Better sit at the back and hope Aaron doesn't notice you this week, guys...

It’s official, a pattern now exists: after every hiatus, the reset button is hit, undoing any progress the show or its characters made in the previous segment. After the first hiatus, the Will/Emma relationship the show worked so hard to set up was undone; following the summer break, they completely destroyed the ad-hoc family the group considered itself in order to maintain the narrative status quo, like they decided halfway through writing the season opener that they had no idea what to do with a group that got along.

Now, the writers have Quinn falling back in what passes for love in a teenager’s mind with Finn. I suppose that’s because they figure for as much chemistry as Dianna Agron and Chord Overstreet share, there’s no stories to tell about those two growing closer and figuring each other out? No drama to be mined from her being a vicious tease and him being an uber-dork with a Bieber-cut? Nothing more with that goofy promise ring bullshit? Glee, you see, doesn’t do nuance often or well and chooses instead to go for the reeeeeeally broad strokes, both dramatically and comedically.

Whenever subtlety rears its complicated head, as in the case of Santana’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-them reaction to Finn and Rachel or Dave’s father’s doubtful glance (both from the same episode), it’s quickly forgotten. Recent revelations from interviews with the writers have contradicted several preconceptions I had about how the show is written (for example, they do actually write together, but the one who breaks the story gets the credit) while uncovering more information about Ryan Murphy/Kurt than I wanted to know (he was out in high school and dated football players on the down-low, which explains so much!).

Aside from this, last night’s episode was not an affront or even merely an attack on my suspension of disbelief so much as an all-out, hour-long siege, bombarding me with ludicrous development after ridiculous event. I get that the show is supposed to be sort of a cartoon, but even its odd heightened reality still takes place in some simulation of our real world and as such, certain things (of which tonight’s episode is almost solely constructed) are completely unrealistic and damage the narrative credibility of even a program like Glee.

Anyway, let’s get on with it - I’m already a day late and there’s another episode tomorrow to wade through.

Con: So, this episode followed the Super Bowl, sort of explaining the odd and silly opening display by the Cheerios. Nothing says “pandering to middle America in an attempt to make them not chance over to SportCenter” like fire, stunts and cheerleaders following a cheerleaderless professional championship game.

Con: Apparently the male Cheerios are all stunt BMX riders and it’s ok for high school students to perform with hand-held fire implements like whips and hoops.

Con: Sue insists the Cheerios wear boob enhancers while simultaneously continuing to needle Santana for having breast implants.

Pro: “Slap yourself with a chicken cutlet... now slap Brittany.”

Con: Why are they playing football? It’s January!

Con: So Dave, to whom football is presumably important, throws the game to prove a point to Finn? Good thing the team will get to the championship even if they lose, lest they deprive the writers of a worthless contrivance to make a wholly unfeasible plot begin.

Pro: Oh look, a carny!

Con: Will is the worst teacher ever. The concept of forcing a tight-knit group of large, aggressive, hormonal, homophobic males to do something that rubs against the grain of their homophobia is absurd and borders on dangerous.

Con: The ham-fisted segue into this week’s Rachel song was particularly inept.

Con: Lea Michele’s contract won’t let anything come between Rachel and a performance. Because she only got to sing lead on one song this hour, I can almost guarantee she’ll sing on three songs tomorrow night. Seriously, she averages two songs per episode and the only other time she missed one, she made up for it a week later.

Con: What the fuck does this song (“Need You Now”) have to do with anything? Why is this performance the one Will used to try and convince the football players that glee is cool?

Con: To that end, what did any of tonight’s numbers have to do with anything? They all seemed completely random and disconnected from the “plots.”

Show-breaking Con: Sue goes apeshit when the principal tells her she can’t fire Brittany out of a cannon and destroys Figgins’ secretary’s office, part of Beiste’s locker room and along the way, manhandles two students. This is not the first time this has happened (which is a separate con, see below). Even in this show’s reality, that is a fire-able offense - teachers cannot just arbitrarily hit students! And Will’s little “There’s a lawsuit” throw-away at the end of the scene does not count as addressing the problem unless someone actually files a goddamn lawsuit!

Con: As stated above, this is not the first time Sue has attacked random students. This, on a greater scale, is the main problem with the episode on a whole and the show in general: it relies primarily on a single premise to create its drama - kids quitting and joining glee club, the cheerleading squad and the football team like you take off and put on a goddamn hat. Repeatedly, seemingly every other episode, and four times in just this episode this device is used and it doesn’t work because it creates a narrative where there is no consequence for your actions.

Con: The entire Sue-plot of the episode is unbelievably unbelievable. She cannot just call up someone and have the entire regional cheerleading competition moved to three days later on a whim.

Con: Dave, the tightly closeted homophobe, suggests to Finn that they do a warm-up number before the half-time show. This in and of itself is not a con, but because it leads to yet another time-wasting performance that makes no sense, it is a con. You see, our time gets wasted by watching another song that only exists to soak up run-time and doesn’t make sense within its own context. The number, “She’s Not There,” is worked out to be performed prior to the big “Thriller” mash-up. Let me get this straight, so now the football team has to play a half, do two choreographed performances instead of resting, then go play the second half? Holy shit...

Con: The captain of the hockey team looks like an eighties teen-movie villain.

Con: Way to wedge the Garglers into an episode they had nothing to do with just to remind us that Ryan Murphy’s author avatar still exists. This is the point that anyone who might have accidentally watched the show after the Super Bowl changed the channel. It comes out of nowhere and is not adequately explained afterward.

Con: So, the Garglers are supposed to be some utopian democracy run by a triumvirate in place of a faculty advisor, and everyone’s supposed to audition for leads, but because he’s the only one with a name, we only ever see Straight Gay Blaine doing it.

Con: Straight Gay Blaine loves football... because he’s Straight Gay Blaine, GOT IT?!?

Con: The contrivance of more than half the football team quitting so we can work in the only two members of the Garglers with names into a scene which leads to the glee girls deciding to take the field is a move so monumentally irresponsible that it should have lead to a lawsuit from Mercedes, Rachel and Tina’s parents.

Con: So, none of those thirty-year-old football players is a senior aiming for a football scholarship and really needs to be seen playing in a championship game?

Con: The show has a completely deranged idea about teenage views of popularity.

Con: Brittany is not old enough (nor does she have the mental capacity to) sign any manner of waiver without a parent present. Brittany is a five-foot-eight-inch six-year-old with boobs. Sue even tells her she has a mind the size of “a toddler’s fist.”

Con: I have trouble buying Brittany’s idiocy anymore. Sue tries to convince her to do the cannon stunt by telling her that if she doesn’t, the cannon’s two twin baby cannons will starve. I’m not making a joke. In the previous episode, Artie gives her a magic comb. Her one-liners and non-sequesters are cute and sometimes funny, but this is tragic and troublesome.

Pro: Rachel’s number on her football jersey is, of course, “1”.

Con: Finn calls Sam over from the sidelines to quarterback while he runs off to convince Quinn and Brittana to quit the Cheerios and come do the half-time show.

Con: And besides, WHY IS THIS HALF-TIME SHOW SO GODDAMN IMPORTANT? What is riding on it, narratively? NOTHING! It’s just because this is the episode after the Super Bowl.

The Biggest Con of All: They didn’t do the goddamn “Thriller” dance. What was the point, then? To force me to listen to a weak-ass mash-up? Way to waste a rare lead by Artie.

Con: You know, whatever dance they did instead, we didn’t even really get to see since the number was edited like a modern fight scene: camera too close and cuts too frequent to tell what’s even happening.

Con: The last play... such bullshit.

Pro: Zombie Cheerleaders

Pro: Dave, who was assumed to be joining glee turns Finn down flat; he ‘s a superstar, what does he need glee for. A whole lot, if this goes the way I suspect.

This show thinks you’re stupid.

A suspension of disbelief is necessary to watch any work of fiction, but the amount of things this episode expects the audience to just gloss over and accept without question is staggering. I have never seen an hour of television that thinks less of its audience than this. There’s mindless entertainment and then there’s a show that just doesn’t fucking care how inane it is. It is ridiculous, as in “deserving of ridicule.” There is no heart, there is no entertainment factor, there is no point.

The only good thing to come of this episode is that maybe we’ll actually see Brittany and Santana in civilian clothes next week. You know, until there’s a progress-eradicating plot machination to get them back on the team.

Grade: F

Songs

“Need You Now” - Lady Antebellum C- (points off for subjecting me to the whole song)
“She’s Not There” - The Zombies C+ (points off for being pointless)
“Bills, Bills, Bills” - Destiny’s Child C- (points off for being pointless)
“Thriller / Heads Will Roll” - Michael Jackson / The Yeah Yeah Yeahs F (for “fuck you, Glee”)

Random Observations

That bullshit with the tattoo - Sue gets a tattoo of herself on her back wherein her name is misspelled. ::sigh:: This shit just doesn’t happen.

Slushies - I wonder if the show has its own machine or if they have to send out for them.

The Samoan football player - is a dancer Zach Woodlee hires for large dance numbers. He also appears in “The Safety Dance” and “Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit” alongside Brittany.

The new fat white football player - I surmise he is going to replace Dave in the character slot of “fat white bully” after he joins Nude Erections. I know this because... well, because he talks.

Speaking of Dave - I bet he sneaks off to Columbus or Cleveland to watch touring companies of Broadway shows.

Football:Glee::Quidditch:Harry Potter - it is boring and grinds the plot to a halt, even if it is the plot.

Great Lines

Sue - What’s changed (about cheerleading since 1979)?
Quinn - Personal grooming habits?

Beiste - You better find a way to work together or we’re gonna get our asses kicked from here until Tuesday finds a saddlebag full of buckwheat.

Quinn - I’m torn.
Santana - Well, I’m not.
Brittany - I’m Brittany.

Brittany - I’m gonna die. Santana - It’ll be worth it.

Sue - (to Katie Couric) I hate you, Diane Sawyer.