Archive

“Glee” Episode 211 Recap: It’s a Killer, Thriller Mash-up

Glee. Oh, Glee. These long months without you, and now tonight you come back and make me watch football. Not just McKinley High football, which at least is totally short and unrealistic, but real life football, because I was afraid I’d miss the beginning of Glee so I tuned into the Super Bowl’s last ten minutes.

It’s the most football I’ve ever seen in my life. And I had no idea they’d blah blah blah for so long when it was over.

I believe folkpants said it best on Twitter: “Too much football. Not enough Kurt.” To which I’d add, not enough Santana.

Our sweet unrealistic little show opens with the much-leaked Cheerios routine to Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” with flaming breast cones, fiery batons, stunt bike riding and blue wigs.

Which Sue finds boring. Not even getting the Cheerios to shove chicken cutlets in their bras, or slap each other with them, amuses her anymore.

Quinn tells her that her problem is she’s got to find a way to top herself, and Sue nods approvingly. “Q,” she says, “I think you may have hit on something.”

I find it awesome that she calls Quinn “Q.” I keep thinking Quinn will be able to know all and see all, like Q on Star Trek.

Then there’s football and Karofsky is queer-baiting Finn, who queer-baits him back (“Funny how you’re always calling everybody gay but I never see you with a girlfriend”). Then Karofsky lets the opposing team do something that I didn’t understand, because I know nothing about football. So I’ll let them summarize what happened in their own words:

Coach Beiste: What the hell happened? Finn, you’re the captain! TALK!

Finn: Karofsky sucks, that’s what happened!

Karofsky: That’s crap! Hudson’s a fricking girl and couldn’t take a joke about his precious Glee Club.

Thanks for clearing that up, guys.

Coach Beiste throws them all out of the locker room, and Finn storms into the shower. Then we cut to Sue, writing in her diary that the raccoon hormones her new doctor gave her may be screwing her up, because she just doesn’t feel anything anymore. Even getting a near-life-sized tattoo of herself on her own back didn’t help.

So of course, she gets a cannon. The kind that blows not confetti, but a human cannonball. It has, the guy who sells it to her says, a 70 percent chance of catastrophic failure.

“Which is a 30 percent chance of catastrophic success,” Sue says. “I’ll take it.”

Then there’s an incredibly hard-to-watch scene of Karofsky and his gang of goons slushying Artie. It’s not that we haven’t seen Artie slushied before, or worse; we have. It’s that those were all in the realm of “cartoon violence,” like Kurt handing Finn his designer jacket before getting tossed in the dumpster last season. This was set up specifically as the football players surrounding a kid in a wheelchair and ceremoniously dousing him in blood-red slushy as an act of harassment. It was creepy.

Coach Beiste and Mr. Schu get together and try to figure out how to fix the bitter war between the two camps on the football team. The solution? To force the non-glee members of the football team to join the Glee Club for one week.

However, the goon squad, led by Karofsky, strolls in to meet Coach Beiste in the choir room just as the club sees what they did to Artie. Finn says, “This ends now,” and starts to act all angry and macho, and a fight’s about to break out when Beiste comes in and Mr. Shu announces that the guys are joining Glee Club.

All hell breaks loose, with some objecting to letting the guy who forced Kurt to transfer join the club, but Rachel puts it best: “There is no way I’m sharing the choir room with a known homophobe.”

Mr. Shu says Karofsky bullies out of ignorance (he says that right in front of him, which I think was totally uncool but very Mr. Schu-esque), and that he’ll learn something from being in the Glee Club.

Azimio Adams (James Earl) objects to being forced to sing show tunes, “the music of my oppressor.”

Finn says, “Do you even have any idea what we do in here?”

No, Mr. Schu says; they don’t. So he invites Rachel and Puck to sing “Need You Now,” a country song by an all-white country group called Lady Antebellum. So the “lesson” for Azimio seems misplaced, but what we do see is Finn freaking out at Puck and Rachel singing a duet, and Sam looking thoughtful.

“The girl with the Mohawk had a really nice voice,” Azimio shouts, and Puck rips off his guitar and charges him. Mr. Shu and Coach Beiste try to break it up, Rachel looks like she’s going to jump into the fray, but when the scene ends, chaos is raging in the choir room.

After things quiet down, Puck proposes that he and Finn bury the hatchet — the one where Puck got his girlfriend pregnant and then made out with his other girlfriend. He tells Finn they have to band together again to beat down the goons on the football team, and make the “glee studs” cool and earn them respect.

Finn, who has firmly rejected Rachel several times now, asks Puck why he sang the duet with her. We see a flashback to Rachel asking Puck to do the duet with her to make Finn jealous (hello, it worked), but Puck swears nothing like that will ever happen again. I believe him, don’t you?

So, Finn and Puck are together once more, and the greatest slash pairing name of all time rides again. You know, the one we can’t use on this site.

Meanwhile, Sue gets the Cheerios together out on the field, and informs Brittany she’ll be the sacrificial lamb – er, lucky athlete- to do the human cannonball stunt. Brittany’s lip quivers, and she says she doesn’t want to die, “At least not before One Tree Hill is canceled.”

Sue agrees to do one more safety test, and the test dummy falls into several pieces on the field. Brittany picks up the head, with its blonde wig, a look of horror on her face.

“Don’t worry,” Quinn tells her firmly. “I’ll talk to Mr. Schu and take care of this.”

Principal Figgins tells Sue she’s out of line, and “cannot perform a stunt that dangerous. Our insurance premium is through the roof as it is!”

“You’re not going to take this away from me,” Sue snarls. “This level of risk and danger makes me feel alive again.”

“But the risk and danger isn’t to you,” Figgins says.

“That’s the best part!” Sue answers.

He tells her she can’t use the cannon without written consent from the student, and Sue goes on a massive rampage, destroying desks, pushing the students, even trashing the locker room in front of a shocked Coach Beiste while apocalyptic music plays in the background. Awesome.

Then she reschedules the cheerleading regional to the same night as the football championship game, leaving the team without cheerleaders or a halftime show.

But it’s okay, because Mr. Shu is offering the Glee Club to do the halftime show – including the football goons.

Mr. Schu tells the Cheerios who are in glee they’ll have to choose between cheerleading and performing at the game. The song, he announces, will be a mash-up of “Thriller” and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ “Heads Will Roll.”

“New Directions, Titans,” says Coach Beiste. “We’re goin’ to zombie camp.”

The two groups get together in the auditorium to practice learning to dance like zombies. Mr. Schu pulls Karofsky aside, and tells him he’s really talented, and that if he took the energy he puts into bullying people into singing and dancing, he could be great.

And Karofsky’s all shucks, ma’am, it weren’t nothin’, and looks sensitive and pleased, and I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to like him or forgive him yet. He made Kurt fear for his life. And now all it takes is one compliment on his sense of rhythm and he’s all sweet and shy? No. Just no.

But props to Max Adler, who is incredible in this role.

So Karofsky goes up to Finn, who tells him to leave him alone, “It’s hard enough not kicking you in the nuts every time I see you.”

Karofsky ignores it, and shyly suggests they do a “warm up” number before the big one, because he needs the practice. And Finn, of course, says he “couldn’t agree more.”

Later, in the girls’ rest room, Brittany, Santana and Quinn are washing off their zombie makeup.

“Zombie camp is funner than I expected,” Brittany says. “The Glee Club together with the football team, it’s like a double rainbow. A zombie double rainbow.”

Quinn says she doesn’t know what to do, whether to go to the cheerleading competition or the halftime show with Glee Club; she says she’s torn.

“I’m not,” says Santana.

“I’m Brittany,” says Brittany.

Sue appears, and says she couldn’t help but overhear their conversation while she was in the stall, thanks to “the Swiss timepiece regularity and utter silence of my 2 PM ninja poops.” I really could have lived without that line. She tells the girls they have to choose, in writing, between Glee Club and the Cheerios.

Then she hands Brittany a note, in crayon, from the human cannon, saying how much it misses her.

“Coach, that cannon is going to get Brittany killed,” Quinn objects. “Is that really worth it, just to win a stupid national championship?”

Apparently, it is. And, somewhat unexpectedly and without Santana having one line of dialogue, they choose the Cheerios.

Finn goes ballistic on Quinn in the hallway, and Sam comes to her defense, and they get into a fight, which Mr. Schu breaks up. This episode is exhausting me.

The guys of the Glee-with-football Club perform the Zombies‘ “She’s Not There” (which I always thought was called “No One Told Me About Her,” glad I looked it up) — I guess this was the “warm-up number” Karofsky pitched to Finn.

And then the hockey team slushies the football team for “making dancing fools of yourself.” “Holy crap,” one “puckhead” says, “They turned Karofsky gay!”

Karofsky apparently can’t handle a slushying (although we really know what he couldn’t handle), and he and the goons walk out of the Glee Club; Coach Beiste accordingly throws them off the football team.

Insert gratuitous Warbler’s song number here: “Bills Bills Bills” by Destiny’s Child. I think everyone liked it, given that “Darren Criss,” “Warblers,” and “Destiny’s Child” were all trending on Twitter all night. But listen, don’t hate me, and above all don’t think I hate Glee, or Blaine, or Klaine, because I love Glee and if things don’t work out between Kurt and Blaine I’m going to be really pissed. But I thought it was kind of lame.

Blaine felt differently; he was incredibly pumped when they finished singing, and said this would be one of their numbers at Regionals. I hope it’s like last year, when every other song the New Directions kids sang was supposed to be a number for Regionals, but that’s the last we ever heard of the song.

Kurt and Blaine adorably meet Rachel and Mercedes for coffee, and Kurt’s appalled to find out what’s being going on at McKinley. “Why hasn’t Finn told me anything about this?” Kurt says. “We live together. I mean, I bring him warm milk every night just in the hopes we’ll have a little lady chat.”

“Warm milk? Really?” Blaine says, a very strange look on his face.

Kurt assures him that it’s delicious, but, ummm, Kurt, sweetie? I don’t think that’s why Blaine looked like that.

Rachel says that it’s Finn’s way to take on the burdens of the group, and sighs that if the two of them were still together, she could make him feel a lot better.

“Let it go, Rachel,” Kurt says. He should know.

Blaine listens to the football team woes, and points out that high school rules only require the Titans to have four more players. And he promises that he and Kurt will be there to cheer them on if they work it out.

Kurt agrees enthusiastically. “We love football. Well, Blaine loves football. I love scarves.” Oh, Kurt. I love you.

So of course, the glee girls decide they’re going to join the football team. Tina, Rachel and Mercedes promise to avoid getting hurt by lying down, but Lauren (my new favorite character) sneers, “Not me. I’m gonna bring the pain.” She reminds them she’s the state champion in Roman-Greco wrestling, and has three offers from professional wrestling teams for after she graduates. Go, Lauren!

In the next scene, Sue is pressuring Brittany to agree to let her shoot her out of a cannon. “I don’t want to die,” Brittany says. Sue is unmoved, and convinces her to sign the consent form by telling her the cannon’s two little baby cannons will go hungry if she doesn’t agree.

Brittany reluctantly takes the consent form from Sue. “How many m’s in the letter ‘r'” she asks.

“Make an ‘X,'” Sue responds.

On the football field, Karofsky and his gang saunter up to Finn. Finn tells Karofsky it’s not too late, but he refuses to play. Then the guys catch sight of the glee girls suited up and coming onto the field.

“What are they doing?” asks Azimio in disbelief.

“What you don’t have the balls to do,” Finn answers. And he goes to greet his new teammates, who are instructed to lie down on the field to avoid getting hurt. I don’t think any of them has ever looked hotter. TINA!

The Titans are getting slammed in the first half, when one of the opposing team knocks Finn down (I’m sure there’s some technical term for what he did, but I have no idea what it is), and Tina suddenly jumps up, grabs the ball, and runs. She’s tackled and for a minute it looks like she’s really hurt — and we see Karofsky in the stands, looking stricken. Mike Chang runs over in best boyfriend fashion, and it turns out she’s fine.

And Kurt is there, cheering them on, but I don’t see Blaine anywhere — I don’t see Burt, either, just Finn’s mom. Weird.

Rachel — who looks really, really cute in her football uniform; butch becomes her — tells Finn the only way they can come back from behind is to kick ass in the halftime show. Which gives Finn an idea. He tells Sam to take over as quarterback for the rest of the half, and tells Puck to figure out a way to get the rest of the football team, including Karofsky, to participate in the halftime performance.

“Where are you going?” asks Rachel.

“Can’t have a halftime show without cheerleaders,” he says.

Brittany, Santana and Quinn are looking at the cannon while waiting to get on the bus to the cheerleading competition. “I’m going to die,” Brittany says.

“It’ll be worth it,” Santana tells her consolingly. One of the few words Santana utters in the entire episode, and it’s to tell Brittany to suck up death? You’re killin’ me, Glee writers.

Finn runs up to the three of them and asks them to come perform at halftime. “You joined Cheerios to be popular; you joined Glee Club because you loved it. Sue doesn’t care about you guys. She’s fine killing Brittany. Tell me honestly, if you didn’t think it would hurt your reputation, which would you choose?”

The three of them decide to say screw Sue, and leave with Finn. Sue tries to stop them, saying, “You’re my stars. If you leave, I have no performance.”

“Sucks for you,” Brittany says as they go.

Puck finds Karofsky, Azimio, and the guys in the locker room, and lays into them. He gives what I think was the best line of the show: “You’re so afraid of being called losers, or geeks, or gay, that you settle for being nothing.”

He tells them that if they perform in the halftime show, Beiste will let them back on the team for the second half. The guys are in — except Karofsky, who tries to convince Azimio not to go, either. “I really want to win this game,” Azimio tells him. “It means so much to my dad.” Oh, great, Glee, make me feel sorry for all the bad guys. Now you’re just pissing me off.

They leave Karofsky behind, with a miserable look on his face.

The “Thriller/Heads Will Roll” mash-up is fantastic, the dancing and costumes are great, but I really can’t understand the lighting — it’s dark, and not in an artistic way. It’s just dark.

Karofsky’s watching from the stands, but he can’t resist the boogie, and runs down on the field and joins the dancers.

Okay, now I see Blaine is with Kurt in the stands. I feel better.

Everyone’s hugging Karofsky. I wonder how Kurt feels about that?

Coach Beiste tells the team to keep their zombie makeup and costumes on, because they might freak out the guys on the other team.

The Titans relegate the girls to cheering on the sidelines — even Lauren — and start smashing up the other team. “One of those zombies bit me!” one guy complains.

And of course, now the Titans are coming back, but they only have 10 seconds left. Finn comes up with the idea to freak out the other team by having the Titans chant, “Brains! Brains!” and then the crowd joins in, and then the sound fades out and is replaced by music, and I can tell from how happy everyone is that the Titans won.

Karofsky’s glowing, Finn smiles at him, and then smiles at Quinn.

Sue’s being interviewed by Katie Couric for her “Loser of the Year” feature. She beat out, says Couric, a long list of losers, including the economy, the housing market, Tiger Woods, Mel Gibson, Dina Lohan, Wall Street, the Dallas Cowboys, 9 percent unemployment, Brett Favre‘s cell phone, and “Sparky Lohan, who is Dina Lohan’s dog and apparently also a loser.”

“I hate you, Diane Sawyer,” sneers Sue. But it’s clear she’s crushed, especially when Couric tells her that the Glee Club will be getting her budget for the rest of the year.

Karofsky comes up to Finn in the halls at McKinley, and says, “Congrats on the MVP!”

“It was a team effort,” Finn says, Finnishly. Then he tells Karofsky that he can’t join the Glee Club if he doesn’t apologize to Kurt, and offers to take him over to Dalton so he can do that.

Karofsky freaks out, and says he has no intention of joining Glee Club, where they can all “sit around singing hippie peace songs together.”

Karofsky stomps off, and Finn sees that Quinn is standing behind him. She tells him he was amazing this week, “on the field and off. You reminded me of why I loved you.” Then she kisses him. Finn watches her walk away, stunned.

Welcome back, Glee. Now, more gay next week, okay? Brittana, Klaine, you know what I’m saying.

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

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button