Archive

“Glee” Recap 4.22: Brittana is Real

Previously on Glee, Rachel was tripping balls on nostalgia at her Funny Girl audition, so she hallucinated Original New Directions onto the stage with her, where they Didn’t Stop Believin’ together again. Blaine made it plain that he wanted to spend all his days of all of his life with perfect human being Kurt Hummel, even if they were still mostly broken up (but still hooking up at literally every opportunity). Brittany pulled down a perfect SAT score. And Ryder was teetering very near the edge of an apoplectic brain hemorrhage because these writers have a memory worse than Finding Nemo‘s Dory but his stupid catfishing storyline just would not go away.

Back when I used to watch American Idol, my favorite thing was when some girl would walk into the room and say she was going to sing Mariah or Whitney or Celine and the judges would all just roll their eyes and flop over in their chairs and start texting or whatever, because the only person who can sing like Celine Dion is Celine Dion, OK? But then the Idol girl would open her mouth and it’d be heaven and the judges would gape at her like a gaggle of dummies, and that’s exactly what happens when Rachel shows up at her second Funny Girl callback and says she’s going to sing “To Love You More.” She crushes it, she crushes it so hard she makes herself cry. When Lea Michele gets to heaven, God’s gonna be like, “Every other angel, shut up!”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brittany is meeting with some MIT administrators who are bamboozled by her perfect SAT scores and her dismal GPA. Also, she destroyed their scantron machine because she took her entrance exams with a crayon. But on the back of her exam she scribbled a bunch of numbers that were jumbled up inside her brain, hoping it would help her concentrate, and it turns out those numbers – “The Brittany Code” – are the most significant mathematical breakthrough since Pythagoras recorded his theorems in finger paint.

Brittany can’t deal with the pressure of having such a beautiful mind and such a remarkable academic offer, so she unleashes her id on everyone at McKinley. She demands all the solos for the rest of her glee club tenure. She breaks up with Sam via text message while standing right in front of him, because she “misses her sweet lady kisses.” And then she channels her inner Martin Luther and nails her 95 crayon-penned theses to the door of Coach Roz’s office explaining why she’s quitting the Cheerios. (One of the best throwaway jokes of the night is Coach Roz reading the theses over the sound of Brittany’s burning cheerleader uniform: “Last year, Coach Sylvester locked seven Cheerios in a dog crate…”)

It’s a tricky week for Brittany to come unglued because there are about fifty-eleven other things happening in Lima. Regionals are finally, fully upon us. Blaine has decided to go through with his proposal to Kurt despite Burt’s excellent advice last week that Blaine should take a deep breath and relax and re-learn his soul mate. But Blaine has never not overachieved at anything, and he wants that gay wedding badge for his scout sash dammit. And, of course, Ryder still doesn’t know who Katie is, so he practically sets the choir room on fire when his friends refuse to turn out their pockets and offer up to him their iPhones, iPads, laptops, Kindles, and hand-written diaries. Kitty, literally and amazingly: “Nobody’s going to admit it, for fear of being murdered.” But Marley does admit it. With a straight face, she say the actual words: “I’m Catfish!” But the camera says: “She’s lying, duh, it’s Unique.”

Nobody’s got time for that shit, though. Two unlikely teams tag-up to stage an intervention for Brittany. First is Will and Sue, who go on Fondue for Two, to talk to her about why she’s acting like a lunatic. Sue is unimpressed with the actual fondue – “It smells like someone poured chardonnay on a homeless woman who’d been dead several days” – but super impressed by the fact that Brit has unlocked the mystery of her baby’s father. It’s Michael Bolton, obviously. Brittany’s also got other questions for her most favored teachers; for example, did they know people stopped caring about their on-again/off-again frenemy feud way back in season one? And does Will plan to continue his weirdly intimate relationship with Finn once he and Emma are married?

In terms of interventions, Will and Sue’s is a flop. So Sam calls up the only person who can see Brittany and touch Brittany when the glow of her unicorn-ness is blinding, and that person is, of course, Santana Lopez. She gets naked while answering the phone for reasons I do not understand and will not question. She also agrees to teleport to Lima quick as a flash to look in on Brittany 3.0.

Also happening in Lima is Ryder’s continued descent into absolute madness. You know in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? when Judge Doom flips open cans of that eraser dip stuff and adorable cartoon characters with floppy hair start squealing and hyperventilating and running around in circles and smashing up against things and falling over and fainting and regaining consciousness and fainting again and waking up and stumbling around and breaking more things and vomiting blood? That’s pretty much what’s happening with Ryder out in the hallway of McKinley High while Marley tries to calm him down with her sweet face and soothing words. But Unique finally confesses that it was her who was catfishing him. Ryder can’t believe it, even though every single one of us have been shouting it at him through the TV for the last three months. He says he’s not ever going to speak to Unique again for as long as he lives!

How about we all agree never to speak of this entire storyline again for as long as we live, hmm? I mean, do you know how many times Santana could have taken off her shirt while we were watching Ryder type? Do you know how many jazzercize classes Blaine could have attended? One hundred and ninety-six billion, that’s how many. Ryder robbed us of Naya’s abs and Darren’s thrusting. UNACCEPTABLE. DIE, CATFISH STORY. DIE FOREVER.

Blaine decides to leave the drama of McKinley behind and go engagement ring shopping with the girl who sleep-straddled him and the boy he intimately serenaded with a Phil Collins song not too terribly long ago. It’s legitimately they gayest thing this show has ever done, and I’m including “Turkey Lurkey” in that assessment. Tina picks out a ring that would suit her just fine and Sam shows up to explain that while Blaine wants to do him, he doesn’t want to marry him. Patty Duke, proprietor of Lima’s gold emporium, pulls Blaine aside and asks if he has any mentors or role models in his life who can help him make a wise decision about getting married. Blaine says, “Will Schuester of New Directions?” And Patty Duke says, “No, then? OK, allow me and Meredith Baxter to assume that role in your life, starting tonight at Breadstix.”

I want Patty Duke and Meredith Baxter to mentor me! Move over, Blaine! You’re not even old enough to remember Family Ties!

OK, so at Breadstix, Kurt and Blaine enjoy some delicious pizza and a lovely, empowering message about how far marriage equality has come in America, and how far it still has to go. Patty Duke and Meredith Baxter couldn’t even go to prom together when they were teenagers. They had to disguise their date as a big group outing. Even just a few years ago, they couldn’t hold hands in public. And now the Supreme Court is deciding on Prop. 8 and DOMA and 11 states have made it legal for gay folks to get married. Times are changing. It really is getting better. It seems like Patty Duke is setting the stage for Blaine to pop the question, but then she flips it on its head and asks Meredith Baxter to be her wife! Kurt gets all teary and googly eyed about how this is the sweetest thing he’s ever seen and Blaine stuffs his engagement ring into his pocket, all, “Sigh. Yeah. I guess.”

 Oh, darling Warbler, you’re going to have to get up awfully early to out U-Haul a couple of elderly lesbians.

Santana really does arrive in Lima an instant after Sam calls her, and Brittany immediately invites her onto Fondue for Two, heartbreaking tagline: “Brittana is Real.” Despite Lord Tubbington’s most ardent protests (editorial continuity is really important to him), Santana shuts the whole thing down. She doesn’t want to have an on-camera conversation with Brittany. She doesn’t want the pantomime. She wants to talk to her Brittany, the real Brittany, and so Brittany agrees. She says she’s got some news that is going to change everything.

Regionals! At last! Someone besides Darren Criss and Kermit the Frog sing “Rainbow Connection,” which is incorrect. And then the Hoosier Daddies take the stage. Before Jessica Sanchez gets awesome, Brittany has a confession to make: She got accepted to MIT. They want her to come to college straightaway. That’s why she’s been acting out.

It’s hard not to think that this is Heather Morris‘ swan song along with Brittany’s, which makes her goodbyes even sadder. She tells them all how much she loves them, individually, even though she can’t remember some of their names and compares the Marley and Jake and Ryder and Kitty to foster kids and Artie to the robot building boy-next-door whose virginity you take for fun. And then she gets to Santana and they both know there’s nothing she can say because the universe has never conceived the words that will allow them to say goodbye to one another.

The Hoosier Daddies kill it with Zedd feat. Foxes’ “Clarity” and Little Mix’s “Wings.” And then New Directions – well, they don’t exactly kill it. It’s more like they beat it with a baseball bat and it almost dies, but it lives to fight another day. They do The Scripts’ “Hall Of Fame,” the choreography of which is basically just all the guys walking around slapping high fives. And then the ladies bust in with Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” which, speaking of killing it, is auto-tuned to within an inch of its life. They close it out with a Marley Rose original that is actually quite lovely. “All or Nothing” is what it is called, and it’s an apt wrap-up for season four.

When it’s over, the Hoosier Daddies take second place, which means that New Directions win again! It’s a slow-mo celebration: Artie hoisting his very last Regionals trophy above his head, Sam chest-bumping everyone in sight, Ryder and Unique hugging and breaking apart. And then it’s just fireworks. And then it’s just Brittany.

If story gives the universe structure, music gives the universe soul. If story is the way we tie together unrelated points of light and call them constellations, music is the bruised night sky healing apricot in the sunrise – the cacophony of color that gives beauty to the form we’ve constructed from the nothingness. The meeting of story and song is the collision of our most ancient needs, the place where our imaginations and our heart’s affections unite. It’s an intersection Keats called holy.

That’s where Glee exists. Not always. Not often. But when Glee manages to stitch together honest narrative with authentic music, it reaches a place inside of us that most TV shows could never hope to touch. And what’s more, the way Glee reaches for us is unapologetically queer.

In this episode, alone,  we saw two young gay soul mates being counseled by two elderly lesbian soul mates about the decision to get married. We saw a straight white guy trying to come to terms with the relationship he’d developed with a transgender black woman. We saw a bisexual teenager saying goodbye to a boyfriend and a girlfriend, both of whom she truly loved.

Glee hasn’t gotten any of those stories right all of the time. It hasn’t even gotten most of those stories right most of the time. But it has had its moments of white hot glory, of pure holiness. And this is one of those times.

Brittany sits alone and Santana walks to meet her. She pulls Brittany to her feet and embraces her. They join hands. They walk off the stage, silently, together.

Fandom conceived Brittana. Fandom nurtured Brittana. Fandom advocated for Brittana, and demanded for Brittana, and understood Brittana. In a lot of ways, Santana’s relationship with Brittany is an accidental allegory for fandom’s relationship with this couple. When the rest of the world wrote off Brittany as a moron, Santana looked right into her eyes and called her a genius. When the rest of the world scoffed at Brittany’s naivete, Santana explained that she was a unicorn. Santana saw in Brittany not the shell of an idea of the shadow of a person, but a woman who was intrinsically good and wholly beautiful and wonderfully complicated. She examined every one of Brittany’s layers lovingly, reverently. And the more she discovered, the deeper she loved.

And then Santana let Brittany unravel her. She let Brittany speak truths that cut through her hard, bitchy exterior. She let Brittany sing songs that acted as a balm to her tortured soul. They said it was just sex, but they knew it was more than sex. They said it was just Cheerios, but they knew it was more than Cheerios. It was more than friends. It was more than girlfriends. And in the end, they stopped saying anything at all, because they finally understood that their truth transcends words.

My friends and family always mock me for sticking with Glee, but this is the reason why I do. These rare and wonderful moments of holiness. There’s a beauty here and a truth here that I don’t experience anywhere else. I know that’s not a cool thing to say, apathy and snark being the order of the day and all that. And it’s especially weird with Glee because people expect you not only to love the exact things they love, but they also expect you to hate the exact things they hate. But I didn’t hate this. I didn’t hate it at all.

The only thing that expresses the inexpressible better than music is silence. Or as our buddy Keats would say: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.”

Backstage, Emma and Will get swept up in the euphoria of victory and finally say “I do.” It’s very sweet. As the camera pans away from the celebration, Blaine clutches an engagement ring behind his back.

The promotion for this finale was built around Kurt and Blaine, and I do understand the fandom disappointment that there was no real proposal, and in fact no real scenes between the two of them. But I think that’s actually the right choice for these two for right now. Kurt Hummel is Glee. His story, his triumphs, his journey: they are the true heart of this show, and even though he was wildly underused this year, I think the writers know that to be the truth. And so his most important relationship, his engagement, his wedding, it deserves more than to be shoehorned into a jam-packed finale. “Endgame” seems like the silliest thing to me because people act like it’s science or something, but Kurt Hummel is Glee‘s endgame. And I think Kurt Hummel’s wedding is the way this show will end its era. And we deserve that, don’t you think? We deserve to see Kurt and Blaine reconnect in every way, we deserve to see Kurt and Blaine carve out their lives in New York, individually and together. And Kurt deserves to have some autonomy, some say in the when and how and where of his engagement. ‘Cause once he says yes to Blaine Warbler, ain’t nobody running away from the altar.

I just want to thank you guys, sincerely, for allowing me to recap Glee for you this season. It’s been ludicrous and it’s been moving. It’s been infuriating and it’s been soul-sustaining. But on its best days, it has been holy. And I don’t know about you, but those days are the ones that will keep me coming back for more.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button