Glee, the Super Bummed Episode.

I’m warning you right now, this isn’t going to be pretty. You guys know me… I LOVE this show. I would MARRY this show. I will always give Glee a biased benefit of the doubt, but WHY did they feel the need to air an episode after the Super Bowl? Huh? Whyyyyyy? I’m displaying the back of my hand! Tell me!!! I knew they were going to do this, but somehow I didn’t believe it until the one eye that was barely open after too many beers and potato skins saw a fuzzy cheerio dance number. And the rest of it is blurry too but I do remember scrunching my nose a lot… To be fair, I’m gonna watch it again right now, and maybe it was because I was drunk and angry but this episode bore the ranch stained pants off of ol’ Birschtalk! I don’t know which was worse. This episode, or the Black Eyed Peas halftime show… Actually, I take that back. NOTHING and I mean nothin’, can stoop to the mediocrity of those horrible sell-outs, especially my precious Glee…

BUT-

Was this episode representative of the Golden Globe’s 2011 “Best Television Series- Musical of Comedy?”

The “Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle” ep opens in a gay club, I mean, the McKinley gym. Sue’s running a cheerio rehearsal of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” Lots of fire and blue wigs and BMX bikes happening… I did laugh out loud when a few of the cheerios lead the group with sparkler boobies. Still, all spectacle and no heart… I gotta go with Sue on this one. BORING.

Anybody got a light?

Quinn tells Sue that in order to make things more exciting, she’ll that she’ll have to find a way to top herSELF. I don’t think anyone is a bigger top than Sue Sylvester, but let’s see how she tries on-

glee

At a big McKinley football game, the team is in a huddle. Karofsky is being homophobic of course and when Finn calls him out on it he threatens not to protect Finn. That gets to Finn’s head during the next play and a big fumble costs them the game. In the locker room, the Beiste’s voice gets all death metal on the guys and she wants to know what “happened out there.” Then the ugly football players make fun of the hot football players for being in glee club.

This causes a big fight and Karfosky tells the Bieste he’s not blocking for Finn. She tells the guys they’re all a “buncha big babies.” Or maybe the devil said that. Or Tom Waits. We can’t be sure.

Sue confesses to her diary that she’s at a loss as to how to outdo herself but then she sees a cannon in a cartoon. Next thing ya know, she’s shaking hands with a carny and excited to stuff a cheerio down her newly acquired toy. They should just use Artie. Less risk.

In the halls, Artie gets gang-slusheed by what seems like the entire defensive line, even despite playing the wheelchair card… Shue and the Beiste are talking about just that kind of bullying in the teacher’s lounge. The Beiste is concerned that they’re not gonna win the championships cause the guys don’t respect each other. This gives Shue and idea. I thought the Beiste eating a whole chicken and carton of milk was a nice touch!

Artie rolls into the choir room, covered in slushee. The glang is outraged and Finn’s about to kick some bully ass, but he doesn’t have to go very far cause the gaggle of giant letterman jackets traverse onto enemy territory right into the room! The Beiste and Goody Two Shues tell the whole group that the rest of the football team is going to have to join glee for one week. Nobody on either side wants this, of course, and Shue asks Rachel and Puck (to Finn’s surprise) to perform a number they’ve been working on. They sing Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now.” Maaan, I tell ya, if I wasn’t so annoyed at the horribly unromantic lyrics, I’d of fallen asleep. Please. For the love of GAWD, don’t ever tell anyone you’re “a little drunk and you need them.” Unless you don’t… The song ends and I’m startled awake from being half asleep cause Puck is going after one of the uglies with his guitar for making fun him…

At the trophy case, Puck apologizes to Finn for being a terrible best friend in the past. He only sang that snooze fest of a number with Rachel cause she wanted to make Finn jealous. Puck convinces Finn that they’ll need to become best buds again if they’re gonna win the football championship and Finn agrees. Then camera focuses on a trophy in the case that says “That makes no sense, MVP.” No, it didn’t… But it should have…

At Cheerio practice, Sue introduces the cannon to the girls and tells Brittany she’s the lucky cannon ball. Brittany voices her concern and Sue performs an unconvincing test run with a dummy. And I don’t mean Brittany. I mean an actual dummy.

“Ladies, my SUEclear weapon…. Put it on vibrate mode.”

For once in his life, Figgins tells Sue she can’t do something, and Sue goes ape shit. And I mean just bat shit crazy. This was actually my favorite part of the entire ep. One of my favorite things Glee does ever is when Sue pushes an unknowing student in the hall. The awesomeness of this particular rant was that it continued even once we thought it was over. Shue is telling the Bieste about Sue’s shenanigans when she busts into the locker room and keeps the awesome tirade train a chuggin’! Once Sue finally gets to the end of the tracks she tells Bieste and Shue that she had the cheerio competition moved to the same night of the football championship so they won’t have a halftime show… Shue’s solution? Have the football players do it. Naturally… Wait. What? Where’s that “That Makes No Sense, MVP” trophy? Shue tells the glang and the gaggle of giant letterman jackets that they’re gonna perform “Thriller” and mash it up with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Heads Will Roll.” And the heads WILL roll. The heads of the the Hollywood execs that decided to spend a lot of money putting up Glee after the Super Bowl. Ouch!

After a group wide rehearsal with a lot of on purpose foot dragging, Shue tells Karofsky he actually makes a pretty good zombie. Karofsky gives the usual confused, frustrated, self-hating look. Shortly after, he tells Finn they should put together a warm up number so they don’t look like dummies in front of the whole school.

Santana, Brittany and Quinn are raving about how well the zombie rehearsal went in the girl’s bathroom and Sue hits ‘em up with resignation letters for the glee club. After being bullied by Sue to choose the cheerios, Finn is upset with Quinn for not choosing glee. New Guy Sam wants to know why Finn is yelling at his girlfriend. The fight escalates from NGS’s “maybe it’s time for some new leadership” to pushing. Shue breaks up the fight probably for his 87th time, taking into account the entire season. It was only like, the 8th or 9th for this ep though…

Per Karofsky’s warm-up suggestion, the football team does the Zombies “She’s Not There” in the auditorium. Which, again, would have been terribly boring if it weren’t for my being weirded out with the zombie make-up. This number, believe it or not, for the very first time in my entire stint spent watching Glee, even made ME feel embarrassed for them. Embarrassed! And I’M a dork. A big goofy dork, and I’m embarrassed for the pretty people forcing their way through a zombie song and dance… Oy. Or should I say, “Uhh,” like a zombie. For some reason though Shue was very pleased and they even get to celebrate with a slow motion “we’re cool” walk through the halls. Not for long though. Somehow the hockey team, yes, hockey team, caught wind of the football players halftime plans. The mullet brigade meets the football team in the halls, armed and dangerous with slushees. I bet the mullets made those slushees from scratch…

Karofsky is pouting about getting slusheed in the showers, and he tells the guys and the Beiste he’s dropping glee. When the Bieste tells him he’s off the football team if he quits glee, he still does anyway, and takes all the uglies with him.

Oh, thank GAWD, it’s the Warblers. Please boys do some of that a cappella that mama likes so ver- oh, wait, a warbler is making what’s clearly a computer sound with his voice. Why are they even trying to justify that noise? Is this a joke? Seriously? Even if they made Michael Winslow from Police Academy a Warbler I STILL wouldn’t believe a human could make that noise. JEEZUS. It MUST be a joke.

We don’t believe you no matter how painful a face you make. DUDE. Get your damn finger out of your ear! You’re not protecting the President.

Anyway, the boys are rehearsing Destiny’s Child “Bill, Bills, Bill” in their lavish rehearsal library and aside from the sound effect guy, I guess it’s okay. A little smarmy for my taste. Although, I have to say THIS is my favorite story of the season. I wouldn’t even mind a Warbler spin-off show on the LOGO channel or Bravo. I keed. Sort of… Still, I think anyone would agree that Kurt’s story line this season is by far the most compelling… Chris Colfer deserved that Golden Globe, dammit… BTW, was anyone delighted at how happy his fellow cast members were at the announcement of his win? ADORABLE. Those were REAL tears from Lea Michele, you guys, I could tell. Trust me. I know these things…

Kurt, Blaine, Mercedes and Rachel sit down to coffee and the girls confide in the boy girls at how badly things are going at McKinley. Blaine somehow knows the regulations of high school football and tells the girls they only need five players to play in the championship… Boy, this Blaine may be smarmy but is he a saint or WHAT? Doesn’t he have anything else to do besides rescue bullied gays and help out the competition?

In the choir room, the Beiste and Shue are lamenting over the lack of dudes signing up for football. With an affirmative nod from Rachel, all the girls of Nude Erections volunteer, and when Shue gives Rachel a lesson in what actually happens in football she says the plan is to just lie there… No wonder Finn left her. HEY-OH! I did laugh hard when Zizes said she was gonna bring the pain. Again, doesn’t make a lotta sense but I’ve given out all of the “doesn’t make sense MVP” trophies by now so I’m gonna just be happy that now they can play in the championship football game…

Sue guilts Brittany into signing up to be a human cannon ball. The selfless Brittany is only ever thinking about the children. The little cannon children.

At the championship, McKinley is getting their cute girl butts handed to them. Again, Zizes makes me laugh with a deep voiced “you’re gonna die,” to the opposing team. Finn gets an idea at halftime. He asks Puck to rally the gaggle of giant letterman jackets and tells NGS to play QB for the rest of the game. Then he tracks down Quinn, Brittany and Santana and gets them to thrown in the pom poms, even despite Sue practically begging them to stay.

Puck talks the giant letterman jackets into doing the halftime show so they can play in the rest of the game. That takes us into the big halftime “Thriller/Heads Will Roll” mash-up ultimate mega epic mammoth extravaganza bla blee blah dee dah show… Which. I. REALLY. Liked. Maybe it’s cause I already love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but this big to do really worked for me. The only thing I didn’t like was Karfoksy joining in…

After the half, the living dead take the field and bring the McKinley football team back to life.

Gimme a “uh,” and an “uh.”

Still it looks like McKinley is about to lose just barely when Finn comes up with an unlikely play and the entire school starts chanting “brains.” The play works and they win the game. The celebrating is shown in slow motion silence, a few weighted knowing glances, and bit of piano, to emphasize the profundity of everyone coming together…

Sue is duped into getting interviewed by Katie Couric for being the biggest loser of the year or something made up and silly like that, and she is informed that the glee club will be getting the remainder of the cheerios budget. Which is the perfect cherry to top Sue losing out on her 7th straight consecutive title. I was disappointed when she didn’t spin Katie Couric around her head…

In the halls, Finn gets rejected when he invites Karofsky to be a permanent member of Nude Erections. But then he gets ACCEPTED by Quinn cause they totally kiss in the halls. OoooohoooOOOhhh! I like it! I liiiiiike it. That would mean we get to go back to Rachel being in unrequited love with Finn and everything will be right with the world…. Fingers-crossed…

Well, my gleeloveds, this was mostly a stinker BUT I think it set up some things that I’m very much looking forward to… I have a feeling the next ep is gonna be good…

Thanks for sticking with me, darlings.

Talk at you next week.

Yours and everyone else’s,

BirschTalk

Glines O’ the Week
“To put your toddler fist sized mind at rest, we’ll do one final test run.” Sue

“Enjoying the eavesdropping afforded me by the swiss piece regularity and utter silence of my two pm ninja poops.” Sue

“How many “M”‘s are there in the letter “R?” Brittany