In which the theme is teams…and teamwork.
Some teams work well together, and some don’t, and you don’t always know which are going to be which. I thought my Brewers were a lock this year, because of the big offense and the sense of chemistry…but things just kind of didn’t go our way. And so it goes with “Glee.”
TEAM #1: All year long, Rachel and some of the rest of the New Directions gang have been suffering from a rash of grape slushies being thrown in their faces. This purple bukkake is now starting to affect even “cool kids” like Finn and Quinn. They try to be cool, but Finn is getting harshed upon by random hockey guys as well as his own football team for being in the glee club. Wait, I didn’t realize that the McKinley football team could actually get its act together long enough to do ANYTHING! Anyway, this causes Finn a lot of angst, despite his many inspiring speeches throughout the year to the rest of the fellas. Plotline grade: B-.
TEAM #2: Emma and Ken waylay Will and ask him to come up with a mash-up of their two favorite songs. Emma’s, predictably, is “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady, which she gets to sing later in a fetching wedding gown. Ken’s is, less predictably, “The Thong Song.” Will knows these two songs cannot be mashed up, but he kinda tries, because he has to prove to himself that he’s not Harry Homewrecker. Ken sees E & W have a moment–one of about 15 so far–during her “Thong Song” dance lessons, and disqualifies all his players from going to Glee Club practice, a decision that is followed full-heartedly by desperate Finn. (The practice thing is later overturned thanks to an inspirational speech.) Subtle it’s not; my 13-year-old daughter caught the whole “your two songs are fundamentally incompatible JUST LIKE YOU” hint drop, and we didn’t really think that Ken was a thong-lovin’ Gosselin before now, but good stuff. Plotline: B+ overall.
TEAM #3: After too much moo shu pork and viewings of Schindler’s List, Puck (nee Noah Puckerman) has a vision of his own membership in a team…a team called Judaism. He has a pretty hot dream about Rachel creeping in through his window sporting a big ol’ Magen David necklace, so he decides to try to hit that. Mission accomplished on the first try, kind of, but their make-outs end because Rachel correctly gleans that they are pretty much another Rogers & Hammerstein vs. Sisqo situation. She goads “Noah” into trying to sing solo instead of hanging back to be cool, and he responds with a rousing rendition of “Sweet Caroline” by noted Jewish-American Neil Diamond. The brief romance fizzles when he decides to go back to football, but then he doesn’t for whatever reason, and the whole plotline fizzles too. Plus, speaking as the only gentile in a family of Jews, it’s pretty offensive when Puck keeps saying stuff like “you’re a hot Jew” and “we’re both hot Jews”–not to be too weird about it, but does the show really mean to imply that most Jews are not hot? Because that is FAIL on several levels. Trés amusant, but too many questions here (does Puck really blow off football for Rachel? it’s unclear) for the Plotline to be more than a B-.
TEAM #4: Sue Sylvester thinks she’s found the perfect man. After delivering one of her excellentest “Sue’s Corner” installments of all time–arguing IN FAVOR of a fictional Ohio ballot measure that would make it legal for humans and dogs to marry!!!!!–she is drawn in by the alcoholic charms of Ron, the jowly news anchorman. She falls so completely for him that she takes swing-dance lessons from Will, and actually turns out to be pretty good in her gawky non-dancer sort of way. But their momentary detente is shattered when she sees Ron plumbing the tonsils of his female co-anchor and realizes that it’s not to be. This switches her back to nasty mode, and she publicly cans Quinn from the squad in the middle of the hallway with the pithy “You’re a disgrace.” I would mark this one down because of my great disappointment that they didn’t play this out longer, over a few episodes even, but it’s too great to see her mooning over yucky Ron (whose only advantage is a Sue-sized self-esteem), and it gave us Will and Sue doing a side-splitting dance routine, so Plotline grade here is a solid A.
TEAM #5: We, the viewers of this show, are pretty explicitly shouted out at the end here. It makes no sense that football players would choose glee club; it makes no sense that Will would decide that he’s leading Emma on but continue his behavior; it makes no sense that Finn would talk his angry cuckolded coach into letting a bunch of burly guys who seem to live in a medieval world of pain and violence skip football practice, and maybe their career, just to try singing and dancing to popular music. But Glee loves us so much, and we love it so much in return, that it’s all forgiven at the end–Will gets a slushy bath, everyone chuckles warmly like happy elves, all social pressures are released, misfits embrace their misfithood, it’s a big wet purple kiss all over our little underdog-favorin’ heads.
And we love it. A+ for that.
“does the show really mean to imply that most Jews are not hot?”
While I might generally agree with your point, I think this “Hot Jews” line was something along the lines of the “hey, we’re two good-looking people, let’s get together” line I hear sometimes in movies.
BTW, Dianna Agron (Quinn) is a hot Jew in real life, though she plays a hot Christian on the show.
Dave: I understand and probably agree with you. Just seemed a little forced with all the stereotypical “I’m a bad Jew” stuff that popped up out of nowhere. But no, I don’t think the show is anti-Semitic or anything. They’d be kind of shooting themselves in the foot if they did that, methinks….
allllllllll goood