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“Glee” recap (4.17): Zig-a-zig-ah

Previously on Glee, Will Schuester learned that anchoring your grown-up emotional health onto a 19-year-old teenager is a proposition fraught with regret. Ryder explored the world of online dating and transphobia. Blaine Warbler rejoined the Cheerios in a double-crossing black-ops move intended to bring down Sue Sylvester from the inside. Also, and most importantly, he revealed the top/bottom dynamic between him and Kurt. They switch, OK? They’re switcherooers. Sometimes one is the top and other times the other one is the top and sometimes one is on one side an sometimes one is the other side and there are various shapes they make with their bodies and all of them are based on shared power and pleasure. Jokes that do not fully explore said dynamic, even by the most well-intentioned recapper, will not be tolerated. Also, Santana owned Paula Abdul and Finn flew to New York to exercise his fists on Brody and his authority over Rachel’s decision-making process process.

Everyone at McKinley High has an extra spring in their step this morning. Why? Because Mr. Schue is out of town and Finn is out of town, which means they can get their song and dance on today without having to mediate their teachers’ bullshit. Blaine slides up to Sam’s locker and offers him 50 bucks to help him feed his family because he accidentally caught him stealing macaroni from the cafeteria and so he knows he’s poor again. Except for he’s not poor. Not by a long shot. In fact, he is flush with treasure. Pasta treasure. Sam, it turns out, is a macaroni portrait prodigy. He leads Blaine to the art room to show off his masterpieces: Emma Stone, Leann Rhimes, the guys from Duck Dynasty, even Kurt. Blaine’s eyes go all mooney over noodle-Kurt. He says, “The macaroni really captures him.”

Blaine turns the revelation into this week’s New Directions assignment: Everyone has to open up their closets and haul out their musical guilty pleasures. (Although Unique, awesomely, says she knows no shame.)

Blam breaks out Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” and it is neon heaven. Scrunchies are scrunched, jitterbugs are jittered, short-shorts are shorted, black lights are lighted, Blaine’s hair is Darren Criss-ed. By the end of the shenanigans, everyone’s on board with their guilty pleasure assignment.

Brittany S. Pierce, intuitive feelings genius and all-around lovely human being, decides to humanize Kitty by inviting her to Fondue for Two and calling her out on her horribleness. Kitty and Brittany both confess to loving Bring it On movies, which: No shame in that game, Cheertators. (Lord Tubbington’s guilty pleasure is Scientology, naturally.) Because she’s beautiful and wonderful and possesses the spirit of a unicorn, Brit gets Kitty to whisper her guiltiest guilty pleasure into her ear.

Obviously it is homosexy fantasies about Marley Rose, but when Marley and Tina and Unique accost them the next day, “as loyal fans of Fondue for Two,” Brit and Kitty claim it is the Spice Girls.

Over in the boys locker room, Sam tells Blaine to put on some pants so they can have a heart-to-heart. Sam’s got a secret. A deep, dark secret. A secret that is writhing around inside him like a Santana in a cage. Blaine’s little face. He glances around and goes, “Do you have … feelings for me?” And then: “Ha ha ha! Just kidding! LOL forever! What a joke I just made! Er, what’s your secret?” Sam’s secret is that he is a huge Barry Manilow fan. A Fanilow. He comes out as such in the choir room with quite a speech about the soft rock stylings of Mr. Manilow and then goes full “Copacabana” on everyone. Brittany hops up from her seat and cha-chas the whole gang into back-up singers and dancers. After the performance everyone admits to being a Fanilow, and Blaine is halfway to admitting he’s a Samilow.

The girls meet in the theater to decide which Spice Girls they’re going to be. Brittany’s British accent is hilarious. I don’t think we’ve ever heard her talk as much as she does in this episode. Like in all other episodes combined, I’ve never heard her string so many complete sentences together. Kitty nominates Marley for Posh Spice because she’s “so skinny and makes everyone uncomfortable.” Brittany nominates Unique for Baby Spice, because she wants to turn the accidental Spice racism on its head. Kitty takes Ginger, Brittany takes Sporty, Tina gets relegated to Scary. The girls can’t get their practice on, though, because Tina breaks the news that Jake’s guilty pleasure is going to be a Chris Brown song.

The way Marley storms through the halls shouting and slamming stuff is both terrifying and super hot.

When Glee tackles any kind of social issue, like as soon as it becomes obvious they’re going to dedicate dialogue to a thing that matters, you can actually sense the collective groan of the entire internet. Not because it’s almost always heavy-handed PSAs with this show, but because nine times out of ten, they jump from the high dive and end up belly-flopping all the water out of the pool. We’ve been watching them muck it up so long now, we’ve actually developed an entirely new standard of measuring their success at social commentary. With other shows, we call offensive things offensive. With Glee, if it isn’t so offensive it makes you want to punch your TV in the face, we call it a win.

Jake: Yes, Chris Brown a jerk who beat the hell out of his girlfriend and acts like an asshole every time he steps out of his house or clicks “send” on Twitter, but some of his music is pretty good. And shouldn’t we be able to separate the art from the artist? And anyway, we didn’t stop performing Rihanna music just because she got back together with him. And Whitney and Britney have their issues too.

Girls: Being a victim of physical assault and having substance abuse problems are not the same things as smashing up a girl’s face and then getting a battered woman tattooed onto your body. There’s a difference between needing drug counseling and being remorseless, sociopathic megalomaniac.

It’s a scene that could have been worse? So, I guess it’s a victory?

Just when you thought Blaine Warbler couldn’t get any cuter, he’s in the library reading R.L. Stine graphic novels. Sam finds him there and tells him he’s only as sick as his secrets and that as a leader of the glee club he needs to come clean in front of glee club, you know, to set an example. Blaine looks like he’s going to vomit all over his comic books. Does Sam know?

And then, three musical numbers.

First, Blaine sings a stripped-down version of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” that is raw and beautiful and sad and super awkward because everyone knows he’s singing about Sam due to the fact that he spends the whole song staring longingly at Sam. Afterwards, Tina is like, “… the fuck was that?” Blaine says his secret shame is loving Phil Collins, which is ridiculous, because no one is ashamed of loving Phil Collins, because loving Phil Collins is both natural and correct. Also, not that I don’t think Sam is swoon-worthy and everything, and I get that Blaine is lonely and has felt conflicted about his attraction to his best friend all season, but the song gives a lot more gravitas to this Blam crush than it really deserves. Three weeks ago, Blaine was repeating for the one millionth time his intention to spend the rest of his life with Kurt, so yeah, I’ll buy that he has a crush on Sam (who doesn’t?) but I won’t buy that it’s a gut-wrenching “You’re the only one who really knew me” kind of angsty emotional reckoning. But it was a pretty cover.

Next, Unique and Tina and Marley and Kitty and Brittany bring it so hard with Spice Girls’ “Wannabe.” For one thing, every one of them looks fierce as hell. And they sound amazing. Unique sounds so, so good. Artie’s jaw hits the floor when Kitty makes her entrance like lesbian Twitter’s jaw hit the floor when Marley stormed in (and hit the floor again when she brought that British accent). It’s always good to see Brittany butching it up. Plus, who is this Magenta-haired keyboard player who’s rocking out all of a sudden? More of that girl, please and thank you. Artie screams “BEST THING EVER!!!!” when it’s over, and he is right.

Finally, in the Glee-est move of all time, Jake does Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” – after which Artie informs him that Bobby Brown allegedly got Whitney Houston hooked on crack, which is just the tip of the iceberg, but sure. It’s just: “We totally paid Bobby Brown lots of money for the rights to this song and will now make even more money for him and for us when we release the single on iTunes, but there’s nothing unethical about that as long as we mention that he allegedly wrecked some lives.” It’s Glee at it’s Glee-est. Like Kitty earlier: “What’s scarier than a girl with a penis? ONLY KIDDING!” How about don’t promote the musician or make the joke in the first place, then you won’t have to clean it up with a clumsy lesson or “LOL!” How about instead of doing a gross thing, pausing for a laugh or a round of applause or some royalties, and then explaining why what you did was gross, you just don’t do the gross thing in the first place?

Blah, blah, blah. It’s a really great episode, otherwise, especially the Small Wonder reference with Tina as V.I.C.I., the ten-year-old android maid.

After school, Sam tracks down Blaine in the auditorium and tries for the tenth time to get Blaine to own up to his feelings for him. He’s not doing it to make him uncomfortable or because he wants the ego boost. He’s doing it because he knows that fact of the crush and hiding the crush is causing Blaine a lot of pain, and Blaine is his best friend, and he wants him to be healthy and happy. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but there’s some really nuanced unspoken commentary here. Blaine Warbler is a sought after performer, the student body president, a much crushed upon sexytimes object, and an out-and-proud gay guy. But there’s still so much pop culture gay panic around, and it has caused Blaine to internalize a lot of shame about his crush on Sam, mostly because he’s afraid Sam’s going to freak out about it. But Sam does not freak out about it. Sam is the most best of all bestness. He says he’s known for a while, and he’s cool with it, flattered in fact, and that it doesn’t change their dynamic duo status at all. They hug it out, like superheroes.

Finally, finally, we kick off the New York story with a Kurt-centric plot. While he’s baring his soul to his fellow NYADA thespians in acting class, he voice-over bares his soul to us. He’s got a lot of guilty pleasures: His obsession with marathoning TV shows with powerhouse women – Golden Girls, Murder She Wrote, Moonligting, Desiging Women – and his fully costumed Sweating to the Oldies workout sessions. But his deepest, darkest secret is the boyfriend arm he ordered online one night when he was high on Ambien. His name is Bruce. His embrace is warm and non-judgemental.

Kurt ranks his worry thus: That Santana and Rachel will find out, that Adam will find out, that (God forbid!) Blaine will find out.

The directing and editing in this scene is quite good. During the powerhouse women marathon montage, Kurt keeps getting closer and closer to the camera/his TV, until only the top of his head is visible, like a puppy doing a photobomb. And it’s all cut together with his overwrought acting in his NYADA class. I wonder what it’s like to be Chris Colfer, just getting awesomer and awesomer (handsomer, funnier, smarter) every second of every day simply by nature of existing.

Pajama Time at the Hummelpezberry loft. Kurt is brushing his teeth while Santana is ransacking their beauty products while Rachel is in the shower doing voice exercises. It’s the greatest living situation on earth. Santana is bursting at the seams to tell Rachel that Brody broke up with her because she found out about his hooking ways, but Kurt says if Rachel finds out before her Funny Girl auditions, it will ruin her life. Santana agrees to keep quiet in exchange for one whole row of bathroom shelf space. She also agrees to help Rachel feel better by pranking Kurt. After he’s asleep, they tip-toe into his room with a pot of warm water to try to make him wet the bed, but are rewarded instead by the sight of him wrapped up in Bruce’s arms. Arm. Singular. Bruce’s arm.

Colfer’s delivery is flawless. First, he shrieks, “THE CURTAIN MEANS PRIVACY!” And then he goes, “I thought it was stupid the first time I saw it, too, but I kept thinking about the ad: Are you lonely, do you need companionship. Yes, yes, I need all of those things. It just offers you a nice, protective arm around you while you sleep at night!”

Also flawless is Naya Rivera in those pajamas. From now on, all loft scenes should take place in the middle of the night so we can see Naya Rivera in her pajamas. Santanajamas: It just offers you a warm, sultry memory around you while you sleep at night!

The next day, Kurt surprises Rachel and Santana with their own boyfriend pillows. Or, well, with a boyfriend pillow and a girlfriend pillow. He sewed a boob onto Santana’s and dressed it in flannel and spritzed it with perfume. Because he is the greatest. Rachel’s not really feeling the boyfriend pillow because she knows it’s just a matter of time before she and Brody get back together. Santana can’t take it anymore, so she blurts out the truth about Brody being an escort, and just in case the word “gigolo” wasn’t clear enough, she clarifies it with: “Like Magic Mike. With happy endings. For money.” Rachel storms off when she realizes Kurt also knew the truth about Brody’s secret identity and Santana hilariously calls out after her, “YOU’RE WELCOME!” And then shrugs at Kurt, like, “Can you believe this ungrateful bitch?”

Rachel marches to NYADA with a wad of cash and stuffs it in Brody’s hand and they get into a slap fight about which thing is worse: Not telling your girlfriend you’re a sex worker, or being in love with Finn Hudson? They come to understand that both things are real yucky, so they duet on Radiohead‘s “Creep,” which is true for both of them in this moment, and Lea Michele goes balls-to-the-wall with it. She sounds fantastic. So, anyway, the break up is still on and now Rachel also knows that Finn came to New York to rail on Brody’s face, and rather than being mad as hell that he is encroaching on her autonomy some more, she gets hearts in her eyes about what a romantic thing it was that he did.

Back at the loft, Santana and Kurt are enjoying a Facts of Life marathon with their significant other pillows. Noteworthy are Kurt’s leather pants, which are leather and pants and Kurt is wearing them. Also, Santana has never seen Facts of Life before, but already she is shipping Jo and Blair. She says they really need to stage a Facts of Life musical (which: YES, PLEASE!) and Rachel walks in and says she will play the Blair to Santana’s Jo (which: DOUBLE YES, PLEASE!). Rachel thanks Santana for pushing her to see the truth about Brody and offers her a permanent place in their loft. Santana accepts with a little girlfriend pillow wave.

Oh, and just in case there was any doubt about the height of Kurt’s amazingness, he went ahead and named Rachel’s boyfriend pillow “Colin” after “the non-threatening boy in The Secret Garden.

Rachel chooses Mama Mia for movie night and it’s such a lovely performance and probably Kurt would even have gotten to participate with her and Santana if stupid New New Directions hadn’t butted in and taken over. GET YOUR OWN SHOW, NEW NEW DIRECTIONS. Of course, now we know that the Lima/Bushwick portal is held together with a psychic connection between Kurt and Blaine and this golden hula hoop they pass back and forth in their imaginations, so that’s something. 

I’m never able to get all of the best one-liners into my recap, so here were a couple of my favorites this week:

Sam to Tina when she finds out Mr. Schue is out sick: “Just curious, are you gonna go over to his house and straddle him while he’s passed out and rub some ointment on his chest?”

Brittany to Jake when he insults Britney Spears: “You shut your mouth!”

Kitty: “My pastor says even Jesus took baby steps.” Brittany: “Do you go to the Church of Satan?”

Santana: “I have no ethical problems with homocide.”

Only five weeks left for: Nationals, a Klaine reunion, and, God willing, an acknowledgement from RMurph & Co. that this show is going to focus on New York next season.

Many thanks as always to my screencapping partner Lindsay (@ScenicPenguin)!

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