Glee Recap: Thank God for High School Stereotypes!

Once the Jewish nerd stereotype finishes his round of interviews with the most-loved members of the cast, conveniently leaving out Puck and Quinn, we follow Finn as he muses to himself in the halls. Everyone knows what they want and where they are going in life except him, and me. But just as you think you are going to go deep into Finn’s character, he get’s slushied and then called the second most clever Glee pun since they first came up with ‘Gleek.’ ‘Glee-otch’. The man responsible for the pun looks like something that fell out of Brittany’s supposed time-machine, which I believe is just an upside down litter box that her oversized cat has no hope of fitting into, especially after it’s third bowl of fondue.

Then Glee gets saucy! Mr. Schuester wakes up next to Emma! Sexy-time! Oh wait, no, she can’t possibly have morning sex. If we’ve learned anything from the Whitney promos, morning breath is a big thumbs-down in sexy-time.

In lieu of sexy-time, they have OCD-packing-lunch time. Which can be sexy if the lunches weren’t packed into super hero lunch boxes. What kind of relationships is this program teaching the youth of American to have?

What’s this? Why are all the trophies in the middle of the room? It looks like Mr. Shu is about to illustrate a point through metaphors again.

Before Mr. Shu can get into his deep, well thought out metaphor, the kids get to catching the audience up to speed on the summer events in a flawless fluid clunky extended explanation; Mr. Shu did not pursue his dream, which is what I thought Glee club was all about and seems like a piss-poor example to show the kids, the guy that took his place won a Tony (salt in the wound) and the kids are the laughing stock of show choir. Plus, Puck lost the plus-sized leading lady in his life because he failed to be cool enough for her. You know the whole storyline about Puck getting denied by an overweight wrestler was just one of the female writer’s secret fantasy to gain revenge on a bully she had in high school. Revenge is a sweet 21-episode arc with a weak out-line by the character. And nobody knows where Quinn is. Baby #2?

Surprise surprise! Mr. Shu brought in purple pianos! Thank you?

His plan is to place the pianos throughout the school and whenever the kids see one, they have to burst into spontaneous song and dance. Which is different from what they were doing previously how?

I don’t know what he’s thinking, wheeling 3 large pianos to various locations throughout the school with that scrawny little body and New Kids on the Block hair. But everyone is still excited nonetheless and they run to their new pianos as if they have never seen this instrument before in their lives; stroking it and delicately testing the keys, clapping and smiling when it makes a noise they weren’t expecting. It’s like I’m watching a modern version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Once the din over the purple pianos subsides, Rachel and Kurt are off to Emma’s office to talk about themselves. Since we didn’t see too much of Emma last season and she is currently Mr. Shu’s new squeeze, they felt the need to have her make a funny with a gag brochure; ‘Me and My Hag’. She then dashes their dream of going to Julliard, telling them Julliard doesn’t have a musical theater department. BUT, there’s a mixer happening for another school that has the best musical theater department ever and they can go check out the ‘competish’. Someone with OCD as severe as Emma’s would never allow themselves to say the word ‘competish’, she would have a breakdown until she could udder the ‘-tion’.

On to Sue, the person we really want to see! What this show needs is more Sue Sylvester. After hearing Glee clubbers playing Chopsticks in the hall, Sue proves that she is the one to watch this season as she begins tearing out the strings and hammers of the piano in a blind rage. Her rage is totally understandable, Chopsticks is the most overplayed song in the world since Big came out.

Kurt and Blaine have “the talk”, which means they are discussing how they are going to win nationals. It seems that all anyone ever cares about on this show is nationals and high school relationships. When are they going to get to the hard-pressing matters like college and jobs and how to file for unemployment?

In case anyone was wondering where Quinn was, she was busy dying her hair pink and working on her ‘I-don’t-give-a-shit’ snarl. It looks like the three musketeers have lost their third because Quinn is never going back to “the man”, i.e., Coach Sue. It’s like she’s been smoking pot for a decade, but they expect us to believe that she has smoked a lifetime’s worth of pot in only a few short months.

Quinn’s part of a new group now, creatively called ‘The Skanks’, proving that there are stereotypes they missed in seasons 1 and 2.

For some reason the skanks hate soap, a characteristic I was not aware of in my local high school group of sluts. When Rachel approaches them to make the plea for Quinn’s return, they tense up like rabid dogs at the scent of ‘the soap’ and Quinn has to calm them with her ‘Skank Whispering’ skills. It’s weird that the skanks have chosen her to lead their tribe because she looks like a mash-up between John Lennon, Janis Joplin and Pink.

The glorious antagonist, Sue Sylvester, has decided to run for political office and takes a platform to publicly shame the school arts department. Her promise is to remove all arts programs from schools once she is elected. Uh-oh! This presents a problem for Glee club. Even Mr. Shu and Emma had to pause their nightly lovemaking to the news ‘sesh’ in order to simultaneously drop their jaws in horror.

The next day Mr. Shu goes to the office for his traditional bi-episode talk with Sue and Principal Figgins and ends up griping about his awkward sex life with Emma. This seems less than appropriate when the real reason he came into the office was to fight for the rights of his precious Glee club, but there was a couch…

Sue makes her standard threat to Mr. Shu before she strides out and begins bearing bad news within the comfort of her very own office. Today’s bad news: Santana and Becky are now Cheerios Co-captains.  The girls shit themselves with anger and Sue gets excited to the point of awkward lesbian creepiness.

Then Rachel and Finn pull some mushy gushy moves and cue the music! It’s “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s, because they want everyone to know that Glee club has “the beat”.  After a High School Musical-esque choreographed lunchroom number, the Gleeks find that their number did not inspire music in the hearts of many angsty teens, but a raucous food fight, which of course the stereotypical nerd declares.

It seems as if their food fight did inspire one person; Sugar Motta, the daughter of the man who donated the purple pianos. Oh look it’s the plot device where the rich man donates a lot of money so that his terrible, untalented daughter gets to be the star of the show.

Now Will has to make a tough decision; stay true to his policy of letting in any student who auditions for Glee club or do whatever it takes to get the existing Glee club members to nationals. Will is all about talking out his problems so he goes to Coach Beiste; since she is clearly bigger than him, she must know the answers. That’s not true. Will takes advice from anything that speaks. If a magic eight ball could speak, that would be his number one decision-making tool.

Kurt manages to sneak away one of the elusive purple pianos to the auditorium where there is a full band just waiting on stage for Rachel and Kurt to do their number. I wonder how long they were waiting there.

They practice a number for their upcoming meet and greet with the college of their dreams. The number they have chosen: A jazzy version of “Ding Dong, The Wicked Witch is Dead”. Did Fox run out of rights for good Broadway songs?

A parade of wack-a-doos performs for us, the audience. For a minute, I think I accidentally hit the remote and have started watching Bring It On, but I quickly realize it’s the Cheerleading auditions on Glee. But this audition isn’t like any of the other countless auditions you’ve seen in TV and movies, this one has a Glitter-bombing. Just when I thought Mr. Shu couldn’t lose anymore of his now non-existent balls, he goes ahead and throws fistfuls of glitter at Sue, like a delicate little fairy while OCD queen films. This is going to provide some hot and steamy entertainment for them later; way better foreplay than the nightly news.

Guess who is the newest student at McKinley high? BLAINE! And to celebrate his first day at school, he does a full on Tom Jones “It’s Not Unusual” number with a bunch of cheerleaders. It seems odd to me that he doesn’t know anyone at the school, but somehow all the cheerleaders are reeled in by his ‘hag-dar’ and are just compelled to shake their little booties off; which the cameras don’t hesitate getting close-up shots of. Nothing like young teenage ass to sell a series!

The cheerleaders light the purple piano on fire to mark the end of the number; two purple pianos down, one purple piano to go.

It’s NYADA time and Kurt and Rachel are full of hubris until they get to the meeting room and find at least a dozen exact replicas of themselves. The rest of the Rachel/Kurt duplicates are way overwhelming, even for the queenliest characters of the series. Before they know it, they have become an audience to the duplicates as they thrust them in chairs and command them to listen. Pushy pushy.

The clones go into a toe-tapping medley of Anything Goes and Anything You Can Do, which has a pyrotechnics finale; of course. Instead of being clearly impressed by this “impromptu” show the clones put on, Rachel and Kurt run to the car and cry like little babies. Kurt manages to pull himself together enough to give Rachel a pep talk, which inspires Rachel to give him a pep talk right back, and then Kurt gives her another pep talk back and Rachel gives another pep talk and then they laugh…

Yay! It’s more Will and Emma in bed footage! Emma tells Will she is turned on, which is a first for her since all the previous times they did it she was just making notes about what needed to be cleaned post-coitus until he was done grunting.

Mr. Shu is inspired by Emma’s libido and decides that today is the day he will tell Sugar Motta she is not welcome in Glee club. He breaks the news to Sugar and she informs him of his shortcomings while Sue silently watches in glee. Ironic, isn’t it.

Sue is super-pleased because since Mr. Shu’s Glitterbombing video, her numbers in the polls went up.  Apparently, in this fictional Ohio congressional district, they run polls every 16 hours or so. It seems that no matter what Mr. Shu does, he can’t seem to convince others that Sue isn’t the best and most hilarious individual to watch. So he sighs, makes his puppy face and turns away slowly, just like he does in every episode.

Glee club meeting! Notes for today: Blaine is in. Santana is out. Is ghetto sass being replaced by gay sass?

It seems that Mr. Shu is a bit of a detective and he figured out that it was Santana who lit the piano on fire and he can’t have that in Glee club; only people who relish a piano like it’s a tool they have never seen before and will provide them with a bountiful harvest can don his sparkly tuxedoes of honor.   Someone needs to tell Mr. Shu that the secret cabal of Lady Gaga fans who have been funding Glee the last 2 years are not going to take kindly to this attack against their pro-piano-burning agenda.

But nothing will bring this Glee club down, as evidenced by their number “You Can’t Stop the Beat”. It’s so great that they are always able to find a song that portrays exactly what they are feeling right in the moment.