Previously on Glee, Blaine Warbler found himself in possession of some confusing feelings about his crime-fighting sidekick, a conundrum experienced by many a man in cape and cowl over the spandexed years. Tina, too, got her Kinsey Scale all mixed up, and made a play for a gay. Kurt’s first day at NYADA prompted him to hop into a time machine – Destination: McKinley High, May 19, 2009 – and pull his self out of the dumpster and twirl his self around and give his self a hug and a dozen high fives and an It Gets Better pep talk of epic proportions. Rachel sang real pretty and did whatever codependency thing. And Santana and Quinn existed in an alternate reality where the sun always shines and the birds always sing and the clouds are made of marshmallows and always they are loved and sometimes they love each other. (Lesbian fandom. Lesbian fandom is where they existed.)
Lima, Ohio:
The Paris of Indiana Nightly News – with your co-anchors Andrea Carmichael and Rod Remington – leads with the story of Dalton Academy’s doping scandal and their subsequent disqualification from the Regional Show Choir Competition. On TV’s TV’s TV, Hunter Clarington III hulks out on reporters who want to know how he’s gonna blow his whistle now, and on TV’s TV, Andrea Carmichael flips her shit about how she can’t take it with this show anymore. She storms off screaming that’s she had it, that’s she’s had enough, that she is an educated woman and she DESERVES BETTER THAN THIS GARBAGE.
McKinley celebrates the Warbler’s DQ with cheers and an acknowledgement that they are still broke as hell, despite the fact that Will set off months ago on a journey to get them some money. But don’t you worry, Tina has got herself a fundraising idea solicited straight from the suggestion box at AfterElton.com: A Nude Directions calendar. It beats having Teen Jesus sell his hair or having Sam sell more of his semen, and also it’s the only chance Tina’s ever going to have to be in the same room with Blaine taking off his clothes.
Fondue for Two! Fondue for Two! Brittany is dressed like if Skipper came to life in 1984 after raiding Workforce Barbie’s closet. The cheese is hot, Lord Tubbington is a slumlord with a gambling addiction, and Brittany wants to know why Marley won’t just tell Jake she’s in love with him. Oh, also: bulimia jokes! Hahaha! Eating disorders, LOL! (Good to see you again, though, Lord Tubbington.)
Figgins calls Sam and Brittany to his office to make them take a blood test to prove they are not, in fact, siblings who are accidentally boffing each other. While he’s got their attention, he congratulates/ridicules them for having the highest/lowest SAT scores in the whole school. By creating connect-the-dots penises and unicorns on her scantron answer form, Brittany has brought home a 2340, while Sam’s score is more along the lines of the points you get just for filling in your name. Harvard, Princetown, Mit, Sanford & Son: The world is now Brittany’s Ivy League oyster. But she tells Sam not to worry. For one thing, he’ll always have his body to fall back on. And for another thing, even if she ends up across the country at the University of California at Charles Barkley’s house, she’s very loyal and they’ll always be together. Like she promised ol’ what’s her name, with the caustic wit and the angry Spanish and the legs for days. Havana? Bobana? Santana! That’s right, Santana! That girl she used to makeout with by rubbing their necks together!
I’m just joshing with ya’; Brittany has no idea who this Santana person is.
What happens next is Sam shows up at school wearing nothing but UGGs and board shorts and strutting in slow-motion to the Ferris Bueller soundtrack.
Blaine is like, “Hey, uh, did you not see that I ironed your uniform and left it in the BlamCave with a basket of delicious mini-muffins this morning?” Sam doesn’t need to be side-eyed by his side-kick right now, though, so he tries to back Blaine down with some pectoral shade-throwing. But Tina’s not having it. She says out loud the thing she wrote just last night in her Chanderson fanfic: “Blaine has an awesome body and a perky and delicious behind that looks like it got baked to perfection by some sort of master chef.”
Sam invites Blaine to the locker room after school, no chicks allowed, which: if that’s a concept that intrigues you, it’s time for you to get caught up on Teen Wolf. Sam’s Nude Directions training session includes tips on broga (“yoga for bros”), manscaping (“nobody wants to see a back that looks like Chewbacca’s ass”), and package augmentation. He follows it with a “Centerfold/Hot In Here” mash-up that features the most ridiculous choreography this show has ever done. It also features three solid minutes of Chord Ovestreet jumping rope and doing crunches and flexing every muscle in his celestially whittled body. The whole thing is basically an answer to the question: But, like, what is Tumblr for?
Also doing some after-school inviting is Marley Rose, who wants Jake to help her pick a Regionals melody. They try out a duet of that song from Twilight about love that stretches across centuries unless you accidentally get pregnant with a vampire baby that tries to eat its way out of your uterus, and then maybe love only lasts like six to ten weeks. It’s a pretty/pretty disturbing song, but they sound nice together. Afterwards, Marley tries to tell Jake that she loves him, but she bails on her confession at the last second because if this is going to be one of those moments she remembers forever, she wants to be wearing her hat.
That afternoon, while Jake and Ryder are doing their daily synchronized weight lifting regimen, Jake asks Ryder for advice about the womenfolks. Ryder says that if Jake loves Marley, he has to say it first, because yes, he’s sexy when he’s naked, but he’ll be even sexier when he gets naked with his feelings. Heh. This really is like an episode of Teen Wolf: the shirtlessness, the locker room, two guys with crackling chemistry failing to convince the audience they’re into boobs instead of each other. If only one of them would shove the other one up against a locker and breathe real close to his face in a totally heterosexual way, MTV could sue for copyright infringement.
Jake takes Ryders advice to heart and sings Ne-Yo’s “Let Me Love You” with so much soul and tenderness it’s like the first time I haven’t thought of him as New Puck this whole season. Although, if we’re being honest, the best part of the whole thing is Kitty rolling her eyes and smashing her head against the wall.
The only glee club member not really feeling the calendar is Artie, and when he and Finn trek to the library to track down a vintage centerfold photo of Sue Sylvester – to blackmail her into not shutting down their calendar project, of course – he says that he’s going to pass on posing for the project. Finn is like, “That’s cool, man. You know, some things are personal. Private. Sacred, even. And we each get to decide when and where and to whom we reveal those hidden parts of ourselves. Except for in the case of lesbian sexuality. I’m the one who chooses the time and place to make that information public.”
The only hitch in the calendar photoshoot is Sam’s ego, which Blaine recognizes right away as insecurity. Sam tells Blaine that the only thing he’s got going for him is his body, and that even his interpersonal skills are padded by how hot he is, and so Blaine makes an appointment for him to talk to Emma about how he does have college choices and scholarship choices, and he even edits together a testimonial from all the Old New Directions about how Sam is a hero, even without his cape. He came back to McKinley so they could go to Nationals, he rescued their trophy, he took care of his family when his dad lost his job, he gave Mercedes the confidence to pursue her dreams and Sanatana the muse she needed for her songwriting career and he busted Hunter Clarington III and gave this show back its narrative structure. Blaine cries, Sam cries, the solo piano cries, I cry. Man, I wish they’d never tried this Blam thing as anything other than a very best friendship. What these two have is really remarkable, especially on TV: a gay guy and a straight guy who are both portrayed as sexy guys with sex drives but who have a deep and abiding platonic affection for one another.
The calendar is a success. They pull down a whopping $350 and everybody feels good about themselves, even Artie, who somehow gets convinced to dress up like a leprechaun. They close it out with “This is a New Year,” all bouncing around and doing that a capella Glee bop-bop-bop-bop thing and laughing and running and dancing and living and loving and not even caring that Will Schuester has probably been eaten by a bear.
New York, New York:
Rachel has landed the lead in a student film called Come Back To Me, Grandmother: A Journey Into Alzheimer’s. Nothing gets Rachel going like someone hand-jobbing her star-power and this student director’s got her sprung in a second talking about how she doesn’t even need a callback ’cause she’s just that good, so Lea Michele duets with Rachel Berry and they decide that even though they’re torn on the issue of full-frontal, they’ll do the movie because nothing says “art” like an allegory between dementia and Armageddon. Brody is on board with this plan because it means more tits and fanny, and so he lends his support by walking around his new apartment completely starkers. The result is the best two seconds of Glee ever. No, not Brody’s chest. I’m talking about Kurt’s face:
Kurt’s beef with Brody is threefold: 1) His bare ass is sitting on Kurt’s vintage flea market chair. 2) His trespassing ass moved into their loft without even a discussion between Kurt and Rachel. 3) His misogynistic ass is just a sexier version of Finn Hudson. Of course, Kurt doesn’t say any of this to Brody. He says it to Rachel right in front of Brody, while also explaining that YouTube is forever, so think about that before you let another dude take over your vagina and your brain.
Ryan Murphy always delivers scripts full of bizarro and often-misplayed meta self-deprecation, and I never really know what to make of it. The guy is notoriously thin-skinned, always shouting on Twitter about “BLOCKED!” and “RUDE!”, and absolutely refusing to apologize for legitimately offensive shit like playing into harmful minority stereotypes or, oh, I don’t know, stealing musical arrangements. So whenever he writes meta stuff like this, it doesn’t feel like the good kind of kind way Tina Fey does it. It feels like, “OK, fine! We said ‘misogyny’ on the show, now drop it!” But, I mean, having your characters comment on the offensiveness of your writing without changing the offensiveness of your writing is actually more insulting than not acknowledging it. Like, so you do know what sexism is, but you’re going to keep being sexist anyway? All right, then, buddy.
That’s the end of Kurt in this episode – BOOOOOOO! – but before he checks out for the day, he does call Santana and Quinn to ask them to come to New York to rescue Rachel from herself for the ten millionth time. They want to do some shopping and also they’re both still weirdly and secretly aroused by that slap fight they got into in Ohio a couple of weeks ago, so they take Kurt up on his offer. Also, let’s be honest, Santana would fly any number of miles to be able to say “feel some breeze on them ‘skeeter bites” to Rachel, even if she had to hop right back on a plane to get back to class.
Quinn explains that going topless in a student film is decidedly like sleeping with Finn Hudson: Two weeks after, you feel like a real woman. Two months later, you’re cloaked in shame. Two years later, you’ve spiraled into an unconquerable depression of eternal self-loathing. And Santana explains that when your breasts are on the internet, Google will dog your steps forever. (“Santana-Lopez-Nude-Lez-Boobies-Sex-Tape-Mexican-Or-Dominican-Question-Mark.”)
Rachel ignores their sound advice and decides to do the topless scene. Only, once she gets onto set, she realizes she’s not ready to bare her breasts to the whole entire world. Or, at least not in a smoke-filled black-and-white scene where Grandma gives in to her lust for the Roman Emperor Titus. Rather than getting naked, she gets with Quinn and Santana for a little musical action, after which Santana says she’s tired of not being on this show anymore and so she’s moving to Manhattan.
Next week: Cage matches! Rachel and Kurt face off in the annual NYADA Fugue Fisticuffs! Sam and Santana angry duet over their feelings for Brittany! Everyone else dresses in circus-colored fur! Madonna! Beyonce! Streisand! …Lambert? Sure, OK, why not!
Thank you, as always, to my screencapping partner Lindsay (@ScenicPenguin). And thank you guys also for understanding that recapping Glee is a bloodsport in its own way. Klaine, Kadam, Blam, Brittana, Quinntana, Faberry, Cherry Banana Boberry: shipping ain’t for the faint of heart.
