Last week on Glee: Mr. Schue continued to be a creeping creeper who creeps by doing The Rocky Horror Picture Show solely to get back into the twitching arms of Emma who is still madly in love with Dr. Carl. HAVE MERCY. Meanwhile Sam has an eating disorder, Finn has body image problems, Mercedes is a Why-the-hell-are-you-playing-Frank-N-Furter issue, Santana and Brittany magically made-up off-screen, GLAAD was offended by the use of the word "tranny" by Mike Chang, Sue Sylvester made her weekly reminder of having a differently abled sister because the show is only allowed one bit of continuity, and shirtlessness abounded to the praise of many a viewer.
This week on Glee: Mash-ups, throwdowns, and Katy Perry all collide together as Puck makes his return, Kurt makes an exit, and a potential new love interest makes a first appearance.
The Cheerios and their hips of team spirit beckon you to read further!
Oh Glee, where do we even begin with you in terms of last night's episode? You know, we aren't even going to take you to task for the entirely After School Special vibe of the proceedings since that seems to be your stock-in-trade. Even if the overall message was dubious at best, which trust me we will get to later on, we appreciate at the least the effort that was made to put forth something. And besides, if we had a deep trouble with a show being preachy, we wouldn't have spent so much of our childhood watching this show:
And if Glee's episode was essentially a musical version of A Very Special Episode of Blossom, Kurt, in our opinionation, was the Blossom of the episode as he navigated the rigors of his bully story arc as well as somebody can when a show moves from plot point to plot point with all the grace of Finn dancing.
As the episode begins, Kurt is still being bullied by Karofsky:
Mr. Schue, remaining consistently ineffectual as always, takes Kurt into his office to talk about the bullying instead of, you know, going to Principal Figgins or some such tedious logical nonsense. I'm sure he was too busy teaching his Spanish class. Does he have a Spanish class anymore? Is Glee club an actual like get-a-grade course now? THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW *Wise Owl Voice*
Also, the show really needs to stop acting like Kurt doesn't have ANY friends when the plot dictates he needs to be lonely since just a few weeks ago the Glee club was all up in face about his father, singing in hospital rooms and taking his pale-self to a Black church and whatnot. Plus, there is the little thing that RACHEL HAS TWO GAY DADS. But whatever.
Off in another storyline, Sam is surprised to find out that teen mom Quinn may not be interested in sex and now uses Coach Beiste as a way to keep his loins under control, actually calling out the Coach's name while in the midst of some in-front-of-the-fireplace action.
Quinn, as any rational person would, goes to Sue Sylvester with this information and ever helpful Sue decides that a golden opportunity to get Beiste out of her hair of plotting evilness. Because having a student accusing her of sexual harrassment in the season premiere worked out OH SO WELL. Jesus, do none of these characters have Hulu? You need to rewatch your show and learn from your mistakes. Seriously.
In a storyline I could not give less a fuck about if I tried, Artie inexplicably, as things always are on this show of awesome continuity, decides that he wants Brittany back for reasons unknown other that WE NEED TO FILL SOME TIME PEOPLE. So Puck being Puck, who is fresh out of juvenile hall and needs a project for his community service, teaches Artie in the way of how to approach young ladies.
That's right. Insult women. That totally works. Every single time. You should go try that now. We'll pause this recap just for you.
And you're back. With a lovely black eye. We don't really have a problem with Puck giving out shitty advice. It's the fact that it actually works and none of the ladies question it at all that troubles us. Santana dumped Puck over his credit score, WHICH WHATEVER SHOW, and called out Artie about his comments about her boobs last episode so we'd think she's a little smarter than the dim bulb they made her out to be. Brittany on the other hand....We're often surprised that they haven't cut to her on the floor, blue in the face, because she forgot to breathe.
In the midst of all of this, the Gleeks are doing a mash-up competition. Remember all of that talk of budget cuts for the Glee club and whatnot? You don't? Neither does the Glee club. Or the writers. Because nothing says, "WE HAVE NO FUNDS" quite like bejeweled microphones.
Back to the storyline we actually sort of care about, Kurt goes off to an all boys school to do some spying and ends up among the pod creatures. That's really the only way we explain all of the goofy friends of joy and happiness among all the Stepford Students as Kurt witnesses their Glee club sing Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream."
But not before he and new guy Blaine go traipsing down the hallway together like this was lost footage from Bonnie Tyler's "Total Ecplise of the Heart" video.
In theory, we should be all about this. New guy Blaine is a cute, attractive guy who would do Kurt a lot of good. It's just the WTF that surrounds them that made us roll our eyes because we simply refuse to believe on the basic grounds of good taste that no song by Katy Perry could make any group, especially a group of teenage boys, that incredibly enthusiastic.
Anyway, the two have a lovely heart-to-heart session about Kurt's life and how he should be brave and stick it out and force change and blah blah blah PSA blah blah blah.
Back in one of the other storylines, Beiste finds out from Will that everybody is using her as their mental chastity belt because she a) foolishly asks him to tell the truth, probably believing that nobody would be stupid enough to not at least soften the news a bit and b) the show needed another moment of Will being ineffectual and since Kurt had scampered off to All Boys Hogwarts, he needed somebody to temporarily screw-up somebody else up.
But he totally made it up to Beiste by kissing her.
How, um, touching? Whatever.
Back to the main storyline, Kurt and the bully have a showdown in the lockerroom. And if you didn't see the bully-secretly-being-gay-moment coming from a thousand paces away, you've clearly never watched a TV show ever.
Because all homophobes are secretly gay. And all members of the KKK are secretly biracial. And Anti-Semites? On the down low Netflix Yentle CONSTANTLY.
I mean, I don't want to make light of the situation, but the homophobe-as-secretly-gay is one of the oldest tropes ever trotted, not because it is necessarily true but story-writing shorthand for LOOK AT OUR DEPTH IN EVEN OUR BAD CHARACTERS. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of homophobes who are secretly gay or at least curious. But I'm sure there are also a ton of them that are just assholes. I would've given credit if the show went that direction.
Speaking of assholes, that lovable d-bag Puck actually got a moment of poignancy this episode when he was sent to the principal's office.
A punk secretly in pain? Breaking new ground every episode Glee.
Elsewhere, Blaine comes to the rescue of Kurt:
So if Blaine is, well, named Blaine. Does that make Kurt Andy?
Mercedes is totally Ducky. Case closed.
Anyway the episode ends with Kurt and the boys doing a musical number to make Bieste feel all beautiful about herself. Or something.:
Lessons were learned. Friendships were mended or begun. Plotlines were dropped as per usual. Overall, we enjoyed this episode in spite of itself.
And one more thing producers of Glee. If you want to say that bullying is bad, which it is, you should probably not build whole marketing campaigns around people throwing Slushies.
We leave you with new guy Darren Criss (Blaine) in his hilarious musical A Very Potter Musical.
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