SUE SYLVESTER’S TRACK SUITS. Wow, a whopping 8 different suits this episode.

• Red with white stripes
• Forest green with orange stripes
• Dark red with white stripes (in a flashback)
• Bright red with white stripes
• Navy blue with orange stripes
• Black with red stripes
• Dark blue with yellow stripes
• Black with red stripes

SUE SYLVESTER’S BEST LINE:

“Sloppy freak show babies! Somewhere in the English countryside in a stately manor home Madonna is weeping!”

Ordinarily, we hate contrived episodes.  Just hate.  The all-Madonna episode of Glee, though?  Is a rare exception.  Because, while it was completely contrived in every single way possible – how many Madonna songs can we fit into one episode? – it also was one of the best episodes of the whole (still only the first!!) season, and it all was, yes, due to the power of Madonna.

The episode begins with another chapter in Sue’s Journal.  She apparently went hog wild in the scrapbooking and pasta sections of Target (those Super Targets are insanely huge) and then read a few too many issues of Real Simple:

“Madonna!  Simply saying the word out loud makes me feel powerful, even in voiceover.”  HA HA!  That’s the kind of self-awareness we need more from Glee, and from people in general.

She continues, “Madonna is the most powerful woman to walk on the face of the earth.”  Really, more than Oprah?!  Now, as Television Without Pity pointed out, we’re not exactly sure whether it makes a whole lot of sense that Sue Sylvester engages in this much idol worship.  This almost non-sensical, idle obsession is the vehicle for the entire episode: nothing happens without Sue’s abrupt love for Madonna, sort of how nothing happens in Othello without Desdemona dropping the handkerchief.  So, a little weak (then again, so was the whole handkerchief business), but we chalk it up to Jane Lynch’s acting and comedic chops as the reason why the episode roars along as if this all made sense.

.. especially the next part where Sue takes her obsession twelve steps too far and demands that Figgins blast Madonna through the school loudspeakers during school business hours.  When he balks, she reminds him of the compromising photo she took of the two together in bed last week, and asks if he needs a crash course on Blackmail 101.  We think Sue Sylvester needs a crash course in Blackmail 102: How to Leverage Your Knowledge to Get Things of Actual Value, Which Does Not, By the Way, Include Winning a Battle To Get Madonna Played Over the School’s PA System.  She wins, obviously.  Madonna for all.  The ’80s and early ’90s officially make their comeback.

Taking a cue from Sue, Schuester decides to assign Madonna as this week’s timely homework assignment.  The boys are unconvinced; they are uncomfortable with Madonna – we’re not totally sure why; could it be that they actually get Madonna’s message of female individuality and independence and are threatened by it?  Finn tries to explain that he doesn’t believe that Madonna’s songs don’t translate to show choir, which he must know is as dumb as it sounds, or he’s never been to a Madonna concert, or a concert, period.

Speaking of things he hasn’t done, Finn also has never done a girl or a boy.  The boy is a virgin, which makes sense, because he’s still in high school.  Santana proposes that they have sex, so he can lose his virginity (the big “V” – here we are thinking the V stood for something totally different) and so she could model Madonna’s choices in men and impress Coach Sylvester.  Finn, who just found out that Rachel is dating Jesse, goes for it.

More sex: Rachel asks the female Gleeks how to say No to a boy who wants to do It; it’s a very After School special moment until Quinn asks her to “please stop talking; you’re grossing out my baby.”  Heh.  The girls then go on on their various boy problems, and Schuester is flabbergasted, just flabbergasted, that in a high school environment, teenage boys are treating teenage girls with such disrespect.  “The reality is, a woman earns 70 cents to every dollar that a man does for doing the same job. That attitude starts in high school,” Quinn tells Schuester.  Correction: it’s 77 cents (coincidentally, the episode aired on the same day that the US Census Bureau released figures on the pay gap between men and women; two years ago, Dahlia Lithwick over at Slate wrote a still-timely article about how dumb women are to continually blame themselves for the existence of the gap).  And other correction: this attitude starts before the girl is born.  In fact, it started around the time of the Bible.  By the time the kids are in high school, the attitude already has been formed and let to air dry, to forever hold its shape of sexism with a faint musty odor of misogyny.  Wowed by this statistic, Schuester goes to Emma to enlist her support in providing better advice to girls facing the same dilemma she happens to be facing: having sexual power and not knowing what, if anything, to do with it.

Too late!  After a hard day’s night, Jesse tells Rachel that he’s willing to wait for her until she’s ready, because he really, really cares for her.  Rachel decides then and there that she is ready.  Oh, honey, what just happened there was a trick. They hug happily as if they just found out that Rachel is pregnant (getting ahead of ourselves here, hrm?)

Emma, meanwhile, has her own sex problems to deal with, as in, like the high schoolers she’s supposed to advise, she hasn’t had any, ever.  Even Sue picks up on her virginity: Emma’s office is a black hole devoid of any Madonna.  Why?  In a lovely Sue-and-Emma moment, Sue explains, “You don’t deserve the power of Madonna.”  Ah, the power has to be deserved!  With great power comes great responsibility, it’s true.  Sue continues, “You have none of her self-confidence, her power over her body, or sexual magnetism.” OMG Is this the prerequisite to being privy to the power of Madonna?  If so, we think we’re missing a few things from that list.  We are not worthy!  The more logistical reason reason why Emma does not hear Madonna in her office: “I had your, ah, intercom disconnected.”  Jane Lynch does this particular line in her signature pause-followed-by-burn delivery.  So deliciously mean.

Emma also then decides to have sex.  Specifically, she misreads Madonna’s message (guess the UK-US translation didn’t pick up all the nuances) and thinks that when Madonna teaches sexual freedom, self-empowerment, and pride in the body, it means: have sex with Schuester.  “Foreplay starts at 7:30pm sharp.”  Can someone schedule foreplay in our calendar, please?

The upshot of all this virginity is: “Like a Virgin.”  In the end, neither of the girls (Rachel, Emma) go through with the sex, because, thankfully, they realize that Madonna’s message is not: Have sex, it’s Take f’ing ownership of yourself.  If only Madonna’s family value critics got it.  Finn, however, does the deed, and feels underwhelmed.  “I thought I would feel different,” he said.  Funny, we know a lot of pre-lesbians who said the same thing when they had sex with a man.

Back at school, Schuester has grown weary of Sue’s hair jokes, and throws some back at her in the presence of Kurt and Mercedes: “How’s the Florence Henderson look working out for you?” “Maybe you should try a new setting on your flowbee.” Meh, Schuester is so nice that even his insults are from the Brady Bunch era.  Despite these weak sauce riffs, Sue is so humiliated that she throws some kids around.  LIterally.

Kurt and Mercedes go to Sue to commiserate.  In a totally unexpected moment of either frankness or blatant lying, Sue tells them the origin of her hair assaults.  “You know kids, I grew up with a handi-capable sister,” she begins.  She didn’t have a lot of support in supporting her handi-capable sister because her parents “were famous nazi-hunters so they weren’t around a lot.”  With the release of True Blue on her 6th birthday (which, as Mercedes points out, would make her around 30  years old), she and her sister were so inspired that they tried to bleach Sue’s hair with any available solution in their house: “ammonia, napalm.”  Of course, who doesn’t like the smell of napalm in the morning?  Her hair now is so damaged that she is “forced to wear it short – a daily, ongoing pain.” As a result, she pokes giant holes of fun in Schuester’s hair because she’s jealous.  Um, really? We can’t imagine any situation where Sue would be this frank with anyone other than her sister.

Having decided to help Sue find a new look (because she was looking for one?), Kurt and Mercedes cast Sue as Madonna in a shot by shot remake of the iconic video as part of their Glee Club project.  That Sue Sylvester would agree to this does not make sense at all, but, thankfully, the video is so awesome that sense and sensibility are irrelevant.  Jane Lynch is a-mazing.    We’ve already showed you the video; following is an awesome video someone did that puts the Jane Lynch version literally next to the Madonna version.

Despite, or because of, the video experience, Sue keeps her sexy shaggy look.  She realizes that she doesn’t need to reinvent herself, she “just needs to reinvent everyone else,” starting with getting Kurt and Mercedes to join the Cheerios.

Turns out, the Glee Club also finds has a new member: Jesse.   He’s quit Vocal Adrenaline to join New Directions (who thinks of these names?) to prove his love to Rachel.  Basically, he pulls the school choir version of Felicity.  Let’s just hope he doesn’t get a haircut anytime soon.

The rest of the boys (most of them, anyway) go about making good with the girls, presumably based on some lessons about how females are equal to them and shouldn’t be objectified.  There should actually be a class on this in high school, before and after sex ed.  Artie apologies to Tina, and Finn apologizes to Rachel for being an ass.  Jesse challenges Finn to settle their differences with a sing-off, because I guess kids don’t just have fistfights anymore.  Finn instead welcomes Jesse to the club, and says that he won’t get in the way of him and “his girl.”  Sigh, two steps forward and three steps back.

The final scene is a very lovely cover of my favoritest Madge song of all time, Like a Prayer.  They even have a choir, and, breaking the barrier between main singers and back up singers, the Glee kids mix and mingle and dance and sing with the choir.  The only thing missing here was the burning cross.