Her Name is Jane Lynch | You know her. You just don't know you know her.

“WHEELS”, OR:  THE SWEETNESS OF SUE SYLVESTER

Sue Sylvester’s Track Suits: Four different suits make their appearance in this episode:

1. Dark blue with light blue stripes;
2. Black with neon green and orange stripes;
3. Turquoise with white stripes; and
4. Dark red with black/white stripes.

Sue Sylvester’s Best Line:
“You think this is hard? Try auditioning for Baywatch and being told they’re going in another direction. That’s hard.”

ties with

“I’m about to projectile express myself all over your Hush Puppies.”

ties with

“[Ramps] are what I call lazy-makers. They discourage able-bodied students from getting proper exercise by using the stairs.”

Welcome to our first review of Glee. More specifically, of Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester in Glee. Apparently, the World Series between two East Coast teams (Yankees and Phillies, blah boring blah) pre-empted a few weeks worth of Glee, and I guess we’re supposed to be super relieved that the adult version of High-School-Musical is back. We are, but the last few episodes of Glee have been a wee bit boring, a wee bit preachy, and a lot bit after-school-special, so we’re looking forward to better, less contrived plot lines.

The first scene thankfully gives us Sue. Sue Sylvester is examining her Cheerio squad post-Quinn. Remember? Quinn the Cheerleader is pregnant, and she still is because abortion is a non-option option.  Has there been a show since Six Feet Under where a teenager gets pregnant, decides to get an abortion, and isn’t killed or otherwise punished for her decision?  Because pregnant high school girls who are not 1000% sure about keeping the kid just need to be taught that it’s ok to abort mission.  Let’s talk about our after school special later, Fox.  Since abortion is out, universal health care can not come soon enough: she also is still hiding her pregnancy from her parents, thereby missing out on the best part of being claimed as your parents’ dependent: health insurance. Wait, maybe even with universal health care, her abortion wouldn’t be covered.  Fine, she doesn’t want to get an abortion, and she can’t tell her parents, so what next? If the whole school knows she’s pregnant, why isn’t someone pointing her to a free clinic somewhere?  Why isn’t her doctor referring her to a free neonatal clinic?  The educational and health care systems fail us all.

Quinn takes these failures to heart, and instead of trying to look all this up herself, she demands that her boyfriend Finn get a job. Puck – the real baby’s daddy – expends the entire rest of the series trying to out-dick Finn, showing what a working man he can be for their non-aborted child. I don’t know where this is going, but I hope it’s towards a miscarriage, followed by a quick unraveling of everyone’s baby-related secret, because this plotline sucks.

Now that Quinn is definitively out, the principal of the high school orders our Sue to hold open auditions to fill the space left by preggers Quinn, to “reflect the diversity of the community.” That’s right, the elite of the high school community does not reflect the diversity of the community. Surprising!  Sue is skeptical: “There comes a point when you’ve got to stop seeing people for what they look like and ask them to show you what they can do.  And as soon as a cheerleader rolls herself out onto the field in a wheelchair, she becomes decidedly less effective at cheering people up.  That’s just a fact.” Oh Jane, well said.

Auditions. Uncoordinated kids who think they’re auditioning for “Stomp the Yard” fail.  Miserably.  Sue goes as far as to call one dude a “freak.” Oh, Ellen, can you please do this during the American Idol auditions? Please? I know, that’s Simon’s job, but how rad would that be?

After about an hour of pain, Sue is about to leave – but, nyet, there’s one just one more on the list: Becky Jackson, a high school student with Down’s syndrome. “Be nice, Sue,” Schuester warns, behind closed clipboards. Because he, like we, expect Sue to jump all over an easy target. Becky jump ropes, poorly. You know what, jumping rope is really hard. Really. I still can’t jump rope without doing the mini-jump between loops. Surprising everyone, Sue deems her a Cheerio. Schuester is suspicious.
… no need to be, Schuester! Your instincts, like the ones that are not tipping you off to the fact that your wife is faking her pregnancy, are a little off. Turns out Sue has an older sister with Down’s syndrome, and it’s all revealed in a lovely, just lovely, scene where Sue visits her sister at an adult residential facility. Now, let me tell you a story that seems unrelated to all this, but in fact, is not: there’s a woman in our apartment who we disaffectionately call Laundry Ogre. This is because this woman, angered by the fact that she has a life to live, stomps around the apartment complex, raises all hell when the laundry room has a little too much lint in it, and in general, is very unpleasant to be around. That said, every once in the bluest of moons, she is really nice. Like, really nice. Like, will agree to have small talk about dryer balls vs. dryer sheets, as opposed to verbally and emotionally shredding you into crisscut pieces. When this happens, it’s the most surprising thing that has happened to you all year. So, when Sue walks into her sister’s room, hands her a little present (aptly, a pom pom), and starts to smile and grin the way that only Jane Lynch can, it reminded us of all those times when Laundry Ogre was ever nice to us. And that made us smile.

Now, Television Without Pity is understandably baffled by this piece of character development:

“Why this, and why this now? And would the character this scene turns her into really keep that unhinged journal we’ve seen her writing in? Would the character this scene turns her into really be offering those bazoo op-ed pieces on the local news? Maybe yes to the latter, simply because Sue obviously needs the additional income to maintain Jean’s current living arrangements — which would also explain, in part, why she’s so driven to have The Cheerios succeed at any and all costs; she indicated, after all, that her tenure was tied to The Cheerios’ winning record — but really to the former? Really?”

We see where TWOP is coming from.  We, too, would have been fine if Sue Sylvester was nothing more than “an irredeemable force of self-centered nature.”  But you know what?  You can be a crazy bitch at work and a loving person at home. Lawyers, for example, seem to thrive at doing exactly this. There’s a scene about three quarters of the way through The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep, playing high powered, high fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (i.e., a thinly veiled Anna Wintour), is in a gorgeous hotel suite, after an industry party, in a bathrobe, sans makeup (this isn’t quite the earth-shattering revelation that apparently is Mariah Carey without makeup in Precious). After terrorizing Anne Hathaway for the entire movie, she is demure, reflective, and protective; the mask is off as she verbalizes her fears about how her kids will fare after her divorce is splashed on the front page of the tabloids in the morning. This is one of maybe two scenes in the whole movie where a little humanity is injected into Miranda, and it’s really all the better for it.

So, we’re hoping that Glee takes a pointer or two from Meryl Streep.  Sue doesn’t have to be irredeemable, but she doesn’t have to be completely redeemable either. As long as Sue is more meanie than softie, then it’ll be all ok with us. And, giving us a little bit more of Jane Lynch’s charming I-Aim-to-Please Grin doesn’t hurt either.

As for everyone else:  Schuester, upset that the Glee club is unwilling to raise money to rent a wheelchair-equipped bus for everyone, including Artie, to go to Sectionals, assigns the team a 7th grade junior high school life science project.  No, not the one where you get a raw egg, pretend that it’s your fragile little baby, and carry it around all day for 5 days, except during PE, at which time you can put the egg in your nasty locker for the 50 minutes that you are pretending to run the mile (obviously, that lesson’s ship has sailed).  No, the Gleeks are to be in wheelchairs to see how the other half lives.  Schuester exempts himself from this little exercise, just like my life science teacher did, I guess on the grounds that they’ve already reached the higher level of understanding of the lesson.  Whatever, it’s still lame. He also forces the club to hold a bake sale to raise funds for the special bus.  The response: “Bake sales are kind of bougie.” Bougie, really?  Maybe they should sell … casseroles?  What’s less bougie than baked goods??

By the end of the episode, Puck laces the bougie baked buns with pot, which successfully moves their inventory; everyone learns a thing or two about wheels, including how to do a full-fledged song and dance number in wheelchairs; Artie and Tina the Asian Girl hook up, then break up on account of Tina’s confession that she fakes her stt-stutter; and Finn, with Rachel’s help, gets a job as a busboy by using the wheelchair to fake a disability and to fake-threaten a discrimination lawsuit against the restaurant if he isn’t hired.  Thank you, American with Disabilities Act.