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“Glee” Recap (4.04): Nobody Said It Was Easy

Before “The Break-Up” aired, critics and Glee creatives said it was the best episode the show has ever done, and while I’m not sure that’s true, it was certainly a showcase of the thing Glee does best. I’m not talking about the music or the acting or the gay PSAs. I’m talking about the way Glee balls up its fist and says, “I’m going to punch you in the feelings.” And you go, “Yeah, OK, TV show.” Because you’re gay, right? This ain’t your first rodeo. Gay cowboy beaten to death with a crowbar? You’ve seen it. Beloved lesbian witch shot in the chest? You’ve seen it. Gay girls turning straight and finding true love, straight guys coming out and getting kicked off their shows, alien attacks, sexless “love scenes,” lost limbs, deep closets, double standards, a rainstorm of bullets on a gay wedding day. You’ve seen it all. But so Glee does what it promised, it punches your heart in the face, and the weird thing is that you feel it.

For all of its missteps and flip-flops and bizarro misogyny, the one thing Glee has always done exceptionally well is hit us where it hurts. See, because this show isn’t really about what we experienced in our teenage lives; it’s a show about how we experienced our teenage lives. That raw innocence with which we approached love and our dreams and our place in the world. Earnestness is out of fashion, I know. Giving a fuck is so last season. Cynicism and snark and 140-character quips of contempt are the order of the day. But Glee remembers what it was like to drive down the road, arm out the window, hair askew, hollering Journey‘s “Don’t Stop Believin'” into the night like a person who meant it.

And that’s the heart Glee went after in “The Break Up.” Not the beaten, battered, patchwork quilt heart that has seen too much and cracked too hard a hundred times before. But the heart that only ever knew how to believe because it had never been broken.

And it worked. Four hours later and I’m still pawing at my eyeballs with a handkerchief, is how well it worked.

McKinley High lunch room. Jake and Marley are bonding over their tickets for free lunch. They look like the tickets you get at those carnivals that pop up in the mall parking lot sometimes, so probably they would work for ferris wheel rides as well. Brittany and Blaine stare forlornly at the burgeoning romance of their fellow glee club members and remember what it was like to be coupled up with the two hottest gay teenagers in the history of high school.

In New York, Kurt is preparing a frittata – or an “egg pie” as Jess called it this week on New Girl – but he abandons his loft to eat breakfast while watching Five-0 roll past the drug dealers in the park so Rachel and Finn can have some alone time. Rachel is curious about why he went dark for a month and then showed up at her apartment to lie in bed and stare creepily at the ceiling all night without saying a word. Turns out he got “semi-honorably discharged” from the Army 16 days into basic training for mishandling his firearm. “I was just trying to get the gun to talk about its feelings and it shot me in the leg,” he says. After the Army patched him up, he took a walk on the Appalachian Trail for a while until he started getting insecure about how his beard wasn’t as bushy as the other hikers’ beards, so he flew to New York so Rachel could reaffirm his manhood. Rachel says his new life plan can be to follow her around to all her classes at NYADA, which doesn’t sound creepy at all.

Santana(!) is folding laundry in Brittany’s bedroom and coming unglued about Kurt’s foray into Anna Wintour’s heart and home. Verbatim:

I mean, I’m not jealous, I just think that it’s insane that all Porcelain had to do to get an internship with Vogue.com was take photos of every ridiculous outfit he’s ever paired with a Cossack hat and a see-through raincoat and then show up at an interview where he is lauded as a visionary because his jodhpurs happened to match his riding crop.

That’s like the most accurate description of Kurt’s wardrobe that I’ve ever heard. Brittany is yawning and yawning, and if you think Santana isn’t noticing, welcome to your first interaction with a lesbian. Brittany, it turns out, has been staying up all night to read the Left Behind books, the ninth of which is apparently called Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne, and is about the 2008 presidential election. Santana seems less shocked by the fact that Brittany is reading and more shocked by the fact that she’s traded in rainbows and unicorns for fire and brimstone. They kiss sweetly. (And then makeout on top of the laundry, I presume.)

Kurt and Blaine have scheduled a phone date for 8:30 a.m. and are shocked to find that the most opportune time to connect isn’t when Blaine is walking to homeroom and Kurt is fielding the frantic morning phone calls of Manhattan’s gossip bloggers. Blaine says that he misses Kurt’s face and Kurt’s cuddles and he also says, “I miss messing around with you” in the sweetest, shyest, most adorable way. It’s nice to see this show finally acknowledge that gay teenage boys have hormones that are stimulated by more than harmony. Kurt has to let him go, and accidentally drops his call a nanosecond too soon, so that Blaine ends up saying, “I love you” to the dialtone.

To emphasize the extradimensional weirdness of Finn following Rachel around NYADA, the first song of the night is “Barely Breathing” and for Finn’s part, he weaves in and out of Rachel and her classmates and makes the one face he makes when he sings. Its’ really a duet, though. Blaine sings the other part in the McKinley High auditorium, but unlike last week when he was all alone in there, this time he hallucinates that Kurt is watching him. (Don’t act like you don’t sometimes imagine yourself alone in a dark auditorium with Chris Colfer for … reasons.) When Blaine realizes that his mind has created a mirage of his boyfriend, he promptly hops on Facebook and pokes any old random Warbler. Eli C., apparently. Eli C. writes back: “Speaking of poking, wanna come over?” Warble off, Eli C.! Warble off a cliff!

In the Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of, Kurt and Rachel are getting ready for NYADA karaoke night, which takes place in a bar called “Callbacks,” because of course it does. They’re trying to goad Finn into changing out of his rugby duds, but he is saved by a knock at the door. You think it’s going to be Grody Brody, but instead it’s Blaine. Kurt goes, “Blaine!” And I go, “Blaine!” Blaine missed Kurt, Kurt missed Blaine! There are flowers and a kiss and goddamn Finn pokes his head in there for a hug and RUINS EVERYTHING LIKE ALWAYS. God, can he not let any gays have any gay moments of their own gay volition at all ever?

Kurt is super excited to be out on the town with Blaine. He calls it their first New York night out together, implying that they will have a lifetime of New York nights out together, but Blaine is only halfway listening because he’s really upset about how he had to sit in a middle seat on the flight over. For some reason, Finn convinces Rachel to sing “Give Your Heart a Break” with Brody, and then the whole time they’re singing, he’s getting jealous-er and jealous-er about the way they harmonize so easily. Kurt doesn’t want to follow-up Rachel’s performance, but Blaine does.

He sits down at the piano and dedicates a song to the love of his life. It’s the first song he ever sang to Kurt, but he was just flirting back then. Now he’s hopelessly, desperately in love, and, like Blaine, the song is stripped all the way down to its core. He chokes out the lyrics while making the saddest face you have ever or will ever see. Like, I’ve seen some sad things in my life. Those Sarah McLachlan homeless dog commercials? Sad. The end of Titanic? Sad. Every time one of The Doctor’s companions gets stranded in a parallel universe? Sad. I Am Sam, A Walk to Remember, Steel Magnolias, The Notebook, My Girl? Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad. But nothing in this life has ever been as sad as Blaine singing this song. His voice cracks, his face drops, his heart breaks.

Afterward, the fearsome foursome take a walk through Central Park. Kurt says, “You’re so emotional and weirdly sad. Please stop pretending there’s nothing wrong.” And Blaine confesses to having “been with someone.” He says the thing people always say, about how it meant nothing, and what else was he supposed to do because he was so very alone, but Kurt is not hearing that because he knows what it’s like to be alone and tempted, but he stayed faithful because to him it meant everything. He runs off into the night in tears.

Meanwhile, Rachel confesses to kissing Brody, and so Finn starts singing “Don’t Speak,” and the editing and blocking of this scene were really the only misses of the night for me. (That and every time the writers tried to make me care about Marley and Jake.) The song is way too sudden; it’s a jarring transition from Kurt and Blaine’s conversation. Anyway, blah blah blah don’t speak, you’re losing your best friend, you can’t believe it could be the end. If you didn’t listen to this song in high school every time your straight friend went on a date with a member of the opposite sex, you missed out on a really important gay right of passage. The song ends with both couples in bed, not speaking or sleeping, but staring awkwardly into the darkness.

Finn tries to sneak out the next morning, but Kurt has been awake all night, waiting for Blaine to come out of the bedroom. Finn is at his best when he’s being a brother, and when he asks how Kurt is feeling, Kurt tells him he feels like he’s dying a little bit. You and me both, Hummel. Finn bounces without passing along a message to Rachel.

Lima. Brittany has dragged Santana along to one of the Left Behind meetings, and Santana isn’t even a little bit impressed with Kitty. Her disdain increases tenfold when Kitty sets up an elaborate rapture hoax to scare one of the new students into believing she’s been abandoned by God. Brittany goes along with it for some reason, but I can’t be mad at her because when Santana clowns on the hyperventilating girl sobbing on the floor, Brittany goes, “That’s what it feels like to be left behind! I know! You did it to me!” So, then, is that actual canonical confirmation that Santana Lopez is the messiah?

Finn and Blaine have flown back bright and early and are ready to get their school day started! What’s that you say? Finn doesn’t even go here? Well, he does now. After collapsing into Mr. Schuester’s arms in tears, he has been made an honorary glee club member. His first order of business: Bossing everyone around about which fall musical to perform, duh! It’s gonna be Grease.

It’s a banner day for Will. Not only has his only friend, Finn Hudon, returned to Lima, but also he gets accepted to The Blue Ribbon Panel to Improve Arts Education. “I got accepted to The Blue Ribbon Panel to Improve Arts Education,” he tells Emma. Pack your bags and quit your job and follow me around the country.” Emma’s like, “I wrote you a new pamphlet called ‘I’m Not Your Finn Hudson.’ Enjoy!”

Blaine sends Kurt some red and yellow apology roses, but Kurt throws away the card, even after sighing to his co-worker that Blaine is “the cutest.”

Brittany and Santana meet up in the choir room, and Santana confesses that ever since sophomore year, she would sit on the top row of the risers and count the number of times Brittany would smile at her and die on the days she didn’t. She wants to sing to Brittany because it’s the only way she’s ever been able to get the truth out of her own heart and into Brittany’s heart without all of those pesky filters of insecurity and pride. It’s Taylor Swift’s “Mine” that she chooses, and the way Santana says, “You are the best thing that’s ever been mine,” it sounds like the loveliest thing.

I walked away from this show for a while and it was AfterEllen writer Dorothy Snarker who pulled me back in. She said, “Brittana, for real.” And I said, “And what’s so special about them anyway?” And she sent me the video of Naya singing “Landslide.” And I was like, “Ohhh.” So I rewatched it all and what I found was the brightest gem of actual truth in a mountain of surreal absurdity. Nothing makes more sense to me than a teenage girl who doesn’t know she’s gay falling in love with her best friend without knowing she’s in love. Santana’s blossoming confusion, her frustrated realization, her desperate confession, her stubborn hope. It was all so true. And in the end, she got the girl. This relationship started as a throwaway joke and bloomed into something real and solid and strong. And I believe everything Naya Rivera tells me when she’s singing. It’s the tenor of her voice, the softness of her face, the pleading in her eyes. She could croon about a land made of gum drops where you ride on the backs of pterodactyls and drink gin from the clouds, and I’d be like, “That makes perfect sense.”

After her song, she scoots over next to Brittany and says it’s time for them to do the mature thing, because Santana doesn’t want to be one of those cheating, fizzling, long-distance couples that ends up resenting each other. Brittany says, “I would never cheat on you” and she knows it’s true and so does Santana, so she says she would never cheat either. But she did – and this is actually very, very funny – have an “energy exchange” with a girl who smiled at her too long in the library, which means she was either “crazy or a lesbian.” Her stack of Virginia Woolf books revealed her as the latter. Santana says it’s not an official break-up and that she’ll always love Brittany the most. Brittany says it feels an awful lot like a break-up and that she loves Santana too.

Remember earlier when I said Blaine crying at the piano was the saddest thing in life? I changed my mind. This is what it feels like to get kicked in the soul.

Jake and Kitty break up because Kitty is a jackass to Marley. Do you care? Me neither.

Finn is wandering aimlessly around the McKinley stage when Rachel storms in to give him what for. These teenagers with their flexible schedules and seemingly endless funds for purchasing last-minute airfare! They have the same fight they’ve been having since the beginning of time, about how he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for her and she doesn’t want to live without him. Rachel literally says, “No matter how rich and famous I get, I’ll always love you.” Something about this stage fills that girl with such a sense of hubris! She shouts at him for abandoning her at the train station, shouts at him for disappearing, shouts at him for showing back up and storming back off and acting like a lost child in an amusement park every day of her life. She tells him he was her first love but that she can’t keep doing this same old song and dance. Not after Sarah Jessica Parker twirled her around in a golden gown and the makeup people started blowing her hair out to make her look like Lea Michele.

Finn starts singing Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” and is joined on stage almost immediately by Blaine and Santana. It’s actually the first scene in which each of the couples hasn’t felt isolated, a purposeful directorial decision, and it makes for a powerful conclusion. Eventually, Santana is joined by Brittany and Blaine is joined by Kurt and Finn is joined by Rachel. Will and Emma appear on stage too. But each of the couples is separated by the light and by their own voices. We’re so used to hearing these guys duet with their significant others that the effect of their solos is striking. They are all separated by nothing and by everything. And when we finally do get to hear their familiar harmonies, it is heartbreaking. We flashback to Rachel and Finn’s first kiss, to Kurt and Blaine running hand-in-hand through Dalton, to Brittany and Santana canoodling in the choir room.

My screencapping partner Lindsay said on Twitter last night that this scene would have made for a beautiful, heartbreaking series finale, and I agree. In fact, that’s exactly what it feels like, and in some ways, that’s exactly what it is. The couples we’ve cared about for two seasons are breaking up with each other, but also the show is breaking up with the comfort of the world that created them. It’s sort of the opposite of the pilot showstopper. Back then it was all about how Will could inspire a generation of kids to put aside their differences and accomplish something great together. And now Will is skipping town because he’s all out of inspiration, and this generation of kids, who put aside their differences so effectively that they fell in love, has got to learn to accomplish something great on their own.

It’s kind of a lie, really, that nobody said it would be easy. That’s the thing about being in high school: Teenage Life makes so many promises that Real Life breaks. There’s more to success than just believin’. Love doesn’t really conquer all. Time stops for no one. But that’s another Coldplay song for another day.

“The Scientist” comes to a close and Finn realizes he’s on the stage all alone.

The way these guys keep hallucinating vivid, interactive images of their loved ones in this stage makes me think McKinley’s auditorium is like a 3D Mirror of Erised, the place you go when you want to experience the deepest, most desperate desires of your heart. In which case, I will be spending the five-week Glee hiatus there, watching Brittana play with puppies and Klaine frolick in a field of dandelions and Eli C. get tied to some train tracks and run down by a steam engine.

One thing we have always asked from Glee is that it treat its gay couples like it treats its straight couples. Kiss counters, is what we are. If Rachel and Finn kiss, we want Blaine and Kurt to kiss. If Rachel and Finn have sex, we want Brittany and Santana to have sex. So even though it was heartbreaking to watch our gay couples fall apart like they did, it was also satisfying to see them treated with the same emotional gravitas as the straight couples. The writers anchored the emotion equally between them and counted on each of their break-ups to pack the same kind of emotional punch. And the result is total, glorious, perfect, perfect heartbreak.

I’ll see you in five weeks when Grease rolls into town and we find out if Klaine and Brittana remember they go together like rama lama lama de dinga a ding a dong.

An enormous thank you to my screencapping partner Lindsay (@ScenicPenguin) who literally stayed up all night to do these screencaps so we could post this recap first thing this morning for all of your processing needs. Follow her on Twitter and show her some love!

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