I guess I’ll get the thread started this week, because I was pleasantly surprised by this episode. For some reason last week’s episode really didn’t work for me even though there were a number of elements I enjoyed, but this one seemed much better even though there were a number of elements I disliked. It felt more like an old episode of Glee to me than most of the others this season; a fairly middle of the road old episode, but it had that familiar “It’s a kind of smutty, musical after-school-special, only it’s ironic, only it’s not” thing going for it.
There was also a bit more self-awareness than the show has demonstrated recently. Yeah, some of these students do seem pretty old for high school, and the alums keep showing up at the drop of a hat (although in NYC this time instead of Lima), and oh yeah, Rachel has become a totally different and more horrible person than she was in seasons 1-3.
I do feel really bad for that Mennonite choir, though. Apparently they don’t get a rematch…or even merit a mention. On the plus side, it looks like the Warblers doping scandal plot was wrapped up in that pre-credits sequence, so I hope we’ve seen the last of New Sebastian, Old Sebastian, and the whole boring Warblers as villains thing.
The songs didn’t wow me, but they were okay. I think they should have just done “Hot in Here” instead of mashing it up with “Centerfold”. They included enough of the lyrics to the latter to make it clear it was about a female centerfold, which didn’t make sense in the context of the Men of New Directions calendar. And if they wanted to include that song, it would have made more sense to have Kurt sing it when he saw the pictures of Blaine as Mr. January and Mr. [del]Tina’s Oddly Specific Sexual Fantasy[/del] December.
I’ve been a faithful viewer since the first episode, but I’m seriously thinking of bailing. I couldn’t wait for this one to be over. They’ve done everything a dozen times and they don’t seem interested in forging any new ground. I think the next time Sue comes storming in vowing to destroy the Glee Club, I’m done. So probably next week.
One of the things I did dislike was how the Sue plot this week was so oddly pointless even for Glee. She announced her objection to the beefcake calendar, then did literally nothing about it. She just sat around and waited for Finn (!) to outwit her.
I completely agree with you. There seemed to be a snarkiness (the mentioned joking self-awareness) as well as a sweetness (with Sam) that called back to Season 1. I really thought it was very well done. Lets keep doing that.
Seriously. Since New Directions and the Warblers got disqualified it seems obvious the Mennoites would go through as the only still qualified show choir standing.
I have been watching the show loyally since the first ep was aired the spring before its actual debut. I have continued watching through the hell that was the season of tribute episodes. I even continued to watch all fall, while they tried to figure out how to both keep the focus on the high school and continue to use a substantial chunk of the cast who had “graduated.” I have never been bothered by the disconnect from reality in the plotting. I have stuck with it through a combination of inertia and the intermittent rewards of an occasional great number and an even more occasional great episode.
Last night, for the first time, I asked myself, “Why am I continuing to watch this show?” I really don’t think I have an answer. It wasn’t a bad episode; there were even, as Lamia notes, a couple of nice elements to it.
But other than my stubbornness – which those who know me will testify is no inconsiderable force – there’s no reason for me to keep watching Glee.
I am immensely saddened to have reached this point. The first season was amazing, but it’s been a downhill slide every episode since.
Godsdamnit, Glee. Why must you do this to me?
blah blah, show, blah blah, Rachel’s bitch, blah blah drama, blah resolution.
And then three minutes of happiest, most exuberant, most enjoyable songs and singing I’ve seen in YEARS from Glee. I had to re-watch it three times, it made me so happy.
Why can’t you make the whole FRACKING show like that? Or more numbers like that! FRELL! Its these moments of true brilliance that keep me with your damn show, why can’t you have MORE OF THEM. STOP with the whining, the moping, the social-issue-of-the-day shit, and JUST DO THE HAPPY STUFF.
While I enjoyed the song selection overall, when Rachel’s duet with Rachel came on, I looked at my daughter and said, “Isn’t that really scraping the bottom of the barrel? Having a character sing a duet with themselves?” She allowed as how it was nice to see the comparison between “old” Rachel and “new” Rachel, but that’s about all I can give it.
I’m sorry to hear that too, both because it’s sad when something you like stops making you happy and because I enjoy reading what you have to say in the Glee threads, but I can’t argue with you on this. This show is frequently awful, and it has been awful more and more frequently as time goes by. (I have joked that by season two Glee had become its own fanfiction, and by season three it was WORSE than its own fanfiction.)
I may be mangling the details, but I seem to recall that there’s some famous psychological experiment with rats where they could press a button to get a treat but after a while the button stopped working. IIRC, if the button had originally given them a treat every time, or given them a treat at predictable intervals like every third push, then once it stopped working they’d keep trying for a little while and then give up. But if the button had initially produced a treat at irregular, unpredictable intervals then the rats kept at it much longer after it stopped working.
Glee makes me feel like that rat.
IMHO the show is still delivering a treat now and then, which is why I’m still watching, but had it been more consistent in the past I think I would have given up long ago.
Kurt sang a duet with himself back in season two and I thought it was kinda neat, although there weren’t two Kurts then (which I agree is a very cheesy device) but one Kurt showing off his vocal range.
I guess I agree with Lamia about “Naked” feeling reminiscent of season one, since my opinion of this episode matched my general opinion of that season: “this is bad, yet I’m enjoying it.” The calendar plotline was weird and I thought that Rachel’s plotline was pointless (and Finn’s feud with Sue was worse than pointless), but Glee often benefits when it just throws caution to the wind and goes nuts, as it does here.
I also dig the reference to the rat experiment, that exactly describes my relationship with Glee.
It occurs to me that Finn could have called Sue out for being a hypocrite for objecting to the calendar even if the writers hadn’t introduced this “Sue posed for Penthouse” rumor. Back in the first season, one of Sue’s many schemes involved having the Cheerios throw a bikini carwash fundraiser for the glee club. I don’t think raising money by selling a calendar of teen boys with their shirts off (but fairly modest bottoms on) to girls their own age is any naughtier than allowing anyone who drives by to pay for live, wet teen girls in bikini tops and cheerleader miniskirts to scrub down their cars.
Speaking of continuity, while there were some good call backs to previous episodes in this one it was odd that Finn had such trouble grasping that Artie didn’t want to show off his body for the calendar because he felt bad about not looking like Sam when just two years ago Finn didn’t want to show off his body in The Rocky Horror Show because he felt bad about not looking like Sam. Or perhaps Finn could have cast his mind back just one year, to Sebastian threatening to post an unflattering (fake) nude photo of Finn online and remembered how embarrassed he was about that. Then when Finn finally did get it, I felt his little speech to Artie went on two or three lines too long, to the point where it seemed more condescending than sympathetic.
Still, I was glad that this episode ended with it being okay for each of the characters to decide how much skin they were comfortable showing rather than the moral being either that it’s always shameful to show off your bod or that it’s always empowering to show off your bod.
I like to put it in perspective, I was a total skeptic that going into a post graduation season would even work at all, but it turns out this is at least better than season three and maybe season two. I’m happy to be wrong about that at least.
It’s not the incredibly creative well written social phenomenon it was a few years ago, but it can still produce pleasant yet imperfect little episodes like this, and some pretty great musical numbers every now and then. As long as Glee can still put an occasional smile on my face I’m going to stick with it.
I’m afraid this will be my last season. I bitched more about this episode than I watched. It’s almost just too painful to put myself through anymore. I’ll miss what it once was, but my time could be better used by sticking bamboo shoots in my eyeballs.
I got to that point around the middle of the second season. Now I just follow along in the threads. That way I find out what happens without having to watch anything.
Oh good. I thought the entire plot was kind of stupid to begin with, but her angst about showing some boob left me perplexed. I kept wondering what Lea Michelle was thinking about this plot. And in the end she doesn’t do it – as if she’s saying, look at me I made a horrible decision in my life!
I don’t think the point was supposed to be that showing some boob is so bad in and of itself – Rachel’s creepy naked boyfriend pointed out that plenty of highly regarded actresses (e.g. Kate Winslet) have done topless scenes, and Rachel says at the end that it’s fine for those who want to do it – but that it wasn’t something Rachel was really comfortable with at this point. And as Santana pointed out, even if Rachel was fine with the idea of going topless it might be better for her career to save it for a more serious project. Otherwise a stupid student movie with a topless scene could be the first hit for her name on Google for years to come.