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“Glee” recap (5.08): Santana Claus is Coming to Town

Previously on Glee, the students and faculty of McKinley High found themselves trapped in an unmoving time vortex, freezing their lives forever in the spring of 2012. In an attempt to add some variety to the tedium, Figgins poisoned the choir room with Muppet gas, which resulted in everyone tripping balls while their puppet doppelgangers took over the school. Mr. Schue said “Nationals” about six hundred thousand times and everyone giggled because they were so sure that’s a thing that’s ever actually going to happen, so to try to regain his show choir’s respect and reestablish his authority, he made an announcement that every teenage girl had to dress slutty or else she was suspended from New Directions. (Marley was suspended.)

Now that we’ve rehashed the plot of this show, forget about that junk. This week’s Glee is an alternate universe re-imagining of what Christmas might have been like for everyone last year – right after “The Break-Up” – because this year: Christmas is never coming. Jane Lynch tells us this while stuffing her Emmy enemies’ stockings full of coal. And also Meryl Streep’s stocking. Sue announces the annual McKinley High School Christmas tree decorating contest, a thing that has never existed (annually, or otherwise) before now. The theme is “green” and Tina threatens to murder every single New Directioner with her bare hands if they don’t succumb to her holiday cheer and help her win that trophy. It’s a lucky angel figurine and she says she’s going to use it to propel New Directions to a Nationals victory, but this episode’s timeline takes place during her descent into VapoRub madness, so you know she’s just going to use that thing to try to make Blaine straight. The other person who really wants the angel figurine is Becky Jackson, who maybe reveals herself as bisexual when she corners Sam and Tina in the hallway wearing a mistletoe hat and demanding that they make out with her. Sue steps in and points out she’s wearing poison sumac on her head, so she stomps off down the hallway in a horny huff. Tina and Sam hint that Sue should stop playing favorites with Becky, and Sue begrudgingly agrees. But not before telling them their Christmas tree – “I’m sure it’s covered with condoms and dental dams and suicide-hotline pamphlets and at-home sex-change kits” – is going to lose the decorating contest on account of she’s the judge.

Tina shoots laser beams out of her eyeballs, killing two innocent passerby and knocking out a whole wall of lockers.

Tina and Sam forage in the forest and come away with antlers and pine cones and bird nests and beaver pelts and other nature things, all of which they use to trim the tree while singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Becky, on the other hand, decorates her “green” tree with radioactive garbage. Like literal glowing garbage. So Sue has no choice but to give the lucky angel to New Directions, especially after Sam presents her with like a little forest hamster or something wearing a Santa hat. Even Sue’s heart cannot withstand that level of adorableness.

Buuuuut it wouldn’t be an episode of Glee without someone walking “a dangerously fine line between being really sweet and horribly condescending,” so Tina and Sam agree to give the lucky angel to Becky and also to let her play the baby Jesus in their live-action nativity scene. Yeah. I don’t know. On the one hand, you’d hope your Messiah would hate xylophones as much as Becky Jackson, but on the other hand: yeeesh.

Yes, the other Lima plotline is Will and Beiste’s quest to cast a Virgin Mary for their nativity scene. Unique wants the role because Mary is arguably the most important woman in history, and Unique would one day like to be a close second. Tina wants the role because Tina wants ALL THE THINGS. And Marley – whose hats are proudly on display on her beautiful head practically the whole time in this flashback episode – wants the role because she is an actual virgin. Kitty, however, does not want the role because she is a Christian and she knows what it means to have the Holy Spirit in her heart and nothing makes a woman grosser to God than when she has sex. Kitty says she’s more like a Mary Magdalene than a Virgin Mary, and forgive me, but that’s a way better role.

 

Unique and Tina and Marley perform “Mary’s Boy Child” and sound awesome even though they look kind of weird. Did anyone else notice how jacked the choreography was in this episode? Is it an editing blunder or is it really just that hackey? When Chris Colfer is doing his hips like he does in this episode and Santana is dressed like she’s dressed and all I can think about is the weird choreography, something’s wrong. Anyway, Kitty storms out after their performance, so the New Directions huddle up and figure out how they can make Kitty take the role so she can feel worthy of whatever reclaimed virgin True Love Waits horseshit. It’s a lame thing, but I don’t care because it results in “the most sacrilegious and profane horror show I have ever seen,” and I mean that in the best possible way

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Every time I write a Glee recap, I know I’m going to piss of some faction of fandom, but this week I think I may be buying my ticket to actual hell, because “Love Child” is one of my favorite performances of all time. OK, because it’s Tina and Marley and Unique all sequined up like The Supremes and a black, transgender teenager is pregnant with our Lord and Savior, singing about “Love child, never meant to be! Love child, born in poverty!” And then Unique gives birth to the Baby Jesus and he’s black and they toss the doll around and I only wish Jerry Falwell could be alive to see this, I really do. You know Pat Robertson’s noggin just exploded all over the place. James Dobson’s blood pressure rose so high his brain melted out of his ears. Unique sounds amazing, as per. Her voice is heaven.

Well, Kitty is horrified and so she agrees to be the Virgin Mary in the nativity.

New Directions performs “Away in a Manger” on school property, even though in real life, they’d be leading the charge to keep that wall of separation between church and state firmly in place. It’s pretty. It’s a pretty arrangement. But the camera keeps zooming in on baby Becky-Jesus and it makes me feel weird. My favorite part of this song is when the cows wake up baby Jesus with their incessant moo-ing but he doesn’t even cry about it because he’s Jesus.

Santana is up in NYC for a visit because she and Brittany broke up and she can’t go back to Lima because of how her heart is broken and she can’t stay in Louisville because of how she doesn’t even go there, so she rides into town with a bunch of prezzies in tow. Most of them are for her, of course, but she brought some really thoughtful things for Kurt and Rachel, too. For example: the deluxe bachelor’s package at Dildo Island and a “styling head” so Kurt can relive all of his Jeffery Dahmer fantasies in the privacy of his own home. When Rachel finds Santana in her loft when she gets home, she invites Santana and Kurt to join her in spreading holiday cheer and advancing their careers by becoming elves at the Midtown Mall. It’s where all the Broadway stars bring their kids, apparently.

Unfortunately, Midtown Mall Santa is a real dick. He shows up drunk and leaves Kurt and Santana and Rachel alone to deal with the mob of angry kids. They decide to wow those little assholes with a sugar-coated performance of “Here Comes Santa Claus” but it only pisses them off even more. Santana bails and heads home for a nice, hot bubble bath, but Rachel calls her in tears and begs her to come back and play Mrs. Claus.

When Rachel announces to the rioters that Mrs. Clause has arrived, they boo and hiss – and then they realize Mrs. Claus looks like Naya Rivera and they erupt into cheers and applause and whooping and lady-boners. And of course, Santana taking Christmas present requests is the greatest holiday thing Glee has ever done: “That sounds a little molest-y; I didn’t start playing doctor until I was nine.” “Whoa, stop right there. You look a little Jewish. Right? Rachel?” “Why don’t we just get you an iPad; you can’t even get porn on whatever you just asked me for.” The best part is when a little blonde-haired girl hops into her lap and Santana goes, “You looks just like a young Brittany S. Pierce. Doesn’t she?” And then she starts explaining true love and lesbianism and also proves once again that she’s kind of delusional about who broke up with whom in their whole horrible split.

The three of them have just about had it when a half-naked Santa Claus comes riding down the escalator to their rescue. He is Detective Darren Wilden from Pretty Little Liars, and if you don’t watch PLL, all you need to know is he made hookers out of moms on that show, wore a Queen of Hearts mask over a mask of a dead girl’s face over his own face while trying to throw a teenage girl from a train, burned down a lodge with five teenage girls inside, and was then run over by a car and stabbed in the chest and shot in the face and now here he is. Kurt Hummel, for one, does not care about Detective Wilden’s past. He invites Santa over to the Hummelpezberry loft for some tree trimming and some egg nog and possibly some lap dancing. Santa is bisexual. Santa accepts the invitation.

I won’t drag this out as long as the show did. Clearly, Santa comes to the Hummelpezberry loft with the sole intention of robbing them, but he gets them blasted on helium – they even sing “The Chipmunk Song,” which I can’t even talk about – and he roofies their eggnog and he makes out with Kurt and then he steals their shit. I know a lot of people were happy to see Kurt displaying a sex drive for a minute, but don’t you think it’s dumb as mayonnaise for the writers to let him rub his ass all over Santa’s dick when most days he only barely gets to hug his fiance like a brother? Also, he was roofied and tied-up on the bed, and even though the ropes were tinsel, that doesn’t make it any less awful. Glee thinks sexual assault imagery is the funniest damn thing. Also, Glee made me type the words “rub his ass on Santa’s dick,” so.

ANYWAY. Rachel and Santana hold hands for a minute, which is real fine with me, and then they all get fancy and perform “Away in a Manger” in the Bergdorf-Goodman window display. God, they’re so pretty. All I want for Christmas is for the ground to open up and swallow Lima whole.

Happy holidays, Gleeks! I’ll see you in February!

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