Yeah, good point. “Glee” is firmly set in TV-Land, and I would do well to remember that. 
Whether high school teachers have tenure depends on the school district, but many do offer it. Its main benefit as I understand it is protection from budget-cut layoffs; most teachers have standard benefits the first year they’re hired.
Sue has not only been there for several years but has an impeccable professional resume and rich boosters and I guarantee you she’d have had it by now. Plus, I don’t think anywhere you have to wait until somebody dies or gets removed to get it. Of course IRL with Sue’s resume if financial security was a concern she would have left the high school to go to a pro-team or at least a major university long ago.
Did anybody else giggle a little when Bieste is talking about the problems with jock itch (or whatever) and says “I showed it to my Cooter”? (It took me a second to remember that her Cooter is her husband.)
Please please please please please, producers, for whatever is salvageable in the show, don’t make Sue’s desire to get pregnant any kind of major arc. In the first place she’s like the dead maid says of the dead doctor’s dead wife in the other Murphy-Falchik show: “She didn’t want a baby, that’s just an idea she got into her head”, and in the second, even in a world where kids in wheelchairs can be on football teams and omnipresent pianists never speak or have a plotline and the same school that can’t afford the most basic materials can cough up money for matador suits & mariachi bands and Jewish girls turn Christian when Irish kids recite from the Gospel of Charlie Brown, etc., a narcissistic single woman in her 50s who has a long history of violent behavior and driving kids to the point of mental breakdown suddenly deciding she wants an infant isn’t an entertaining plotline.
If they have to get some character pregnant, go with Bieste. For one thing, the actress is genuinely likeable and the character would make a great mother. For another, since she’s only a supporting character they wouldn’t have to go into every facet of the pregnancy from the first time she has morning sickness til she finally gets into the delivery elevator. Sue would drop kick the baby the first time it kept her up at nights, claim it got those injuries from that season’s illegal alien who she’d have deported, and then they’d never mention it again as they went into a 6 episode arc about Sugar having a nose job or whatever. (Why do I watch this show again? Oh yeah, eye candy and occasionally good one liners.)
Ah.
Yes. Santana is my favorite character and voice on the show (yes, I prefer her voice to Rachel’s), but her dancing was a shame.
She got the letter but hadn’t opened it - that was the cliffhanger. Thin envelopes can be bad news too.
My dad worked in the public schools for over 30 years and I’ve never heard of them having tenure. They just did stuff based on 1. seniority and 2. who kissed butt the best. My dad did okay for the first, but not so well for the 2nd.
Mom worked in a private school for over 25 years, more or less the same. No tenure. When they had to cut back in the mid 00’s, it was strictly last hired first fired. Which didn’t really work out so well for my dad who had started working there after retiring from the public schools.
But I digress
Pretty much all I remember about the episode is how terrible I thought Ricky Martin’s first number was, far more embarrassing than anything Shu did, I thought. His number with Santana was much better.
No, she definitely told Kurt she was a finalist by the end of the episode. Maybe the end got cut off when you were watching.
FWIW teachers in my (public) high school could get tenure. ETA: A quick Google turned up this *Time *article from 2008, which says over 2 million American public school teachers have tenure.
The former is exactly what I was thinking. The latter had not occurred to me, but sounds like a good idea – or at least a better idea than pregnant Sue. If Bieste conceives and Sue doesn’t, that will also give Sue an extra reason to be horrible. (Not that she needs one.)
Well, she either opened it or she lied to Kurt about having opened it, because she told him she was a finalist. The cliffhanger, such as it was, was how she was going to tell Finn/what this meant for their marriage plans.
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Yes. Santana is my favorite character and voice on the show (yes, I prefer her voice to Rachel’s)
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Me too. I expect her to have the strongest post-GLEE career, at least in television and film. (Trivia: her first high-paying gig was playing Redd Foxx’s granddaughter in his last series, The Royal Family; I wonder if she was there when he died on the set.)
I think one reason I’m Sexy and I Know It didn’t work better for me is that
while Ricky Martin is still a very handsome and fit man, but he’s a very handsome and fit forty year old man. He’s not as blazing hot as La Vida Loca days. (Lest this seem shallow or ageist, I’ll add that I’m 5 years older than he is and have never been a fraction as hot.)
The AV Club review of this episode is now up. VanDerWerff points out something I’d noticed as well, that the writers actually came up with a fairly good justification for Finn continuing as a performer through at least college:
A few episodes back I think I actually laughed out loud when Rachel was encouraging Finn to apply to NYADA. His only acting experience is the cancelled McKinley production of The Rocky Horror Show, and while he’s certainly a better singer and dancer than I am he’s far from being the best at either even within New Directions. But I can buy that at some other NYC area school – one not the most competitive and prestigious dramatic program in the country, or whatever NYADA is supposed to be – Finn’s level of talent combined with his “type” would qualify him for some leading man roles.
Just a question - and I know the answer is likely, 'because it’s the Glee universe and that’s how things are done here, you silly person" - but why on earth were the Cheerios wearing their jackets while the swim coach was running them through her routine? Sure, I’ll buy the fact that cheer leading outfits are the only clothes any of the Cheerios actually wear, but … wearing your winter jacket whilst tumbling and grinding and cartwheeling and generally shaking booty? Didn’t ring true.
Nene Leakes may actually turn her Real Housewives thing into something more than 15 minutes of fame. She might actually have an acting chop or two. I also liked her line about Sue in stirrups pushing out a fully grown adult with a briefcase and a job talking on a cell phone.
I know Glee doesn’t really do continuity, but when was the last time Will was shown to be a decent Spanish teacher?
To the best of my memory, never. Prior to this episode I don’t think we had any evidence that he wasn’t a decent Spanish teacher either, because he’s rarely seen doing anything related to teaching Spanish.
I did. snicker.
I flat-out didn’t like it. Sue becoming a parent is a terrible idea, and Will acted like a douche through the entire episode. The only thing I liked about it was Santana laying the smack down on Will about what a shitty teacher he was. I am a Spanish geek, so I should have loved this episode, but it was just so contrived and there are much, much better songs featuring Spanish lyrics out there.
This is the first episode of Glee that I’ve ever actively disliked.
I feel he acts like a douche in most episodes. This was one of the few where he actually got called out on it by anyone other than Sue. While Will generally seems to mean well, his behavior (both personal and professional) over the course of the series has been pretty questionable.
I agree that the song selections were pretty “meh”, though.
Why is Santana even IN Spanish class? She obviously speaks the language better than the teacher. It’s like Quinn taking a Sneaky Bitch class, or Señor Martinez enrolling in Teeth Whitening (Larry Bird white!).
Probably a requirement, and it’s not like kids who are fluent in English all get straight A’s in English comp.
Of course this being McKinley we’ll probably learn that when she’s not a student Santana teaches auto-shop and serves as assistant vice principal as well.
Sometimes kids grow up speaking a language but not knowing how to read or write it. We had a native Spanish speaker in my high school Spanish class, and quite a few in my college Spanish courses, so this didn’t strike me as unusual.
That seemed to be part of her frustration. Just because she speaks Spanish better than Will doesn’t mean she couldn’t benefit from a Spanish class taught by someone who was actually competent, though. We don’t know much about Santana’s home life, but the one time we’ve seen her with a relative (her grandmother) they were speaking English so it seems that the Lopez family doesn’t exclusively speak Spanish at home. It’s plausible that Santana’s Spanish vocabulary is rather basic/slangy, or that she speaks Spanish like a native but can’t read or write the language very well.
Of course, it’s also quite possible that was just hoping for an easy A her senior year.