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“Glee” recap (5.05): A Streetcar Named Predictability

Previously on Glee, esteemed McKinley High School faculty member William Schuester staged an entire production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the chance to perform “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me” with the guidance counselor, decried Britney Spears‘ role model cred and then performed “Toxic” in front of the whole entire school, tried to get Coach Bieste fired by ostracizing and pizza-shaming her but then took pity on her and kissed her on the lips so she wouldn’t be a smoochin’-virgin anymore, pitched a tantrum and threw some books, stomped around a stage in a matador costume singing “La Cucaracha,” openly sneered at his students on the regular, told Emma Pillsbury’s boyfriend that he would allow him to continue to date her and then changed his mind and tried to fix her OCD by singing Coldplay at her, implemented some exposure therapy as a Plan B cure, and suspended a student with an eating disorder for refusing to perform in a clam-shell bra. Blaine Warbler is twerking around the choir room with his headphones on, and the camera remembers that, like Tina Cohen-Chang, it had an obsession with Blaine’s ass last season, so it gets up in there and-surprise!-it’s actually Tina’s camera [phone]. She shows the video to the rest of glee club and they giggle and Mr. Schue decides that with three weeks left until Nationals (because at the end of the last episode, it was four weeks and everyone got suspended for one week, right?), what these guys need to do is really focus on their butt-bouncing skills. Why? Why on Naya Rivera‘s green earth would he think that’s a good idea? Because, you guys. Because “twerking is about blurring the lines between past and present, between men and women, between tradition and envelope-pushing.” And what better way to illustrate this false dichotomy than to perform a song about date rape.

Just in case Mr. Schue is confused about the message of Robin Thicke‘s “Blurred Lines,” Artie goes ahead and preemptively explains that the blurred line in question has less to do with the grey area between “tradition and envelope-pushing” and more to do with that pesky issue of consent when it comes to sex. Mr. Schue goes, “LOL, what’s rapey about breathing, ‘You know you want it! You know you want it!’ into a drunk girl’s ear over and over?”

And so:

And here’s where Glee manages to out-Glee itself. Sue calls Will into her office to fire him for humpin’ ‘ round the school with his students singin’ ’bout gettin’ nasty. These are the exact words that come out of her mouth: “You do realize ‘Blurred Lines’ is a song about date rape, don’t you? You need to back your ass up to the fact that you, a married 37-year-old, just performed a song about coercive sexual advances as nine minors twerked along beside you, down the hallways of a public high school.”

Hallelujah, right? Power to the voice of Sue Sylvester and the People!

Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Let me just frame it for you like this: Glee chose to perform song about date rape and chose to have its grown-ass hero character sing that song about date rape while dancing suggestively with his students. OK, they paid for rights to that song. They’re going to make bank selling that song on iTunes. But they know it’s wildly inappropriate on every level and so they had a character say it out loud in the episode, which-newsflash!-doesn’t make it OK; it makes it even more gross. Everything I know about the law, I learned from Scandal, so I don’t know much but I know premeditated bullshit is even more felonious than accidental bullshit. “We’re doing a gross thing and we know it’s gross and we’re going to make an on obscene profit on it!” Ugh. And blech. And stop saying “Throat Explosion” while we’re at it.

I’m not writing about this part of the story anymore. Here’s all you need to know: Will takes some kind of moral high-ground based on an internet troll’s understanding of the first amendment and Becky calls him a bitch and Sue agrees to let him keep his job (and agrees to help out Unique) if he’ll just fucking stop with his awful twerking crusade. He’s like, “No way will I do what is best for my students when I could dig my heels in the ground over the dumbest possible thing.” But he does in the end, probably because Sue put him under the Imperius Curse. OR MAYBE SHE THREATENED TO SUSPEND HIM FOR A WEEK FOR NOT THINKING ABOUT THE GOOD OF THE TEAM.

I’m going to say one more thing and then hush and talk about what was right with this episode. People often get grouchy with me because I hold Will to a different standard than Sue when it comes to terribleness. They assume it’s because I’m a lesbian and, hey: Jane Lynch. But that’s not it. From the very beginning of this show, Sue has been played as an over-the-top cartoon villain, twirling her mustache and tying damsels to the train tracks. Sure, she has her redemptive moments, but on the whole, she is a caricature of a sociopath. I nearly punched my TV every time she referred to Unique as “him” this week, but we’re not supposed to side with Sue. That’s not how this story is written. Her evilness is characterized as evilness. Will, on the other hand, has been played as The Great Straight White Hope from day one. He is the Messiah of Lima. And so we’re supposed to root for him. That’s the thing the writers keep telling us: That his terribleness, unlike Sue’s, is actually noble and heroic and correct. And it’s not, not, not. That’s my problem with Will Schuester.

And actually, to a larger extent, that’s the real problem with Glee. It tells us it’s heroic, and in some ways it is, but that doesn’t excuse the awful bullshit it pulls on the regular. Schue is Glee. Maybe that’s my real problem with him.

ANYWAY. Two other things go down at Lima this week and both of them result in commanding performances. The first is that Unique chooses to use the school restrooms during class so she can use the ladies room without any grief. Because she identifies as a woman, right, and as a woman, she doesn’t want to use the men’s room. During one of her bathroom breaks, Bree peeps her and dimes her out to her classmates and the school descends into chaos! Stoner Brett in the girl’s bathroom, Cheerios in the boy’s bathroom, cats and dogs sleeping together, and it all culminates in a co-ed toilet rave with lightsabers. Sue’s solution is to put a port-a-potty with Riddler-y question marks all over it in the choir room. Get it? Question marks? Because what gender is Unique? Ha ha ha. Oh, ha ha ha. What a hoot that is. (It is not a hoot.)

The best thing about the port-a-potty situation is that Unique uses it as a springboard to perform a stunning rendition of “If I Were a Boy.” Alex Newell frikkin crushes it, man. It gave me goosebumps on top of my goosebumps. The second-best thing about the port-a-potty situation is that Tina takes a shining to using it-because “What? Its convenient. Jeez, get your priorities straight.”- and she keeps going in there, even though Artie hilariously observes: “She just used it like five minutes ago!” In the end, the glee club rallies around Unique, threatening to beat up the dudes who bullied her out of the girl’s restroom, and then “sacrificing” their “right” to “twerk” so Sue will give her a key to the co-ed staff restroom.

The other good Lima thing is that Bree tells Marley she’s been sleeping with Jake, and not only does Marley dump his ass so fast; she also performs “Wrecking Ball” with the kind of energy and emotion this show scarcely allows her. It was Melissa Benoist‘s most commanding performance and we didn’t even have to hear Will give her an inappropriate/patronizing speech about her V-card! She stood up for herself without any straight men swooping in to solve her problems for her! Even though standing up for herself last week caused her to get suspended! Sweet Marley Rose, you are so much better than these dudes. One idea is you could become a lesbian. Just a thought.

At the end of the day, New Directions twirls around on a merry-go-round and sings “On Our Way.” On their way where? To Nationals, presumably, in only two weeks with exactly zero songs prepared. I hope Marley’s got another ditty about gay marriage and otters holding hands in her pocket.

Rachel Berry-whose head is Lea Michele‘s head whose hair is certainly insured for more than $10,000-decides to get a blunt-cut bob in an effort to shake herself out of the funk she’s been in since Finn passed away. It’s shocking. I mean, it’s beautiful, of course, because (again) it is attached to Lea Michele’s face. But still. Shocking. Her Funny Girl director hates is real bad, especially because anyone who has seen any TV show about how Broadway gets made knows you can’t even clip your fingernails without asking the director first. But after a (classy) sexy performance of “You Are Woman, I Am Man,” he decides the new look is just what she needs to own the role of Fanny Brice.

Kurt, also, is startled by Rachel’s new look, but she whips off her hair to reveal her actual hair underneath and a hundred L’Oreal executives stop breathing into paper bags. Rachel accuses Kurt of sinking into an emotional spiral, just like her, on account of all he does is go to school and go to work and come home and watch Project Runway. Even his Skyping sessions with Blaine are fraught with Old Married Couple doldrums. Mostly they just sleep. She wants to feel alive like she did in high school, like every single decision will make or break her whole world, and so she and Kurt have one swig each of Limoncello and rock on out to the tattoo shop to get some ink.

For-my god, how many seasons of those show have we lived through? Five? Five?!-five seasons now, every dude on Glee has been whipping of his shirt at the slightest provocation, but not Kurt Hummel. No, his pecs are wrapped up even tighter than Dylan O’Brien‘s on Teen Wolf (which are wrapped up even tighter than rolls of quarters in Scrooge McDuck’s vault). But not this week. No, siree. Kurt takes off his shirt about ten different times. The first time is to get his tattoo. He means for it to say “It Gets Better,” but those two shots of fruity liquor caused him to ask for “It’s Get Better.” He is horrified, mainly because: “What if I run into Dan Savage in the steam room at the gym? I mean, I’ll be humiliated!” Chris Colfer is so hilarious in this scene. His face.

Rachel tells Kurt she chickened out about getting a tattoo because she’s not attached to anything enough to have it stamped on her body for the next 50 years, but she’s bluffing, of course. She got the word “Finn” inked onto her side. It’s sweet and very, very sad.

Kurt marches back to the tattoo shop and demands some justice, but the artist tells his he got what he asked for and helps him fix it to: “It’s Got Bette Midler.” Rachel says it’s genius and also inexplicable, and she is correct. Kurt says he’s going to get lucky on Skype when he shows it to Blaine, which is also correct. Because guess what else he got? A tongue ring. Even though right now his tongue is so swollen he sounds like he’s gnawing on pretzels from the diet-destroying vendor down the street.

There’s no real momentum to this storyline, no three-act drama or emotional character arcs, but I’d rather watch a hundred hours of Kurt and Rachel just learning about life in New York City than literally any more seconds of Will Schuester’s asinine blergfests in Lima, Ohio. You’ve broken me, Glee. Excuse me while I go flip over some xylophones. Sometimes I think Becky is the only one who gets me.

Next week: Blaine and Kurt co-exist in the same city for a minute, Sam slips out of his shirt some more, Santana twirls in her Starlight Diner uniform, and, god willing, Becky says the F-word at least a little bit.

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