This season is moving ever closer to the end. Mercifully.
0:00–This episode was written by Ryan Murphy, who’s been wildly up and down this season.
0:40–I’ve already had this discussion in a previous post, but I wish that the writers had a clue about Jesse. They know Jonathan Groff can sing (can he ever), but every time he comes on the show he feels more and more like the guest star who moved in without asking anyone first.
0:43–…is Naya Rivera wearing clothes?
1:18–This was a point of contention with me when Cory Monteith was still singing all the time. They’ve really backed off on making him a main character this season. He doesn’t really get his own plots anymore: he’s just a prop for Rachel/Kurt/Quinn plots.
2:00–Thinking like that is why the average baseball fan’s understanding of the sport is stuck in about 1950.
2:11–Lactating with rage, horny with grief. Look, a joke-making formula!
2:23–Howard Bamboo! He’s alive!
4:31–And Becky Jackson becomes the first person who ever asked to be in the glee club and got turned away.
4:48–Will has historically not had a clue about Sue’s relationship with Becky, dating all the way back to Wheels. Why start now?
4:58–Everyone knew someone was supposed to die in this episode. My money was on a longshot, Quinn’s dad. Jean Sylvester was probably as good a choice as any.
6:12–Yeah, we miss the baby fat. Made her look healthy.
6:20–Good God, they resisted the temptation to throw another slushie at her while signing up. Is this self-restraint or an oversight?
6:30–Yes you do.
7:07–I shouldn’t say this publicly, but my intended wardrobe for when I’m teaching is going to be a lot like Will’s. With better vests, but still…vests.
7:47–If all the Type A people in the world were to have an election to choose a king for themselves (man, there are a lot of potential jokes here), I think my dad would have a decent shot at winning. That’s why I’m less impressed by the boxes with labels with neatly folded clothes inside than Will is, I think. His dad burned down their house when Will was a cub.
8:04–Sentimentality! On this show? Never!
9:29–Every now and then, Glee makes someone relatable who had previously not been: Quinn in Preggers, Sue in Wheels, Santana in Sectionals or Sexy, depending on where you think that process started with her. But where Sue differs from Quinn and Santana is that they have to keep making Sue the villain. Quinn was never meant to be purely antagonistic for long. Controlling and ambitious like Caesar, but never purely antagonistic. Santana is harder to define, but the show decided to have her come out, and the insecurities she has about her sexuality have made her incredibly relatable–more so, perhaps, than Kurt.
9:40–
Ready photon torpedoes, Number One.
10:15–I’m starting understand why liberal humanists prefer the showing of themes rather than the telling. Telling people what the theme in every episode is just so annoying…
10:37–Jesse: making sense, looking heartless. Sigh.
12:09–Poor UCLA.
12:21–From here until about 24:40, the only things happening are the four audition pieces. And this calls to attention a serious issue with this episode of Glee. Most episodes of Glee are somewhere between 42:30 and 44:30 in length. This one clocks in at 43:59. But twelve of those minutes are mostly singing. Offhand, that doesn’t seem unusual for Glee either. The problem lies in the fact that all the musical performances but one in this episode are smushed into one section, and quite frankly, we didn’t really need to hear any of them. None of them drove the plot. It was just an iTunes section that also covered up the lack of material. There’s enough material here for about half an hour. I’m starting to understand why they usually have three subplots per episode: it’s unwieldy and clumsy when they do it, but at least it gives them 42:30-44:30 per episode.
13:40–Nameless bass kid with a bad haircut is one of my favorite characters on the show.
14:18–Kitty!
14:26–One of my favorite movies is the 2006 British import The History Boys, based on Alan Bennett’s play of the same name. I bring this up because there’s a line where the school’s sour headmaster (played by Clive Merrison) says in this awful voice, “Don’t give me that Cardinal Wolsey shit!” That’s the voice I wish I could use whenever someone talks about the “emotional truth” of a song.
14:41–I actually liked that Santana, Kurt, Mercedes, and Rachel went with artists that they had previously had some experience singing. Santana now has two Amy Winehouse songs (“Valerie” and “Back to Black”), Kurt has two from Gypsy (“Rose’s Turn” and “Some People”), Mercedes has songs sung by the Queen and the King of Soul (“Ain’t No Way” and “Try a Little Tenderness,” respectively), and Rachel goes back Barbra Streisand with “My Man” after “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “Papa, Can You Hear Me?,” etc. It was actually close to verisimilitude, which is nice. I know that if I ever had to audition for anything ever again, I’d pick some male solo from a Boublil/Schoenberg musical like I had before.
17:05–Yep, back when I rooted for Kurt to succeed. And because I haven’t said this in a while: his “Defying Gravity” is better than Lea Michele’s, deal with it.
18:03–I would have cared more about that egg scene if I thought it would actually trickle over into this season for no reason at all. Alas, optimism.
20:33–I’ve been saying for a long time now that regardless of how good Amber Riley is, Lea Michele is still a better singer. And I think that’s still true. But in this episode, no one came anywhere close to Riley’s singing.
20:50–Little moments like this for Will are reminiscent of Billy Joel’s song “Keeping the Faith,” in which the singer starts by saying that he’s not lost in the past, but then goes on for three minutes about his past.
21:02–
21:26–Again, Jesse is the voice of wisdom masked in douchebaggery. I had an English professor who said that if we were geniuses who didn’t have to work on our writing, we would have known by now. Similar advice to Mercedes here.
21:55–I’m having a really hard time understanding what reigniting the Jesse/Rachel flame does for this show. I would say that the writers have a plan, but that would be completely out of character for them.
22:09–That shot is probably as good a representation of Glee as any other one. They want to make you laugh and they want to make you feel something at the same time. Perhaps it’s telling that “Nessy Club” was funnier than the prospect of Finchel was moving.
22:45–Is “Rachel cries during the song” a meme yet?
25:29–This is why we have overcrowded houses. People use unnecessary physical helpmeets for mental stimulation.
25:39–Up there with “When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.” Or “China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”
26:07–Sue is having multiple personalities with grief is more like it. I haven’t seen such rapid personality shifts since I watched Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight.
26:22–Something tells me that that’s not the interior of a Le Car.
27:30–That’s probably one of the best things that Kurt’s ever said on this show.
30:24–It’s funny, because that eulogy would have been the height of cheese on so many other shows, but in the strange world of Glee, this is actually pretty earnest and honest. How sick is that?
31:16–Every time I see a photo montage like that in a movie/TV funeral, I can’t focus on the “poignancy” of the moment because I’m always jarred, as all of those have to be staged at some point.
31:30–Wow, Tina didn’t break down in the middle of her solo this time. Crazy.
31:52–I guess women don’t have to wear black to funerals anymore. Or maybe that fits into the “joy of life, not a focus on death” theme of the funeral. (This is one of my rare neutral observations.)
32:01–”Don’t give me that Cardinal Wolsey shit!”
33:02–While we’re on our British movie kick, here’s a superior funeral scene.
33:23–Whiplash.
34:05–At the risk of descending into pure, crappy Bill Simmons territory, let us suggest that what the fat lady is to Steven Hiller, being prom queen is to Quinn Fabray.
34:19–That dialogue made absolutely no sense.
34:49–Finn is a moron. Finn might be consigned to the depths of moron-hell for the rest of eternity.
35:31–Then you’re going about teaching the wrong way…again. If you love children, be a parent. If you love teaching, be a teacher.
36:38–This scene sits somewhere between “creepy” and “wrong.”
37:28–Will Schuester and his pure heart. Would that all women had an infinite supply of birth control pills to defend against such purehearted men!
37:37–Last year, the season ended with Sue getting Will’s club another year and they were all like, “Hey, we respect each other,” and then this year, Sue was like, “Aw, shucks, I’m not going after the glee club anymore.” I have no idea what they plan to do with Sue now if they actually take that one seriously. And this announcement of the cessation of hostilities comes after a much more important event in Sue’s life than having her pride hurt by Rod Remington, Olivia Newton-John, and Josh Groban. I’m very confused.
38:00–Yeah, hope you enjoyed that, because you’re never going to hear about that again. Remember when she wanted that local Emmy?
38:26–American Airlines, the only American airline that has scheduled flights to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Thanks, Wikipedia.
38:57–That’s not a catch, that’s a totally unrelated piece of information.
39:55–They can’t possibly be ending Jessalyn Gilsig’s involvement with the show that quietly. After all of the crazy stuff that went down because of her, they’re going to finish her tenure like that? She’ll be back. Why, I don’t know, but she will. Speaking of people who have been odd romantic matches for Will, is Beiste dead?
40:00–…oh. That’s not completely awkward.
40:08–Concerning Ryan Murphy and the word “deserve,” here’s a classic tidbit.
Seriously, I just wish I had a little Mandy Patinkin in my pocket who could pop out and say that for me sometimes.
40:34–There are so many things happening and I’m not sure what to make of them because I have no idea if Glee actually intends to uphold any of this. I don’t think I’m ready for another Will/Emma relationship, though. The past incarnations have been stupid.
41:46–So much groundwork being laid…
42:55–And immediately, as soon as they don’t have to compete, look how nice they are! Wow, it’s like they flipped a little switch! That’s adorable.
42:56–Jesse’s a much better show choir consultant than I thought he’d be. Remember that thing I said a while back, that slaving your ideas to the expert’s is what has kept baseball IQ so low for so long? It’s all about building your ideas off of the right experts. And Jesse, though caricatured, is the right expert. Not that it matters in the scheme of the show, but it’s a nice life lesson.
43:19–Smiling scary Quinn.
43:21–This episode, looking back at it, was so full of promises for future episodes that it didn’t really have a lot to supplement itself with. A lot of stuff coming up, not a lot of material in this episode. It makes me vaguely excited for the future, because in a lot of ways, Funeral has suggested some clean sheets, and Glee needs those. Not a really good episode, but potentially important.
“I am just going outside. I may be some time.”
