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“Glee” recap (4.11): Locked Out of Heaven

Previously on Glee:

Let’s do McKinley first today:

Tina Cohen-Chang leads a meeting of the Too Young to Be Bitter Club. In the case of most of the club’s members – Becky, Lauren Zizes (er, hey, girl?), Marley – it’s true; they are too young to be bitter. But Tina, whose entire existence is like getting live-action trolled Stranger than Fiction-style, deserves her bitterness. Honestly, if she could find an archenemy and develop a maniacal laugh, she’d be in possession of all the qualities and life experiences she needs to become a supervillain. Anyway, the club doesn’t know it is trapped inside an episode of Glee, so the ladies decide it’s time for some female-empowerment. Rather than waiting around for boys to validate their existence, the girls decide to throw a Sadie Hawkins dance, so they can actively seek out boys to validate their existence. Revolutionary!

Finn decides that the best way to honor his super queer, gender role-breaking glee club is to have the gals sing a song to the guy of their choosing as an invitation to the dance. Tina is up first and she chooses to sing Jesus Christ Superstar’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” to Blaine, which is unintentionally hilarious on a variety of levels. For starters, like Tina, Mary Magdelane was possessed by seven demons that set her up for a lifetime of raining down her wrath. And also like Tina, to sing this song to the object of her affection, Mary M. would have had to elbow/claw her way into a group of dudes who were flanking him on all sides and worshiping him as their messiah. Blaine sways and claps and grins and gives her the thumbs up all the way through her solo, and then he shoots her down in front of everyone when she asks him to the dance.

After class, Tina stares at Blaine’s ass for a while and decides she will not take “no” for an answer. She marches over and demands to know why he won’t go to the dance with her. He’s like, “Um, because I’m gay and I already did that whole bicurious storyline with Rachel ages ago.” Just kidding. He says he can’t go to the dance with her because he’s doing the “gay guy falling for straight guy” thing that Kurt did with Finn in season one. “But less predatory machinations and more being adorably awkward from a distance,” he explains. Tina says they should go to the dance as just friends, because being a straight girl staring moony-eyed at a gay guy staring moony-eyed at a straight guy is an exercise in humiliation even she has not yet experienced.

Marley wants to ask Jake to the dance, but she’s feeling pretty low since everyone took turns punching her in the face after she passed out at Regionals. Brittany decides to take Marley under her wing, so she gives it the old one-two punch of “It’s Brittany, Bitch” and a magical turn, and we are rewarded with some killer HeMo dance moves and a rousing rendition of “Tell Him” as performed by Marley, Brittany, Unique, and Tina, Kitty, and Sugar Motta. At the end of the ditty, Marley asks Jake to the dance and he accepts.

Kitty isn’t really feeling Marley’s newfound confidence, so she slithers up to Jake in the hallway and offers to blow him, once right now and once after the dance, if he’ll go with her instead. Jake’s face is like Zoinks!. He asks Puck, who is legit just roaming around the hallways at his leisure these days, if it’s better to get to third base with the devil or halfway to first base with the shadow of the ghost of the echo of Rachel Berry. Puck’s like, “That second thing, bro. But just out of curiosity, where would one find this ‘devil?'” Puck then tracks down Kitty and asks her to the dance, which is apparently not a recipe for statutory rape because she has a fake ID.

The Sadie Hawkins dance is pretty. Everyone looks very nice. Sadly, there are so many sad ladies sitting around sadly in the sad bleachers feeling sad about how no boys will ask them to dance, and this is a Jane Austen novel after all, and a person can’t speak to another person at a country ball without first being formally introduced. Coach Bieste sees the sad ladies being sad with no men to call their own, so she marches over and tells them to get up and be proactive. After all, it was after she sought out her own validation in the arms of a man at her first Sadie Hawkins dance that she decided to join the football team. Who knows what these girls can accomplish if only they’ll find the courage to ask a boy to love them?

But it’s not all sad news for these teenage spinsters. The ladies of New Directions crush it with a performance of “Locked Out of Heaven.” The harmonies are sweet, Brittany’s moves are fierce, Unique has finally found her place, and Tina puts so much heart into the song it’s like she really does think – quite rightly, probably – that with her luck, she literally will get locked out of heaven one day. The fellas of New Directions bring it with a cover of TLC’s “No Scrubs.” It’s gender-bendy. It’s nostalgic. It’s sexy. Also, HeMo, girl, it’s hard to stay mad at you when you do it like you do.

The weirdest part of the dance is when Blaine and Tina almost kiss because he’s having such a good time I guess he forgets that he’s a raging homosexual? Luckily, Sam pulls him out of the moment with a legitimately hilarious request for some sleuthing backup. Turns out the Warblers were doping before Regionals. Sam figured it out because they all have giant heads and also Sebastian hulked out in The Lima Bean and someone recorded it. Blaine smiles adoringly as Sam delivers the news to Finn. So, New New Directions is back, I guess! Sectionals, here we come?

And over in New York City:

Kurt ponders the social hierarchy at NYADA while doing some ballet. Should he join the Tennessee Williams play-reading group? Should he join NYADA’s show choir, Adam’s Apples? Rachel says no to that last thing. Right before she runs across a busy Manhattan street, pausing so many times I thought for sure she was about to get Regina George-ed by a taxi, she gives Kurt some advice about fitting in at college: “The first thing you do is get into an insecure-off with one of your teachers, so you can take turns showing each other up and acting generally pathetic week after week. And then the next thing you do is find the first boy who shows any interest in you at all and build your whole life and personality around him.”

Kurt tries to take her advice to heart and stay away from NYADA’s glee club, but the leader of the Adam’s Apples is actually a guy named Adam and his irresistible attributes can be summed up as: British. He flirts with Kurt when he finds him pondering an Adam’s Apples flyer, flirts with Kurt some more when he sees him examining the flyer a second time, and finally invites Kurt to a performance as an introduction to the club. It’s that Jonathan Coulton-ripped cover of “Baby Got Back,” and it’s fine or whatever, but I really wish Glee would at least start acknowledging when they borrow other people’s arrangements. It’s not like this show is some low-budget late-night local-cable deal that no other artists are ever going to hear about. Everything about it is on the internet everywhere at all times forever.

What I really like is that when Blaine/The Warblers wanted Kurt, they pulled out all the stops and wooed him with “Teenage Dream.” And now that Adam/The Adam’s Apples want Kurt, they’re pulling out all the stops and wooing him with “Baby Got Back.” Which is exactly how it should be. Kurt Hummel doesn’t need to audition for your group, OK? You audition for him.

Kurt decides to be brave and ask Adam out on a date. He’s adorably shy about the whole thing, but Adam seizes the opportunity in a second. “You want me to go out with you? I mean, you’ve seen you, right? The answer is absofuckinglutely.”

Rachel does it with Brody. She does it with Brody in the day and she does it with Brody in the night. Brody, Brody, Brody, blah, blah, blah. I’m so glad Glee decided to tell the story of Rachel Berry following her dreams all the way to the greatest city in the world. It’s just so much fun watching her do things in Manhattan that she never could have done in Lima. Like wrapping her whole life around a boy and dicking over her friends to spend time with him and pursuing his acceptance like oxygen. Oh, but wait. What’s this? Rachel has prepared a romantic feast for Brody and he has arrived 45 minutes late.

“Where do you get off?” she demands, as she thrashes around the kitchen, throwing away his dinner and throwing dishes in the sink. “This is a women’s empowerment episode and you’re treating me like a goddamn Betty Draper!” Brody rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Hush, now. I’m going to get a place close by so I can validate your existence with more regularity.” Rachel rushes into his arms and tells him not to be a fool; he can just move into her bedroom and validate her existence 24 hours a day.

Next week, Kurt goes on a date with Adam and splits Glee‘s gay fandom into three warring factions. Klainers have history on their side. Kadamers have Queen Elizabeth. Slainers have superhero costumes. The battleground: Tumblr. The weapon of choice: Feelings. Also, Santana returns and murders Sam with her bare hands, after which she turns and looks straight into the camera, raises her bloody fists, and says, “Here’s to you, lesbian blogger community.” Plus, Sue tries to destroy New Directions but learns a Very Important Lesson instead, while Sugar Motta continues to make the most GIF-able faces of all time.

Big thanks to my screencapping partner Lindsay (@ScenicPenguin) whose new strategy for dealing with Glee is to pretend each show exists in a different parallel universe than the show before it.

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