years to understand what he thought Finn already knew - that it doesn't really matter who you are attracted to, what matters it the person you are. He then tells Finn that Finn is no longer welcome to live in their home. The entire scene was so fucking heartening and wonderful and Mike O'Malley was fucking BRILLIANT in it. He deserves an Emmy for that.


Anyway, the next day at school, Finn would like to talk to Kurt about what happened but Kurt doesn't think there's anything to say.

In the course of learning about Kiss and Gaga and stuff, Puck becomes sensitive and busts out the stools and his backup boys to serenade the girls with Beth. Puck is ridiculously hot.

Rachel and her mom break up but have one last duet before they say goodbye - a slow, ballady version of Pokerface which...is weird and great at the same time.

Tina is sick of her bubble dress so she preys on Figgins' fear of vampires and wins back the right to dress however she wants. The kids would like to know from Schue what his lesson was with this theatricality assignment and Shue stands there all "oh...uh...I really have no idea. I don't ever plan far enough ahead to have a lesson."

After school, Kurt is being menaced in the hall by the neckless brigade gain when Finn arrives kitted out in a supremely ridiculous red, plastic dress and eye patches a la Gaga. If the neckless wonders want to beat up Kurt, they're going to have to go through Finn to do it. The Cromag Twins do not look worried. But then Puck pipes up and says that they'll actually have to fight the entire glee club if they have a beef with any one of it's members - all of whom are in full, insane costume at the moment. The kids having taught THEMSELVES a valuable lesson about friendship and acceptance, Schue pops in to say that's what he had planned all along. Good God he's a useless teacher.


I can't believe how much I loved an episode where Finn acted like an asshole and Sue didn't even show up!

1 comment:

Robert said...

Mike O'Malley was absolutely fantastic! It was a pretty strong episode, though I was angry that Sue didn't show up.