SUE SYLVESTER’S TRACK SUITS. Just two were broken out of the sports locker this week:

• Black with red stripes
• Red with white stripes

SUE SYLVESTER’S BEST LINE(S):

We know everyone is guffawing at Sue’s declaration that Will has a haircut that makes him look lezzie, but our favorite was:   “Get ready for the ride of your life, Will Schuester,” she told him. “You’re about to board the Sue Sylvester Express. Destination: Horror!“

This is the power of Jane Lynch:  she doesn’t have to be in every scene, or even in the majority of scenes, but what ever she is in makes a lasting impact for the rest of the episode.  Witness, then, Glee’s Fall Finale, in which Sue Sylvester steals the two – only two – scenes she is in, and oh, is it delicious.

The episode opens up with Rachel explaining that she is psychic.  (FYI: Rachel will henceforth be known as Miss Cleo.)  She thinks something is up with Puck and Quinn, and, when she is proven right, tells Finn.  We next see Finn pounding Puck with the same frantic, hollowed-out anger that Edward Norton had when he beat up pretty face Jared Leto in Fight Club.  He quits Glee Club.  Quinn cries for his forgiveness.  Oh, honey.  Chillingworth didn’t forgive Hester Prynne, now did he?

Quinn decides that Puck, Jr. will not have any daddy.  This is what woman’s lib was all about, people: the luxury of choice.  This includes the choice to return to one of her knights in football armor when she realizes how difficult it is raise anything – a plant, a puppy, a baby, whatever – on her own.  If there’s one thing we learned from television, it is, with the exception of an abrupt death of the father and Lorelei Gilmore, there really is no such thing as an unpunished single mother, much less one who chose that role in the middle of her second trimester.

Sectionals.  Schuester is giving the Gleeks his Goodnight and Good Luck speech.  The way this is going, with his can-barely-hold-’em-back-he’s-choking tears and his sadly encouraging words (“I don’t know what the future holds for me or for us so goodbye for now”), you’d think he just finished painting his face blue and was sending his kids off to fight an epic battle a la Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

Emma is now the teacher/supervisor of the New Directions.  What about her wedding to Ken?  Ah, Emma cleared her schedule – i.e., pushed back her wedding to the evening (“Now the wedding doesn’t have to take place in broad daylight” – heh) – to be there for Will.  Er, the kids.  Riight.  Poor lovestruck Emma.  Sidenote:  she looks like she popped out of a J.Crew catalogue, she’s so cute.

The Gleeks scramble.  Who will sing what?  Miss Cleo ungraciously volunteers to do the ballad, but Mercedes steps in and pronounces that she’s better.  In the ensuing demonstration that thankfully did not reek of AutoTune, she bellows out Dreamgirls’ “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” with an Arcade Fire-like orchestra accompanying her.  The Gleeks cheer the way I cheered the first time I heard “Neighborhood #3” live.  She wins.

At Sectionals, the Gleeks have the last straw.  Literally: they will go last, after Eve’s Jane Addams Reform School for Girls and the School of the Deaf.  Eve’s girls do Mercedes’ number, with added hairography effect.  Then they do Proud Mary in wheelchairs.  Which we found incredibly dumb; even if you were going to rip off of another school’s setlist, would you really do it verbatim?  Couldn’t they be singing this song in roller skates or something instead, just to add one iota of orginality to this?  All of the Gleeks’ numbers are up before they even had a chance to sing.

Emma confronts Eve and the deaf school choir teacher and guilts them for doing the deed.  “You’re teaching them that the only way they could get ahead is by cheating,” she schools.  Uh, yeah.  The kids have to learn this lesson sometime, Emma.

AH Sue!  Finally!

Will, hears about the fiasco via Emma, accuses Sue of leaking the setlist; she states that he can’t prove anything, and that when the New Directions lose, the budget will go back to the Cheerios.  He states he’s going to take her down; Sue states, delicously:

“You’ll be adding revenge to the long list of things you’re no good at, right next to being married, running a high school glee club and finding a hairstyle that doesn’t look like a lesbian.“

Ha ha!  His curls do make him look a little like a Midwestern butch.  No offense at all, Midwestern butchies.

“Love you like a sister,” she ta-ta’s.  We do.  We really do.  She shoves Will a bit, taunting him: “You wouldn’t hit a woman, would you?” before she whips around, walks away, and fist pumps the air.  Fist pumps!!

Meanwhile, in a very Vanity Fair-esque spread, the New Directions members are sulking in a green room with the nicest furniture arrangement we’ve seen outside of Ikea.  After an inspiring pep talk by Will (“Sometimes being special sucks”), Finn grandly re-enters to quarterback a sudden death, 4th and Goal situation: he brings new songs and enlists Asian guy to choreograph a dance, giving Asian guy one of his very few lines: “It’s going to be choppy.”  Yeah Asian!!

Stage.  Music.  Singing.  Where’s Miss Cleo?  Ah, there she is!  In a classic example of Suprise Them By Entering Through a Different Door, Miss Cleo bursts through the auditorium doors and starts belting out Bahbawa Streisand’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”  Have you ever seen the stage version of The Lion King?  Well, if you have, then you will know what we mean when we say: the New Directions stream through those auditorium doors like the animals completing the circle of life during the opening moments of the The Lion King.  Good job, Miss Cleo!

The next number is Finn and his annoyingly breathy pipes that have been so obviously AutoTuned and edited that I don’t even know why they bother.  He’s singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which obviously means a lot of things for different people at different times; for him, though, he is getting what he wants: to not have his scholarship and future screwed up because of an unplanned baby.  Overall, a decent cover, but Mick Jagger ain’t Mick Jagger for nothing.

Schuester can hear the amazing-ness that is his Glee Club via Emma’s cell phone, and he is on the verge of the tears.  So, too, are the judges, in their judging room, jousting over who wants to be there the least: they don’t want to be there any more than Ken wanted his fiancee to be there.  Any notion of political correctness that this show has finally collapses under its overly sincere weight:  the Ohio beauty pageant judge confesses that she had no idea why the deaf kids were up there “honking” (that is exactly what she said; we can not be snarky enough to dare making that up).  The state comptroller declares that she will vote against the Jane Addams girls because she does not want to the state to fund their whore-ishness.  Oh, welcome back Glee — this is exactly the type of mocking self-awareness we were talking about during “True Colors.”

The judges finish their deliberations.  Can you guess who won?

Will can’t.  He’s too busy gravely putting on his tie to attend Emma’s now-evening wedding.  On his way out, he brushes off Terri, who attempts to do what too many people do: explain how her newfound therapy session is indicative of her commitment to him.  Just keep brushing, Will, and pretty soon the stain will go away.

Emma and Ken’s wedding looks like it had a budget of approximately $1,000, with $800 of that going to Emma’s lovely dress.  Just lovely.  If Design Within Reach was a clothing line, she’d be its model.  So she sits, alone.  Ken had enough of her obvious love for the man with the lesbian haircut, and left her at their fugly altar.  She confesses her love to Will, explains that now she must resign in shame, and rushes out.  This reminds us of a lot of gay movies we saw in the ’90s.

Back at school, Eve and the other teacher ratted out Sue, and Principal Higgins is about to fire her.  “I beg your PARDON?” she asks, twice, in a row, with barely a breath in between.  We’re going to say this that way from now on.  Will wins.  Big woop.

Thankfully, Sue is not down for the count just yet.  After her tar and feathering, she confronts Will about her Rocky IV plans:  “I’m going to head down to my condo in Boca, brown up a bit, get myself back into fighting shape.”  By the spring opener of Glee, she’ll be ready for the next bout: “Get ready for the ride of your life, Will Schuester,” she told him. “You’re about to board the Sue Sylvester Express. Destination: Horror!”  She leaves, shoving students out of her way.  This is the awesomest part of the whole episode, possibly the entire series so far.

Will licks his chops as he walks into the Glee Club’s rehearsal room.  Oh, right, who won Sectionals?  Oh, right, you have watched television for the last few decades, right?   To celebrate their win, the Gleeks put on a little AutoTuned performance of Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” for Will.  Just as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” resonated particularly well with Finn, this teenybopper song resonates with Will.  He slow-mo runs down the high school highways – hey, when did John Hughes start directing this episode? – and finds Emma.  He kisses her.  My neighbor weeps.

The fall finale is over, but don’t fear!  The Jane Lynch Project doesn’t take hiatuses!  Stay tuned….

Sue Sylvester’s Track Suits:

• Black with lovely white accents
• Dark blue with yellow stripes
• Black with red stripes
• Bright red with white stripe

Sue Sylvester’s Best Line:

“It’s like looking at a porno star in a nun’s habit.”

It’s yearbook time at McKinley High.  Oh, how happy we are that we have moved on from high school and are no longer forced to pose for, then buy, a $50+ hardcover book full of photos of people we no longer remember, or want to remember (read: Please Stop Facebooking Me, Ex-High School, College, and Law School Mates.  We Lost Touch for a Reason).

To start off this recap, we’re going to ask you to imagine this: Angelina Jolie’s doctor has an unsteady hand and screws up as he injects Botox around her eyes.  Now imagine that she doesn’t get any sleep because the Vietnamese baby she rescued from the Communist rice paddies was whining all night about how much he missed fish sauce.  Is this image in your head?  This is how Sue Sylvester looks when we see her – and it is awesome.  Emma, who just finished telling Schuester that she can’t attend his all-important Sectionals because she will be busy attending her wedding, sees Sue.  “Oh, Sue, did someone finally punch you?”  Oh, we love our girls sassy.

Sue explains to “Edie” that she just got her annual eye lift for the yearbook photo.  Oh, Cher, we’ve come a long way since bandages on the nose haven’t we?  And while she got the lift, she also got her eye ducts pulled.  Why?  Simple: she “wasn’t using them.”  We tend to agree with Sue about most things, but not so much on this one.  One really should not remove tear ducts for the same reason why you shouldn’t remove that tiny screw in the back of your TV: it serves some function, even if you don’t know what or why.

Sue then tells Schuester that she did the Gleeks a favor by pulling their yearbook photo away from them.  This will save them from the humilation of having their photos defaced and vandalized in the official school copies of the yearbook.  After a bitter protest by Schuester and Emma/Edie/Eleanor, Sue leaves the table – “You three are boring me now.  I’m going to do something else.”  Heh.

The Glee clubbers are relieved by Sue’s gesture.  Kurt notes the fate of other defaced Glee clubbers: homelessness, suicide. Although, wasn’t that their fate regardless of the Glee Club yearbook photo?  And, won’t their individual photos be defaced anyway, since everyone knows who is in Glee Club?  And why don’t the Gleeks just deface their tormentors’ photos?  Questions, questions.

The principal of McKinley doesn’t bother with logic; rather, he agrees with Sue: “I’m doing the Glee Club a solid!”  We think that one of the writers heard a good looking kid say this phrase, then thought that all cool kids say it, and that is how this horrible circa 2000s phrase entered this show.  We hope that same writer overhears the kid say, “Dude, remember that time when we were saying, ‘I’m doing you a solid’ all the time?  And how dumb that sounded?  So glad we don’t say crap like that anymore.”  We can only hope.

Schuester, on the other hand, believes that, similar to way gay marriages historically have not been counted in the United States census, “not being in the yearbook gives the appearance that Glee Club isn’t all that important.”  Rachel throws it out there that her two gay dads have close ties to the ACLU.  We’re not sure exactly what the ACLU could do in this situation, as being a Glee Club member does not mean you’re in a class that can be constitutionally protected from discrimination.  It’s sad, but true.  The principal states that the only way the Glee Club can get into the yearbook now is by buying an ad, at the very Super Bowl ad rate of $325 for a 1/4 page.  One quarter of a page means only two Gleeks get their mugs shot.  Schuester agrees to shell out.  Everyone seems to be ok with this … well, everyone, that is, except for Terri, who is not happy that Schuester is using part of his public teacher salary to buy an ad for some kids he doesn’t even own.  Meanwhile, we are really, really confused.  Do the other clubs have to pay ad space rates for their photos too?

No answers here, as the show is more concerned with which two will be the faces of Glee.  Rachel is the obvious choice; she wants to be the face of every club on campus so, when she’s applying for college, she will have evidence that she is totally involved in a school whose students generally terrorize her.  Schuester asks her to recruit a co-leader, and Rachel agrees in part because she has “65 proposals” to implement.  What, are we watching Marie Claire all of a sudden?

Witness the leadership buck being passed: first, Mercedes refuses, citing Kwanzaa prep.  Next, Artie is a no go because, apparently, the composition of the photo will be thrown off if he’s sitting in his wheelchair while she stands.  This reminds us of something we learned from Kristina Wong at last night’s Diane Meyer exhibit about being car-less in LA: even though the car-less generally would not like to be discriminated against by the car-ed, it is an awfully convenient crutch to get out of doing things people ask you to do.  Brittany’s the only one who honestly states that she can’t be in the photo because she doesn’t want to deface herself.

Rachel finally convinces Finn to be co-leader.  She schedules a lesson with him on Smiling 101 and assigns, um, Lily Allen’s Smile?  How will singing about a future ex-girlfriend’s delight in his misery help him smile?  Glee, you guys know what this song is about, right?  Instead of this useless exercise, Rachel needs to give him real pointers, like Mr. Jay does.  For example, Finn, you look goofy when you smile too big and show too much teeth, so be aware of both.  Practice in the mirror.  Don’t slouch, because you need to show off your football-y broad shoulders.  We need fierce, not dunce.  Also, as much as we give props to these kids’ amazing voices, this cover of “Smile” is probably the worst cover we’ve heard, particularly in light of this song’s approximately one million trillion covers, mixes, and mash-ups.  Listen to Ms. Allen doing it right with nothing other than an guitar:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And, because there was an enormous period of our lives when everything Lily Allen made sense to us, here is another Lily Allen video for your viewing pleasure.  Flutter.

When it counts, Finn flakes.  He’s a no show at the shoot.  Sigh, there are so many this world.  Rachel, understandably, is sorely disappointed, and needs a Twix moment.  She tells herself that she needs to “stop being defined by people who disappoint you.”  There are moments of bad writing on this show, and there are golden good ones, like that.  We need to take that advice.  She then shows fierce for the camera and convinces the photographer to cast the Glee Club in his commercial for a mattress store.   She theorizes that this will be great for the Glee Clubbers, because “no one messes with celebrities or defaces their pictures.”  Oh honey.  So much to learn.

The mattress company is very excited about the Gleeks, so excited that they apparently do not: 1) verify with McKinley that this last-minute casting is permitted; 2) determine whether it is actually legal to make a business deal with high school students; 2a) discuss waiver form issues with McKinley, so they know who would be liable for what should something go wrong; and 3) raise the fact that the Glee Clubbers, sans teacher supervisor, is a little odd.  Yes, so excited.  The mattress shoot itself involves a lot of mattress jumping and a rendition of Van Halen’s “Jump.”  It’s kind of cool, but, really, it just reminded us of how absolutely effing amazing OK GO’s “Here It Goes Again” music video was.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sue sees the commercial after finishing a “Sue’s Corner” segment.

All I want is one day out of the year where I am not visually assaulted by uglies and fatties. … Friday after Christmas, which I have off, if you’re hideous, stay at home.  Spend the entire day watching home videos of a time when you weren’t too repulsive for me to look at.

And that’s how Sue C’s it.  Yeah!  On her way out, she tells Andrea the Anchor: “That Sue’s Corner I just did?  I was talking about you.”  HA!

Schuester, meanwhile, does not see the commercial, because he is super busy at home discovering that his wife has been faking the pregnancy this entire time.  The cat’s finally out of the bag, ladies, gents, and all in between and beyond.  Now, there are all sorts of people who are crying “Emmy, Emmy!” for Matthew Morrison’s pretty great performance in this scene, the way the audience at Carnegie Hall demanded, “Encore! Encore!” when Judy Garland left the stage.  Don’t fret, Matthew Morrison lovers: it took Gillian Anderson too long to get her Emmy for The X-Files, and, in what might be the biggest robbery since the Academy foolishly voted for Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich over Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream in the Best Actress category, Battlestar Galactica was never, ever recognized by The Powers That Be.  Given the enormous build up and the amount of time devoted to this dumb plot line, the climax here was a bit disappointing: it felt a bit rushed.  We can’t put our finger on it, but there was some oomph lacking.  Just to contrast, this scene between Roseanne and Dan left us feeling chilled, like we watched the last fight between our parents before they decide to Divorce.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In an interview with the LA Times, the actress who plays Terri hopes that this fight gives us positive insight and/or pity for her character.  Unfortunately, it really didn’t, although we – like Emma at the end of the episode – acknowledge that people do stupid things for desperate reasons.  For example, relentlessly overusing auto-tune during music numbers.

Schuester seeks refuge in his office.  This says a lot about his social life, and also this writer’s, since that is where I used to go too.  He grabs one of the mattresses given to Gleeks for their commercial work and sleeps/soils on it.  Problem is, as Sue points out, accepting any payment negates Glee Club’s amateur status, which disqualifies them from the amateurs-only Sectionals.  Schuester points out that this whole ordeal was just an “innocent mistake”; Sue shoots right back at him: “What if I were to ‘innocently’ murder you, Will?  I’d still have to go to trial.”  Oh, snap.  What did we say about sassy girls?

The principal correctly notes that the mistake doesn’t matter (it’s true; outside of a self-defense situation, you’d get second-degree or manslaughter even if the killing was innocent) and, further, they can’t return all of the mattresses to rectify the situation because it was used.  (This also is so, so true – we have tried oh so hard to give away our used mattresses, but no one wants them.  We’re clean, honest.).  Schuester gets DQ’ed.  This leads to an awesome Sue Sylvester Dear Journal moment:

Quinn comes in to Sue’s office spoil the victor.  She calls Sue on being a hypocrite – turns out Sue always has gotten the Cheerios free swag, from shoes to hair treatments.  Quinn successfully blackmails Sue into giving up a page from the Cheerio’s six page spread to Glee, for free.  She severs all ties with Cheerios on her way out by inverting a lesson from Marx (Groucho, not Karl – what do you think you’re reading?):  “I don’t want to be on a team where I only appear to belong. I’d rather be part of a club that’s proud to have me – Glee Club.”

The episode ends with Emma somewhat suggesting that Will not leave his wife, and the footballers defacing Glee’s yearbook page.  Is it the end of the year already?

SUE SYLVESTER’S TRACK SUITS:

• Red with black and white stripes
• Blue on light blue stripes
• Black and yellow stripes
• Black and white piping

SUE SYLVESTER’S BEST LINE: “If there’s anything on that list that involves demeaning, fruity hair tossing, I’m cutting it!”

This week’s episode of Glee presents us with a problem.  On one hand, we love Jane Lynch.   Obviously.  We are happy, oh so very happy, that Glee showcases her talents and that she’s finally getting recognition for the outstanding talent that she is.  On the other hand, sometimes Glee just sucks.  There are wonderful episodes, and there are others stuck in sap like the dinosaur fly in Jurassic Park, and thus make us want to vomit pretty, scented flowers.  “True Colors” was on that side of the maple tree.

This episode’s word of the day is distract, and all derivatives thereof.  Scream when you hear it, because you will feel like it.

The episode opens with Sue Sylvester announcing that she has been named “Cheerleading Coach of the Decade” by Splits magazine and, unrelatedly, wants the set list for Glee Club’s sectional performance as part of her co-artistic director duties.   After Sue asks him for the names of McKinley’s competitors (Jane Addams Academy and the School for the Deaf), including zip code, please, Schuester suspects Sue of leaking Glee Club intel to the rival schools.  He goes to the Jane Addams Academy to ask the principal (Eve) straight up what’s up.

Turns out the Jane Addams Academy is little more than a Mini-Supermax for Pre-Incarcerated Girls.  We know this in part by the handi-cam that is used to document Schuester’s entrance, pat-down, and sign-in at the school.  From one of our experiences visiting clients, this is just a little more comprehensive than the security detail over at the Valley State Prison for Women and California Institution for Women.  You’d think he was going to visit Hannibal Lecter.

He goes in to see Principal Eve, but  not before he gets pickpocketed by a girl named, I kid you not, Aphasia.  Aphasia.  This after Eve asks Aphasia why she tried to hold up a bank.  I’ve seen that movie, girl, and it does not turn out well.

Eve is surprised to see Schuester, because “we don’t get other educators paying us visits.”  Except he’s not there as an educator.  J’accuse Eve of cheating.  Eve rightly points out that her kids have enough on their plate than to try to cheat.  And, we would add, if they could hold up a bank, they certainly can figure out a better way to cheat.  Shuester admits he made some fairly unfounded assumptions and graciously permits the Jane Addams kids to practice in McKinley’s swanky PTA-supported auditorium as penance.  Eve knows white guilt when she sees it and accepts.

Eve’s girls show up, and they bring with them their hair.  Because that is all these poor girls have.  They should see Chris Rock’s documentary.  Everyone should see that documentary.  Given that this is all they have, presumably, they throw it about quite a bit.  Rachel correctly tells Schuester that even though Eve is their coach, the Jane Addams hair is essentially a distraction from the fact that the their performance was like their test scores, graduation rates, and and statewide ranking: not as good as McKinley’s.

Schuester instead is distracted by the hair, and buys wigs for his team to wear and toss.  Is this both stupid and a terrible waste of their limited budget?  Yes and hell yes.  In a great, correct, and very welcome rant, Sue throws down Schuester and tells him how utterly inane his idea is:  “If there’s anything on that list that involves demeaning, fruity hair tossing, I’m cutting it.”  She didn’t become Cheerleading Coach of the Decade because she had stupid ideas.

Meanwhile, the principal of the School for the Deaf cries discrimination and demands equal treatment.  A couple of deaf jokes later, the deaf school’s choir club is being subjected to the Gleeks trying out their new ‘dos and getting wiggy with it.  It’s so crazy and silly that even the deaf people are laughing at it!

When it’s their turn to practice, the School of Deaf kids begin to sing and sign John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  It is very pretty and touching in an overbearing, deliberate sort of way.  Schuester and the Gleeks eat their slices of humble pie.  And then – and then. Basically, the Gleeks are so moved by the deaf kids’ rendition of “Imagine” that they horn in and sing along too.  That sound you hear?  Is sap dripping.  Sprinting, actually.

Our heads hurt from being beat on the head with the sentimentality stick.  We get that the writers are earnestly attempting to Bring People Together, but executing this lesson via machine gun to the head was a tad too much.  The lesson we got from this was:  Be yourself, then watch as the majority co-opts your talents and attention and turn it into something of their own.  And then win Sectionals and otherwise gentrify.

Ok, on to other stupid plotlines.  In the baby plotline that won’t die, Puck picks up a book for Quinn: “How to Raise a Baby on $5 a Day.”  By Rachel Ray, we assume.  Thus begins very annoying internal focalizations via voiceovers that continue throughout the episode.  Quinn is not sure Finn is the right father.  Quinn thinks she ought to give Puck a chance.  Quinn thinks that she wants the baby after all, and takes it back from Terri.  Maybe she thinks she’ll name the baby Spud.  Terri takes her sister’s suggestion to distract Quinn with money: hire her to babysit the sister’s three little rugrat monsters, on the theory that the difficulty of watching these monsters will scare Quinn away from motherhood.   Yeah, that worked for a generation of high school girls who made their living on babysitting.  Really, though, the sister should be expending her time and effort towards getting Supernanny to visit her home.

Quinn and Puck babysit.  Quinn is pleased with him as daddy material, particularly when the two join to sing “Papa Don’t Preach” to calm down the boys.  Apparently, a song about teenage pregnancy will soothe rowdy children.  To be fair, this really was an excellent choice, and Quinn did it well.  (Now, to get Jane Lynch sing “This Used to Be My Playground” …).  Unfortunately for Quinn, Puck was sexting his other girlfriend the whole time, and so Quinn decides he isn’t daddy material after all.  That was a little disappointing – it would have been been nice if Puck didn’t live up to his stereotype.  She’s back with Finn, becomes concerned that her baby will not have a good father regardless of the teenage dad she chooses, and so gives Spud back to Terri.  It’s just small potatoes, Quinn.

Meanwhile, Terri voiceovers her stress over being found out.  She decides to distract Schuester from her fake bump.  Her vehicle of distraction is … well, a vehicle:  a run down 1970s-ish sports car that Schuester can fix up.  At first, he’s elated and distracted, but he realizes that he can’t let anything distract him from his family and from cars equipped to handle child safety seats.  He trades down his ride for an ugly minivan.  Terri’s back to where she started from: stupid.  Just small potatoes, Terri.

Meanwhile, in heaven, Henry James is trying to think of godly ways to sue the writers for taking his narrative invention and stomping it to death.

Finally, something not stupid:  Sue is feeding the other schools information about the Gleeks’ setlists.  Eve objects:  she can’t be a good role model to her at-risk kids if she’s cheating to win a singing contest.  Sue agrees, but pulls out the race and class card:  in contrast to the privileged McKinley kids, Jane Addams’ have enough setbacks.  They need as many wins as they can get.  Same for the deaf kids.  See, Glee, there is a very subtle difference between explicitly recognizing how class and race are limiting circumstances, as Sue does here, and exploiting stereotypes to perpetuate assumptions about those two same issues in order to make a point, as the writers do by SuperMaximizing Jane Addams and naming Aphasia Aphasia.  It’s a very tricky line, but can the show please inject some of Sue’s self-awareness into its own world?

Sue concludes by telling both principals that they need to take what they can gets: “Never let anything distract you from winning. Ever.”

The show ends with the Gleeks sitting simply on stools, dressed up in solid color American Apparel-like tshirts, and singing “True Colors.”  How much cooler would this have been had the Gleeks been lined up in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple?  Ah, but subtlety is not this show’s strong suit, is it?

Next week:  McKinley’s Glee Club visits a Kumon center; is humbled by Asian kids who not only are good at maths, but also have amazing voices; and are thankful that as miserable as their lives are, no one is as miserable as the kid who must be #1 in each of her six AP classes.  And she’s gay.  Oh wait, that’s our lives.  Ok, for realz: next week, the Gleeks are in a commercial.  Of course, our Jane knows all about that.

So, even though Jane Lynch made not one frame in this entire episode, we’ll do a quick GleeCap anyway.  In a contrived piece of plotting, the Gleeks are paired off to practice their ballad skillz. Kurt, who had a mad crush on Finn, happily draws Finn. Rachel draws her crush, Mr. Schuester, and they practice a ballad around the piano. While Rachel is swooning over Schuester, the other members are having all sorts of interior monologue. It’s not as funny as when Alvy Singer and Annie Hall were doing it in Annie Hall, but it’s cute. Kind of.

Schuester is freaked out that Rachel has a big crush on him. He’s more freaked out when she gives him a pretty damn ugly tie, and recalls a prior similarly afflicted teen girl: Susie Pepper (not a Nancy Drew character, but should be). She was so in love with him that when he finally let her down, she was utterly devastated and suicide pilled herself by swallowing an extremely hot pepper special ordered from the free range grasses of Brazil (I guess she was planning on giving it to him?). She ended up needing esophagus surgery. Oh, those crazy teenage girls, their irrational, silly crushes, and their weird reactions to rejection!!

Susie Pepper stalks Rachel until she finally has the ears to listen. “I’m a cautionary tale,” she says. Rachel relents and gives Schuester some flowers with a card: “Sorry I’m being crazy.”  Hey, why can’t my life be literal like this?  Why can’t people walk around with big signs hung around their neck that say, “Cautionary tale,” or “No, you’re right, I am acting crazy,” or “My advice is right,” or “You must apply for that job, because you will get it.”

Since the abortion option continues to be a non-starter, real mom Quinn and fake dad Finn are continuing to deal with the stresses of the impeding baby of doom, again seemingly without any guidance from any school counselors or nurses.  Finn’s mom catches him singing to the sonogram, which is on his computer.  Hey, that’s actually pretty cool.  We hope the all providers start using electronic health records if only for this reason.

Remember Roseanne’s reaction when Darlene told her that she was pregnant? It was somewhere between sheer disbelief and a volcano eruption. The episode was called, “Another Mouth to Shut Up.”  Oh, Roseanne, TV just doesn’t have the voice of the plebians anymore. (Lesbians, though, they have. (<– That was our only way to work Jane Lynch into this Sue Sylvester-less episode)). In any case, this was nothing like that. It’s hugging, supportive, comforting.

In contrast, Quinn’s parents – who are stereotypical Crazy Neoconservatives Who Probably Voted for the McCain-Palin Ticket and Probably Were First in Line at Midnight at Their Local Major Bookstore Chain to Buy Going Rogue – are very, very excited about her upcoming chastity ball. Oh, first Quinn is President of the Celibacy Club, now this? Really, if you’re going to tell someone not to have sex this hard, then they’re going to have sex. And, do you know what chastity balls are?? It’s a date with Dad.  Aw.  And, ew.  From Wikipedia:

A purity ball (also known as a father-daughter purity ball or purity wedding is a formal event attended by fathers and their daughters. Purity balls promote virginity until marriage for teenage girls, and are often closely associated with U.S. Christian churches, particularly fundamentalist churches.  Typically, daughters who attend make a virginity pledge; a pledge to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. Fathers who attend pledge to protect what they view as their young daughters’ purity of mind, body, and soul. Proponents promote a strong father-daughter relationship as a means to affirm what they consider to constitute spiritual and physical purity.

From a website that is organizing such a ball:

The Purity Ball brings fathers and daughters together for an elegant evening of dining, discussion, and decision. Fathers commit to their daughters that they will remain pure, and ask their daughters for the same commitment. The fathers also commit to pursue the hearts of their daughters by working on strengthening their relationships and letting them know how much they love and care for them. [...]

The fathers/mentors are the ones signing the covenants with the girls witnessing the pledge that their fathers make. The pledge represents the dedication he feels to his daughter to protect and shield her. A challenge is issued to the fathers to be pure in their own lives as a man, husband and father, and to be a man of integrity and accountability as he leads, guides and prays for his family and home.

And finally, an article from Time.

Not wanting to cop to the fact that he broke her commitment before he even made his at the Chastity Ball (men!), Quinn’s dad kicks his daughter out. “We thought we raised you right,” he explains. Really, though, he’s just bummed that he won’t be able to have his date with her, and that Finn got to her before he did.  Her mother, in a typical, sickening example of enabling, sits tight and lets it all happen. She’s going to regret this, and she knows it.  Quinn is off to live with Finn and his mom.

Kurt, then, probably will not get the guy, even after sharing his Garnier Fructise face lotion with him to help him with his t-zone. That’s ok, Kurt, there’s a man without a fake baby for you somewhere!

In a totally random, somewhat inexplicable scene that only can attributed to the writers’ wanting to get the plot moving, stat, Puck tells Mercedes that he’s the real babby daddy. She essentially tells him to shove it, let Quinn carry on with Finn, and leave it all alone. Personally, we think that’s bad advice.  If someone is eating our cookie, we snatch it right back. If we don’t get credit where it’s due, we credit ourselves. So, if someone was having our baby and pretending like it wasn’t ours, against our wishes, we totally be all over that. Don’t listen to her, Puck.  She needs to be wearing a sign that says, “I am giving you bad advice.”

The Glee club members note the ongoing friction between Finn and Quinn (why did it take us so long to realize that their names rhyme?). Instead of engaging in an act of understandable schadenfreude (after all, Quinn and Finn did once spearhead all efforts to make the Gleeks’ respective lives miserable) the kids take the high road and put together a performance of “Lean on Me” for them. How … nice.  We guess.

Two final thoughts: first, why do the Glee club Cheerios have to wear their cheerleading getup everywhere? Don’t they just have practice before or after school? And second, can the producers please, please do something about the massively overdubbed lip syncing? Music videos are better than this. Ashlee Simpson’s performance on SNL was better than this (in a total twist of fate, Ashlee Simpson’s purported reason for lip syncing her performance on SNL?  ACID REFLUX DISEASE. We kid you not.). The show should look and sound like the characters are singing, not like we’re synching the Glee soundtrack with the appropriate places in the episode, Wizard of Oz/Pink Floyd style.

That’s it for this week, folks. Next week: Sue Sylvester is back. At least, she better be.  Coffee isn’t the same without the cyanide.

So we just recapped and reviewed and critiqued and otherwise put a lot of words together to form our very first GleeCap!  You can read all about last night’s episode here.  In other news, Faith Salie over at Double X (a spinoff of Slate) has a great phone interview with our Jane.  In the below excerpt, she talks about wanting the President to get on with it already:

[Q]  You recently spoke at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, where President Obama announced his commitment to ending “don’t ask don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. What was that experience like?

[A]  I was, of course, thrilled to hear the president, but I’d love for him to do something. He has the power to put a stay on [Don't Ask Don't Tell] right now. He can’t overturn it—Congress has to do that. And I know he’s only been in there a few months, but I just hope he’s not all talk. It was really nice to see him, and I stood up and applauded with everybody else, but we’ve heard it all before, so let’s get moving.

Damn right, Jane.  Let’s get it going.

“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.