(Spoilers lurk below.)
If this episode had consisted of only the sixth act, I’d have said it was pretty good. Unfortunately, there were five unfocussed, silly, plotless acts before it. At its heart, “Glease” wants to be a sequel to “The Break-Up,” examining the post-breakup lives of Rachel, Finn, Blaine, Kurt, Santana, and Brittany, and what it does with that is decent. However, a lot of it gets buried in bullshit having to do with Kitty and her bizarre revenge plan, Marley and her body image, and Finn’s taking charge of the school production of Grease.
Finn stepping up as a leader has come through in Glee over and over again throughout the series. In fact, it was one of the main reasons that Will recruited him: he needed a male lead for the club. As an accepted leader of the club, though, I think the defining moment early on was season one’s “Sectionals,” when he put aside his problems with Quinn and Puck (even after finding out that Quinn was carrying Puck’s baby) and showed up at the competition with the music they needed just in time to bring everyone together. He also did this at Will’s request because Will couldn’t be there. So, in many ways, Finn’s now-official leadership role feels like rehash rather than the step forward that it’s supposed to feel like. He’s also scarcely shining bright as a leader, at least as far as the viewer can tell. His entire role in this episode appeared to consist of getting the guys to practice in his stepdad’s body shop, and then tell them to do it again “with, like, twice the energy!” I thought that that scene was meant to establish that Finn still had no idea what he was doing, but the musical was apparently a huge success, and Will is perfectly content to give all the credit to Finn (because really, fuck Artie).
Finn is also worse than Will at mending fences with Sue, though to be fair he did call her possibly Down syndrome afflicted baby “retarded,” which is genuinely fucking offensive and mean. I was actually kinda on Sue’s side when she refused to accept his half-assed apology (though I’m much less prone to revenge than Sue). I’m quite disappointed to see Sue back in full-bore villain mode since, as I’ve said before, I like her much better as a benign antagonist.
All in all, the musical was pretty pointless. If some of Finn’s supposed leadership skills had been put on display, it might have had some worth. At the end of the episode, Finn tells Rachel that she was his inspiration when he was trying to lead the musical. However, we never actually saw anything like that, so we just have to take his word for it.
Most of the interesting things related to the musical happened on the sideline and didn’t have a lot of plot time devoted to them. First, Wade’s parents come down to Figgins’s office to pull Wade out of the play. They’re actually remarkably accepting for parents of a transgender child. They say they were “proud” of Wade’s performance as Unique in Chicago, but that Chicago is a “liberal” city and they fear for Wade’s safety if she continues to dress and perform as a woman in public. This explanation is intercut with a scene of Wade, while dressed as a woman, being shoved into a locker. Which did not have much of an emotional impact. We’ve seen much worse things happen on this show to people who do dress consistently with their anatomical sex. Anyone remember when Puck was locked in a Porta-Potty for 24 hours? That aside, Wade’s parents were interesting characters and really seemed to have the best interests of their child at heart. I hope to see more of them (though I said the same thing about Karofsky’s dad once).
And rounding out the crew of glee kids coming back to WMHS for the musical is Santana, who at least has the excuse of only being a few hours drive away, unlike Mercedes, Mike, Kurt, and Rachel. (Absent are Puck, who made a cameo earlier this season, and Quinn, who has yet to make an appearance.) Santana comes in at Finn’s request to fill in as Rizzo when Wade is pulled out, which leads to a short scene of Tina being angry at being passed over (she’s playing Jan). Anyway, Santana has a very cute scene with Brittany in which they discuss how much they miss each other, which essentially boils down to how much they miss the way things were and never will be again. That hints at the theme of the episode, which is pretty much that you can’t go home again.
As strong as act six was, a lot of the stuff leading up to it felt like rehash, as Rachel/Finn and Kurt/Blaine deal with the fact that their relationships are over for good. I’ve had enough of Kurt and Rachel’s personal angst, but I liked the scene in which Rachel and Finn have a heart-to-heart talk with each other that meanders from wistful to happy to sad to mean to cold. It’s a very well-written scene that feels very real, including their final promise to break off all contact with each other. The end of any relationship is hard, but especially at that age it feels like the end of the world, and neither party really knows how to deal with it.
I was really expecting Kurt and Blaine to have some kind of serious heart-to-heart talk as well, but Kurt still insists that it’s all over and shuts down the lines of communication. This is non-negotiable for him. We pretty much got that sense from “The Break-Up” and “The Role Your Were Born to Play,” so I don’t think they added much here, though it was a bit shocking to get no hint of friendliness between the two characters at all, even after some time to cool off.
That brings us to Kitty and Marley’s subplot. Still out for revenge because Marley kinda caused Jake to break up with her, Kitty convinces Marley that she’s gaining weight by taking a couple of inches out of the waist of Marley’s costume every day. Why Tina, who is in charge of costuming, doesn’t notice her costumes shrinking, or why Marley doesn’t just weigh herself and thereby notice she’s not gaining weight, or wonder why all her other clothes still fit properly… none of that is explained. However, Marley does become convinced that she is doomed by genetics to become obese like her mother.
It’s around this point that things get really ugly and dark. Kitty not only decides to convince Marley that she’s gaining weight, but tries to get Marley to try losing weight via bulimic purging, to the point that the emotionally wrecked Marley actually tries it. After her last failed attempt to fit into her costume, Ryder finds her sobbing into a toilet bowl with her fingers down her throat. Jesus Christ! Kitty has successfully proven herself eviller than Sue and season-one Quinn combined, as well as genuinely mentally disturbed. Marley sorta helped cause Jake to break up with Kitty (though it was mostly Kitty’s fault) and Kitty tried to force Marley into a life of bulimia and distorted self image. This is only slightly less of an overreaction than Cartman’s in “Scott Tenorman Must Die.”
Body image problems were previously explored with Finn in “The Rocky Horror Glee Show,” but sheesh. This one was really hard to watch.
While Marley’s final scene with Ryder was nice, we still know basically nothing about Ryder. Why is he even here? Write that scene for Sam or Jake or even Joe and it would have worked better.
Revealed at the end of the episode: Cassie convinced Rachel to go home for the musical so that Cassie could move in on Brody, which she successfully does. And here I thought that Cassie and Rachel were kinda becoming friends, especially after their cathartic confrontation at the end of “Britney 2.0.” Nope, that would just be too interesting.
The music in this episode was pretty bleh. “You’re the One That I Want” was the highlight by a mile, and it actually was kinda cool seeing the other characters put themselves in the places of Ryder and Marley, remembering times and relationships in their lives that they will never get back. Especially pointless, on the other hand, was Kitty’s “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee.” It was an entertaining number, and I actually do like Becca Tobin’s voice quite a bit, but it came out of nowhere and had no place in the scene. The boys’ “Greased Lightnin” at least had a purpose in being a rehearsal number, but it felt strangely lifeless, and I had to wonder where the hell the music was coming from.
This episode was a big bag of wasted potential. Not exactly horrible, but I’m not liking where the season is heading.
Other thoughts:
“Glease” is the new record-holder for stupidest episode title of the series. Sorry “Prom-asaurus.”
They established that Finn is volunteering at the school, which I guess I actually can buy, as long as the glee club really is an outside activity and not a class.
Why the hell did the girls decide to be so friendly with Kitty? Has she not sufficiently proven that she’s a total psychopathic bitch? Hopefully she has now.
Melissa Benoist isn’t nearly as good a crier as Lea Michele, but who is?
If nothing else, at least this episode reminds us that, as unreasonably old as the Glee actors may look, at least they look more like they’re in high school than the actors in Grease.
