TV

“Glee” recap (5.12): It’s Brittana, Bitch

Here’s what you missed on Glee: New Directions didn’t win Nationals so Sue promised to shut down glee club, but for real this time. No, seriously. For real. For real, you guys.

One of the weirdest things about human beings is we’re all so very caught up in our own narcissistic deal that is blows our mind grapes wide open when the world keeps on spinning in our absence. And so it is that Rachel and Mercedes are completely bamboozled that there’s no red carpet or confetti or even just a parking lot parade to mark their return to McKinley for the newest last time that Sue has finally destroyed New Directions for now. Their main thing, though, is that they want the other one to admit to being the silver medalist in the Diva Olympics. First leg of the competition: Rachel’s front-and-center chair in the choir room, which Rachel snags, which prompts Mercedes to for real say: “Excuse me while I take my place at the back of the bus.”

Will thanks everyone for wading into the vortex of unmovable time to say goodbye to glee club, and your level of enjoyment of this episode is going to be in direct proportion to the thump your heart did (or didn’t do) when you saw Quinn and Puck and Brittany (sitting next to Santana!) back in the choir room. My heart did a triple-thump.

This week’s assignment is to re-sing songs, and here to kick things off is April Rhodes, pulling a trolley full of liquor behind her and prepping for “Raise Your Glass.” Blaine reminds her that it was the Warblers who did that one, but she’s not fussed. Her glass is already raised.

Puck wanders the hallways in his uniform, looking more like a 31-year-old man than ever, voicing-over about how the past is the past is the past – and then he spots Quinn at the end of the hall and realizes the past is giving him a present. A Dianna Agron-shaped present. Truly, the best shape of any present. He asks her out to Breadstix, but they’re interrupted by Nate Archibald who has apparently escaped from Dan “Lonely Boy” Humprhey’s NSA-caliber surveillance tactics by joining the Witness Protection Program and enrolling in Yale with the name Biff McIntosh, heir to the McIntosh apple fortune. Jesus, that’s the most Nate Archibald cover story I have ever heard in my life. Whatever, though; the eyebrows don’t lie. It’s him. And he knows less about Quinn’s past than she knows about his.

Brittany is solving complex quantitative algorithms in an empty classroom when Santana busts in and demands to know what she’s doing. The answer is math. Always math. And not in that cool Adventure Time way where “math” is a coded swear word. At MIT, Brittany spends all her time hooked up to various neurological tracking devices proving theorems.

Brittany misses: scissoring with Santana, and hanging with Lord Tubbington, so Santana suggests a little Unholy Trinity action to realign her brain priorities. They redo “Toxic” half in the choir room and half in a “Cell Block Tango” fever dream. Biff spends the whole time texting, which causes Puck and me and you to give him such a side-eye. Not because he’s being a bad boyfriend, necessarily, but because his hormones are obviously busted.

After the dance, Brittany says she was 3/16th of a beat off of the choreography and so probably she should just go back to whatever Pythagorean Theorem thing.

But first! Fondue For Two! Britt hosts Mercedes and Rachel on her world famous talk show, asking such no-bullshit questions as: “Rachel, would you agree it’s irresponsible to leave New York for an entire week for no other reason than the glee club has been cancelled?” And: “Mercedes, how would you respond to the rumors that you’re a really good dancer but you hid that fact the entire time you were in glee club so Mr. Schue would allow you to quote park and bark?” Plus a smash cut of her cats making out. I whimpered out loud with how much I missed Brittany S. Pierce on my television. She feels like when Daylight Savings Time comes and you’d forgotten the sun didn’t always set at noon.

Instead of enjoying a quiet date at Breadstix, Biff has invited all of Quinn’s friends to tell the many tales of her erratic existence. He’s like, “Would you say the writers of this show had literally zero ideas about what to do with her character?” But before anyone can answer that, Quinn sends him to the car for her purse and tells everyone to lock it down because this week she’s twisting herself into the shape of Snow White in the hopes that Biff will fill the hole in her heart that she also tried to plug up with Finn, Puck, Sam, and Boner Jesus.

Rachel and Mercedes’ last, tenth, Diva-off will feature Kurt and also another round of “Defying Gravity.” Kurt and Rachel and Mercedes sound great, but there’s a weird editing thing where their lips don’t synch with the music and sometimes it seems like Chris Colfer’s voice is coming out of Lea Michele’s mouth. After it’s over, April is like, “I mean, awesome, but I’d like to do that song some time as a duet with Rachel’s mom. Something tells me we’d fucking crush that shit.”

Also, P.S., Kurt is dressed like Charlie Brown.

Out in the quad, Brittany is masterminding a game of human chess when Santana cozies up to her and asks if she wants to do some more singin’ and dancin’. But Brittany cannot. She is a trigonometric robot now. Arithmetic is her life force.

One thing April Rhodes has always said is the only thing this country needs more of is teen marriage, so she presents Kurt and Blaine with some booze as a gift for their adolescent nuptials. Because the forces of physics that dictate the crawl of time in Lima, OH also have created an impenetrable force-field around Kurt and Blaine, individually, they do not speak to or touch each other; rather, they communicate through the conduit of April Rhodes, noting that they will begin planning their wedding later this year once the White Witch is defeated and eternal winter ends and Blaine moves to New York, where he can begin the aging process like a normal human.

Before the Diva-Off vote, Santana decides to make like old times and hijack glee club for an intervention. She recruits Mike Chang to perform “Valerie” with her. I do not sing or dance, but I very nearly jumped through the TV to join in on Santana’s shenanigans, so you know Brittany wasn’t going to be able to keep her seat very long. They sing, they swerve, they canoodle, they rain heaven down on this parched earth. Puck also wants to do an intervention, for Quinn. He takes it to the auditorium and performs “Keep Holding On.” The whole group joins in on the nostalgia, even breaking out choreography from seasons past. Quin cries and cries. Puck’s like, “It’s OK, girl. I just wanted you to remember I know who you are.” And she’s like, “No, it’s not that. I just can’t believe I came all the way back here to sit still and do nothing while the rest of y’all get to perform. Nothing ever changes. I guess I’ll go get hit by another car!”

My beagle loves to bay. Like, she loves the way it feels in her throat. She doesn’t do it all the time, but when she does it just one time, she can’t stop. It’s like a chain reaction of horrible (but also weirdly lovable?) noise that goes on for hours. That’s how it is when Santana starts dropping truth bombs. Will’s rapping makes ears bleed. Boom! Brittany’s losing her soul to equations. Boom! So of course she’s gotta get in on this Rachel/Mercedes thing by interrupting yet another almost-vote to rehash her grievances with Rachel re: Funny Girl. She fails to mention that their last two altercations involved them: 1) singing the stalker anthem to each other, and 2) discussing Santana’s panty drawer at length. For Brittany’s sake, I guess, she omits those things. Also, you know, that wedding thing with Quinn.

Well, you know how this ends: Rachel and Mercedes crying and hugging it out in the bathroom. (A candle for Faberry-ites who thought for sure when that bathroom door opened that it was going to be Quinn.)

The glee club votes Rachel and Mercedes co-Divas, which pleases them greatly. No reaction from Kurt who also deserves a slice of that pie.

So while all of this is going on, April and Will are meeting with Sue in secret to remind her that April bought the auditorium and therefore gets to decide what goes on in the auditorium and therefore New Directions can sing in there whenever they want and therefore they are not disbanded. Which: Forgive me for not grasping the specifics of each new time this emergency happens, but this time it’s literally because glee club doesn’t have a place to practice? They can’t use, I don’t know, the parking lot? The hallway? The gym? The football field? Sue does some research and finds out April’s assets are frozen and just last week Will used up the two million dollar stockpile of money she originally granted the glee club, due to the elaborate sets and costumes he requires the students to wear when performing for him. He’s so mad at April, like, “I cannot believe you lied to me about how you would give me more millions of dollars to mismanage!”

To make up for not being able to continue to bankroll Will’s bullshit, April invites Holly Holiday to come back to glee club for one last hurrah. Holly Holiday doesn’t give a goop about your backwards-looking asses; she’s going to perform “Happy” because she can. And she does. And so there.

Puck visits Finn’s retired jersey in the locker room, where Quinn finds him and says they can’t beat themselves up about deceiving him about the anatomical specifics of making a baby. Rachel was his soul mate anyway. Puck wants to know if Quinn’s figured out who her soul mate is, and she figures out real quick that it’s not Biff. She tells him her deal, about Beth and the pink hair and the tattoo and all that, and he stomps around about old apple money for ten minutes until Quinn twists off his nose and Puck tosses him in the garbage. Puck thinks he’ll be going back to the Air Force now, unless she can think of a reason for him to stay. She can, and the reason is smooches.

Brittany and Santana are chowing down on some churros in the choir room. Santana’s like, “Look, you remember when Sam put all those Cheerios on the floor and made you eat your way to the auditorium that time? MIT is doing that to you, but with numbers instead of cereal. You should be in the world doing what you love: dancing, going to concerts, and I’m going to say ‘dating’ because that makes it sound like I’m breezy sitting here beside you.” Brittany can’t help herself anymore. Santana’s body wakes up her body, she says so herself; then, she caresses Santana’s cheek and kisses her so good. Santana is halfway to kissing back when she remembers … I don’t know what, honestly. She broke her own goddamn heart talking about energy exchanges with randos in the library. Brittany pulls back, stands up, says, “You break stuff so you don’t get broken. I get it, I really do. Your girlfriend, she’s probably pretty cool. I’ll bet she sways in the background like a champ. But in terms of math, when you want to stop feeling things at a two and start feeling things at an eleven again, you know where to find me.”

And then Glee finally explains what the fuck has been going on all these years. Will takes New Directions to the auditorium to show them the plaques of Finn and Lillian Adler that he hanged in there. He says they’ll live on here forever. And up in the rafters, Holly Holiday and April Rhodes drink wine out of water bottles and talk about what they can do to save the glee club this time. And that’s when you realize that New Directions’ real problem all these years is that April and Holly are their guardian angels. Their drunk-ass, cahootin’ tootin’ guardian angels. They are the ones who have been petitioning the gods of luck and logic and time on behalf of these kids. They miss half their meetings with the deities and show up trousered to the rest of them. It makes sense now. Finally. New Directions are guided by the drunken whims of April Rhodes and Holly Holiday.

Next week: Brittany buys Santana one hundred thousand lesbian flowers and Blaine is appointed President of the United States of America upon graduating from high school.

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

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button