It wasn’t, and at this point I assume the cause of Finn’s death will never be revealed.
It is strange for Glee to pass up the opportunity for some heavy-handed moralizing, especially when doing so is misguided or in questionable taste*, but in fairness to the show then in real life one doesn’t always learn how a former classmate died. I can think of three people I went to high school or college with who died fairly young of causes that remain unknown to me. I don’t think there was any big mystery in any of these cases – two were people with serious long-term health issues – but the obituaries didn’t give a cause of death and our mutual friends either didn’t know or didn’t tell me. So it seems realistic, if dramatically unsatisfying, that many of the characters on Glee wouldn’t even know how Finn died.
However, there’s no way Kurt doesn’t know, and at the very least it seems like he would have told Rachel and Will. It does seem awkward to me that several major characters must know how Finn died but this has been kept from the audience.
*Does this thread cover episodes since the season six premier? I don’t want to surprise anyone with spoilers, but the 1/16 episode had a lot of heavy-handed, misguided, and tasteless moralizing even for Glee.
The characters on the show set in a small town Middle American high school now includes two transgendered people (whatever happened to Unique?), two lesbians, and three gay men. This might be admirable if it wasn’t complete overkill and the show did not suck.
Presumably the same thing that “happened” to Marley. I guess all of the people who claimed they would stop watching when the originals all left the show made good on their threats.
Question: did somebody teach Heather Morris how to sing, or did somebody improve AutoTune? I couldn’t detect any correction when she sang in the third episode. Then again, for all I know, they had somebody sing for her, which wouldn’t be surprising, considering they have other people sing for the dancers that make up most of Vocal Adrenaline.
Yeah, in theory I’d say it’s admirable for a television show to feature a sympathetic transgender character, but in this case it seems pretty obvious that Ryan Murphy realized that writing off Unique* meant he no longer had LGBT bingo and he’d better turn an existing character trans ASAP.
And so we learned the Very Special lesson that if a woman has short hair, usually wears pants, and likes sports, she’s either an unlovable monster (Sue) or is actually a man (Beiste). For all the diversity on this show, Glee seems to have a very limited and traditional idea of how women should look and what their interests should be.
*Sue said in the season premier that all remaining former members of New Directions had been forced to transfer to other schools. I was kind of surprised that Unique wasn’t back with Vocal Adrenaline.
I’m sure Kurt knows how Finn died, and I’d imagine the other New Directions members do, too. In the ep that dealt with Finn’s death, it started with Kurt saying something like, “Everybody wants to talk about how he died, but what difference does it make? He’s dead, and nothing can change that.”
Beiste is now transgender? wow, Ryan must be getting desperate.
[QUOTE=Lamia]
And so we learned the Very Special lesson that if a woman has short hair, usually wears pants, and likes sports, she’s either an unlovable monster (Sue) or is actually a man (Beiste). For all the diversity on this show, Glee seems to have a very limited and traditional idea of how women should look and what their interests should.
[/QUOTE]
And so far the lesbian characters have all been of the lipstick variety. Even special guest lesbians Patty Duke and Meredith Baxter were of this variety.
I wonder how Dot Jones feels about the revelation. She is an out’n’proud lesbian in real life and has talked about how much she appreciates the fan mail she receives from both gay and straight butch (no offense intended with the term) women about seeing a sympathetic like character, and it must sting that they want to make Bieste a man.
And FOUR gay men, actually- forgot the new football player. And the twin brother guy probably (will they name his sister Sharpay?), but not officially yet.
Glee’s idea of a “butch” lesbian is apparently Demi Lovato (!), and even she didn’t stick around long.
I remember reading that when she was first cast, Dot Jones asked that her character not be a lesbian because (even though she is herself both a lesbian and a former athlete) she felt the big butch lesbian gym teacher was a tired old stereotype. I found an interview with the Hollywood Reporter just now where Jones talks about her character’s new storyline. Basically she just says that this development was a surprise to her and that she wants to do right by the trans community, but while I can believe she’s being sincere about that I would suspect she wasn’t really delighted when she found out that Beiste is now transgender.
It’s 5-6+ if you count one or both of Rachel’s dads.
As for the twins, yeah, I’d be a lot more creeped out by the incest jokes if it didn’t seem so obvious that the boy prefers other boys. I was kind of annoyed when his duet with Jane turned into the second Klaine flashback number of the evening (one was fine with me, two was definitely overdoing it), but since this guy seems like basically a younger version of Blaine then I can buy that Kurt would be unable to stop thinking about younger Blaine.
Speaking of Kurt, given the musical theme of the episode I kept expecting him to publicly embarrass himself by singing an emotional version of Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know” to/about Blaine. “Another version of me, is [he] perverted like me, would [he] go down on you in a theater” would probably be pushing it for network television though. “It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced, and are of you thinking of me when you fuck [him]” definitely would be.
Becky needs to be institutionalized, btw. It has nothing to do with her Down Syndrome and everything to do with the fact she’s a violent bitch who’s a danger to herself and others, and any guy of normal intelligence and decent looks who would date her should be closely monitored by Homeland Security because he has serious issues himself.
When the new boyfriend told Sue, et. al. that he liked Becky for who she was I did not find this at all reassuring, because Becky may be the most horrible person on a show full of horrible people. And it’s not like she’s changed her ways or the guy doesn’t realize what she’s really like – she continued to behave horribly throughout this episode.
And while it’s true that Sue was meddling in the private life of someone who isn’t even her student anymore, I was uncomfortable with the apparent intended message that there was nothing exploitative about Becky’s relationship with this guy. This whole subplot depending on Becky being both desperate to impress this guy and incapable of understanding what he might plausibly believe to be true. Given that we know she has access to a loaded gun, it’s all too easy to imagine a horrible ending to this storyline. But with only 10 episodes to go, I’m hoping Becky and her fella are simply never seen again.
Yes, and that was the worst part of the entire episode. You could smell the smug from the writers or showrunner or whoever coming off that statement coming from a mile away.
It’s hard to believe at this point that I used to non-ironically enjoy this show. It’s just such a train wreck now…
-Becky plot. Wtf?
-Sue’s reaction to Coach Biest. Wtf? Has any character on any show ever changed personalities and motivations as often as Sue Sylvester?
-There are only 4 actual students in the New Directions?
-All the other alumni have nothing better to do than just hang around at their high school?
There’s just so much ridiculously wrong with this show.
After hating the first two episodes, I actually enjoyed this one at least some. It was stupid and silly, but it didn’t try to be anything other than that, and it was also fun. Sue’s face showing up in Rachel’s desk drawer was pretty funny, and all of the self-referential self-deprecation is always good for a chuckle.
The reviewer over at the Onion AV Club disagrees with me entirely, giving the first two episodes B minuses, and this one a D. I’d basically reverse that.
Ditto on all of the above. The hypnosis subplot in particular was pretty dumb, but unlike the awful Becky storyline last week it was at least openly goofy and not something the viewer was expected to learn A Very Special lesson from.
When I heard the opening chords of Meredith Brooks’s 1997 hit “Bitch” in the background I realized I’d be willing to forgive this episode many of its sins, not just because I like it when they do songs from when I was a teenager but because this must have been one of the most fitting musical numbers the show has ever done.
I did like finding out that someone remembered Matt, the black football player who was the 12th member of the glee club in season one and had like two lines before being written off, even if Sue couldn’t recall his name. But I also think the show gets lazy with the self-deprecating humor. I liked Sue calling Will out for being a horrible teacher and a creep (although the Sandusky joke was a little too much IMHO), but a better show either would have not so frequently depicted Will as a horrible teacher and a creep or would seriously acknowledge that this is a character with major issues.
I also thought making Sue suddenly obsessed with getting “Klaine” back together was weird and sloppy. It would have been far more in-character for her to want them to get back together so that Kurt’s attention would be distracted from the New New Directions or his loyalties would be torn between NND and the Warblers. It might have been funny to reveal that she was a secret Klaine shipper in addition to that, but this came out of nowhere and didn’t make sense as a primary motive. And since the show obviously only broke Kurt and Blaine up for the purpose of getting them back together again, I didn’t feel like this situation required Sue’s involvement.
I’m far more with the AV Club guy than you. I enjoyed the first two eps, solid B’s IMO. I even mentioned that it feels like the Season 2 we should have gotten (in tone, not plot, of course). I tended the enjoy the everyone screwed up their dreams and now has to start over reboot that was so un-glee (in a good way) - with the exception of Will (possibly) and Kurt.
The third one was ok, but the whole Sam being so easy to hypnotize is just utterly ridiculous and way too easy of a plot point to go back to over and over again. It’s lazy.
I enjoy the self-deprecating humor and how the writers realize the flaws (or read internet message boards). Good on them for actually making fun of the stuff they’ve screwed up in the past. Something that wasn’t done nearly enough the last few seasons.
Also, can we move onto the new folks please? I realize they are only 4… but the old crew is only annoying in so far as they are helping the new folks build from nothing… you know like the S1 plot.
I never thought I’d be saying this about Glee, but I was actually disappointed we saw so little of the new kids. Even though this episode was about gearing up for their first semi-public performance, they didn’t get a single musical number (although I assume their actual performance will be in Part II next week) and were barely even seen in this episode.
Speaking of Invitationals, Will’s plan for going easy on the New New Directions was to have Vocal Adrenaline throw out their planned set half an hour before what I guess was a rehearsal and come up with something fresh. (I assume their “Rock Lobster/Whip It” performance was what they had originally planned to do, though.) His plan for winning Nationals back in season two was to talk about getting ready for Nationals for weeks but apparently do nothing to actually prepare, depart for New York without even a setlist, and leave his teenaged charges to write two entirely new songs, work out the vocal arrangements, and come up with the choreography the night before/morning of the competition.
He really is a horrible teacher.
It was the glee club coach from back in Will’s day. Her picture has been up on the wall since season one IIRC.
Leaving out that she’s a bitch, Sue was completely right when she told principal She-Figgins (why?) that Will is a traitor. It was terribly unfair to his students for him to even consider taking a dive.
Well, last night’s episode certainly was…something.
I wouldn’t say this was the Worst. Episode. Ever. – it has plenty of competition for that title – but this was probably the episode where it seemed most obvious that the creators of Glee don’t even like their own show or its audience. It was if anything even more absurd than last week, but most of this didn’t work for me as comedy (although there were apparently specific pop culture references to things I’ve never seen, so those were probably funnier for other viewers) and, worst of all, we’re apparently expected to take some of this nonsense seriously.
Last week I thought the hypnosis plot was pretty dumb, but it seemed like it was just supposed to be a goofy joke. Between this week’s episode and the promo for next week, it looks like we’re supposed to consider a Rachel/Sam relationship a real possibility…even though Sam did not consent to and in fact isn’t even aware of his flirtation with Rachel. Similarly, I was okay with Sue’s bizarre schemes to break up Kurt and Blaine’s current relationships as long as they didn’t work and were soon brushed aside, but it sure seemed like we were supposed to accept that her elaborate Saw-like plan to force them to kiss for her amusement was actually a significant step towards getting them back together.
I did like that both Will and Rachel acknowledged that it was wrong for her to ask him to throw the competition and wrong of him to consider this, but it was disappointing that once again the New New Directions barely had any screen time. We didn’t see them come together as a team and rise to a challenge, we saw Rachel bring back Quinn 2.0 so the new kids could be given orders. The biggest laugh of the evening came when the one of the new kids thanked Rachel and Kurt for being such great teachers.
Bad as it was- and it was very bad- I give it props for three things:
The Fat Kid’s cover of Father Figure was my favorite musical number in a while.
Rachel’s comment on how she never got to know “the kid with the dreadlocks and Puck’s brother and the girl with the fat mother”- which is how I think of them too.
3 (and most importantly) Sue’s suggested surefire death mashup of Corey Feldman’s Ascenscion Millennium- “I don’t know why Corey Feldman is writing songs. I don’t know why he wrote this particular song. All I know is that the first time I heard this song, I literally could not move”, a particularly awful Tammy Wynette duet, and… this made me laugh out loud- "Dear Mr. Jesus, “a song about the horrors of child abuse that actually makes you want to go out and locate a child for the express purpose of beating him up.”
Dear Mr. Jesus is a glurgey piece of shit so horrible I won’t even link to it for this thread, but damn she (and the writer) nailed it exactly. I’d even add her description of “first time I heard it I couldn’t move” to that song, it is that bad, but you’ll rarely go wrong with singing it’s godawfully earnest instant camp last line to a group of southern gay guys from religious backgrounds.