“Glee Actually”. Ha! I thought this was a decent episode. Mean Coach Sue Sylvester, but not the unrelentingly nasty Coach Sue we usually get. They also crammed in a lot of stuff and characters, including the long-gone First Will Wife, Terri. Emma and Quinn were MIA, but at least they were mentioned in passing. I thought this one was a real step up from last year’s Christmas episode. They even remembered that some of the characters are Jewish.
I thought it was kind of “meh” – although I’ve never seen Love Actually, so maybe I couldn’t fully appreciate it – but I do agree that it was better than last year’s Christmas episode. This one at least managed not to make me ANGRY.
I continue to be surprised that the show is restraining itself from neatly tying up the Marley’s eating disorder and Klaine breakup storylines. We learn this week that Marley is in therapy, and I assume there will be at least one more episode where Kitty apologizes or received some sort of comeuppance. And while Kurt is now back on friendly terms with Blaine, things are still strained and Kurt doesn’t seem interested in getting back together as a couple.
I did feel that it was unnecessary to give Burt cancer, though. I didn’t feel he needed a special reason to want to visit his son at Christmas, and this seemed like the sort of storyline that’s likely to be dropped and rarely if ever mentioned again. Heck, the show doesn’t even seem to remember that Burt is now in Congress.
Or that Burt is married to Finn’s mom – or did something happen there?
The connection to Love Actually – a movie I’m immensely fond of – is only tangential: multiple storylines, a couple of which come together at the end. The actual storylines, not so much.
There was a brief reference to Finn’s mom, who I don’t think has actually been mentioned previously this season despite her son dropping off the grid for months then coming back to live with her.* Anyway, Kurt mentioned to Rachel that he didn’t mind not going back to Ohio because Burt, Carole, and Finn were all going to visit Carole’s sister.
*Although what’s really starting to creep me out is how Blaine never, ever talks about his parents. I think maybe he murdered them in early season three when they refused to let him transfer to McKinley.
It was far from a masterpiece, but it was enjoyable. However, I was annoyed that this was the most idiotic we’ve seen Sam, especially disappointing because it seemed like they had figured out a good intelligence level for him in “Swan Song.” Does no one on the Glee staff remember that Sam was never portrayed as a moron prior to season four’s “Makeover?”
Better question, why do I keep expecting continuity from Glee?
The music wasn’t great, but I did like that they went with a bunch of Christmas standards this year.
Yeah, I don’t think they fully appreciated that we don’t need any artificial injection of emotion for a series of Kurt/Burt scenes to work. Colfer and O’Malley can pretty much take care of that no matter what material they’re given.
The bit about Coach Beiste fake marrying Sam and Britanny as a way to protect them from getting into trouble was “Huh?”. If they believed they were married and the end of the world was imminent surely reckless sexual abandon would be the way they would go.
It’s just a show. It’s just a show.
And, of course, how Artie has conveniently forgotten about the hella-expensive external leg-servo support system that Coach Beiste bought him two years ago.
Its just a show. Its just a show.
In retrospect, it was also kind of weird that Blaine offered to look out for Kurt’s dad. I guess he was just trying to be nice/make himself seem responsible, but Burt should be in DC most of the time, and Kurt’s stepbrother Finn is now living in Burt’s Ohio residence. Sam may also still be living there – they’ve never made it clear where he’s staying this season.
To be fair, reckless sexual abandon seems like the way they’d go whether they were married or not. Brittany certainly wasn’t saving it for marriage, and while Sam has been depicted as fairly religious he was a stripper and did mention to Dreadlocks last season that he wasn’t a virgin and didn’t believe in celibacy anymore.
This actually was mentioned just once after that episode, at some point in season three. Turns out the device broke soon after Artie received it. This again seemed unnecessary to me, as Artie said when he got it that he could only use it for short periods of time. So presumably he wouldn’t be taking it to school with him, and that’s pretty much the only place we see Artie.
And the Puck boys…let’s see…they are in LA and decide to go back to Ohio and young one says “we can be back tomorrow” riding a motorcycle with a sidecar in December…gee, what could go wrong with that plan? And exactly how fast were they going?
I loathed the spin off of “It’s A Wonderful Life” story - geez, does every single show have to dredge this over-used plot up again and again around Christmas? And filming it in B&W, how original. Yawn.
Otherwise, I did like the traditional Christmas songs and again, so far I am still far preferring the NYC stories than anything in Lima.