Don’t Cry for Me, Sue Sylvester!: A Recap of Glee’s “Home”

  

Glad to see my girl, Mercedes, happy and smiling again!

This week’s installment of Glee might not have been the show’s most GLEE-FUL (Everyone was CRYING during it!), but it was certainly its most heartfelt.  As you can probably gather from the title, the episode’s theme was “home” (and just in case you didn’t get the theme from the title, the entire cast hit you on the head with it, sledgehammer style, by using the word, about every 5 minutes).

The “home” in question, referred to a house, in the literal sense, like the one Mr. Schuester was trying to sublet, pending his divorce.  It also referred to “home” in the more abstract sense, like the inner peace Mercedes had to regain, regarding her body.

“All this talk about HOME is making me HOMESICK, Toto!”

Let’s revisit, shall we? 

There’s No Place Like Inside Will Schuester’s Pants . . .

When the episode begins, the Glee club is homeless, due to Sue Sylvester’s commandeering of the auditorium for use by her Cheerios (of which, by now, half of the Glee kids just so happen to be members).  Ummm . . . to be honest, I’m not sure why this was such an issue.  I always thought the Gleeks held their practice sessions in the music room, you know, the one we always see them practicing in.  Anyway, as a result of this plot device unfortunate circumstance, Mr. Schuester (a.k.a Will) is forced to search for a temporary “home” for his Glee club, and randomly decides that the 1980’s would be a perfect place for them to go (last week, after all, was the Madonna episode). 

So, our favorite Glee coach travels back in time . . . to a roller rink . . . and to a previous episode of the show, guest starring Kristin Chenoweth . . .

Yes, boys and girls, you probably remember Kristin’s guest starring role on Glee, during the first half of the season, as the boozy songstress, April.  Well, now, apparently, April is back, and conveniently in charge of the roller rink that constitutes the “only possible” place for our Gleeks to practice (aside from the music room, of course).  April gallantly lets Will use the roller rink as Glee Club practice space.  She’s also willing to prospectively help him find a subletter for his home.  Why, you ask?  Because April is a girl, and everyone knows that all GIRLS on Glee (except for maybe, Sue Sylvester)desire a coveted spot inside the Schuester pantalones (a spot which is becoming increasingly less exclusive as the weeks progress)!

“Come on inside, ladies.  There’s room in here for EVERYBODY!”

April swings by Will’s place, ostensibly to check out the apartment, but ends up spending the night.  Surprisingly, these two don’t actually do it!

I know, Mr. Monkey, I was shocked too!

However, they did sing a couple of rousing show tunes together, about how lonely they both were.  And nothing says foreplay like SHOW TUNES!

After the foreplay show tunes singing, Will goes into Daddy mode, and self-righteously lectures April on how crappy her life is right now.  (Right, because YOU are the epitome of healthy living, Man Slut Will).  And to his credit, Will Schuester must be REALLY good at singing show tunes, because one talk with him is all it takes for April to decide to clean up her life and head out of town, but not before she buys the Glee club its auditorium, of course .  . .

Our Parents are Dating Eachother, So We Should TOTALLY Date TOO . . .

“You’re so TENSE future step-brother.  Maybe a full body massage would help.”

Speaking of pantalones, I’m not exactly sure what gave Kurt the brilliant idea that, if you have a crush on someone, becoming related to them is the PERFECT way to get them to do it with you (particularly if that person is straight, and you are gay)!  And yet, that was precisely our boy Kurt’s dastardly plan at the beginning of this episode.  We watch as Kurt deftly orchestrates the coupling of his widower father (played by Mike O’Malley) with Finn’s widowed mom.  And, wouldn’t you know it, these two fall completely in love, during the course of a SINGLE EPISODE!

Finn, who sees any “moving on” he and his mother might do, as a direct betrayal of his deceased dad, is not too happy with this new state of affairs.  And he lets both Finn and his mother know it, in no uncertain terms.  I love how when a very hurt Kurt sings “A House is Not a Home” directly to Finn during Glee practice, Puck mouths to Finn “Are you gay?”  (It might have been wise for Kurt to ask Finn this same question, before he started going through all this trouble!)

To further complicate matters, when Kurt and Finn, and their respective parents, all go out to eat together, Kurt’s dad starts talking football with Finn, which makes Kurt, who has always desired a closer relationship with his “man’s man” father, extremely jealous.  But . . . wait . . . isn’t Kurt on the football team too?

Did Kurt not WIN a football game for his school, by distracting the opposing team with his hypnotic “Single Ladies” dance, just a few months ago?

I mean that’s gotta count for something, right?  During the episode, Kurt comes to terms with his relationship with his father, while Finn comes to terms with the loss of his.  Ultimately, Finn allows Kurt’s dad to sit in his father’s sacred chair, while the two bond over a college football game.  Kurt looks on wistfully, but with a new understanding of the situation.

What it takes to be Beautiful . . .

“Just for cheering, not for EATING!”

Poor Mercedes!  The minute Sue Sylvester calls her and Kurt into her office, we just know she’s in for some trouble.   “How do you two not have a show on Bravo?”  Sue inquires, as the spunky pair banters with one another, just seconds before Sue rips their hearts out.  (And, she’s RIGHT!  I would TOTALLY watch a Bravo show starring these two!)

Check out Kurt and Mercedes in Bravo’s new hit show “Girl Talk,” on Thursday nights (right after Project Runway)

In preparation from an upcoming interview with a premiere journalist, Sue Sylvester has given her newest Cheerio an ultimatum: “Lose ten pounds, or you’re off the squad.”

To her credit, Mercedes initially goes about losing the weight the right way, by ordering a healthy lo-cal lunch at the cafeteria.  Unfortunately, Mercedes’ “friends” intervene, giving her “advice,” ranging from the bad to the downright insulting.

“Don’t ruin this for me!” Kurt says.

“Would you rather feel bad and look good, or feel good and look bad?”  Santana asks, after suggesting that Mercedes drink a “meal replacement” shake, that will cause her to instantly regurgitate all her food.

“We like you no matter what you look like,” says Artie (good sentiment, poor delivery)

“I’m pretty sure my cat has been reading my diary,” says Brittany.

(LOVE this girl!  I’m so glad they’ve decided to upgrade her to series regular status.  She totally deserves it.)

 . . . and so does her cat. 

Mercedes soon begins starving herself, to the point where she faints in the lunchroom.  Surprisingly, the only person with anything remotely supportive to say to Mercedes throughout this entire ordeal is Quinn.

In a very touching scene, Quinn visits Mercedes in the nurse’s office, offers her a granola bar, and tells her she is beautiful.  “You’ve always been at home in your body.  I admired that about you,” Quinn counsels.

Having had body issues in the past, and having gained a new understanding about healthy eating, as a result of her pregnancy, Quinn is able to commiserate with Mercedes, and provide her with some good advice.  I love the journey the writers have taken with Quinn this season.  She has certainly come along way from the shallow self-righteous girl we knew from the pilot. 

At the pep rally, Mercedes surprises everyone by giving a heart-warming speech about the importance of feeling comfortable in your own skin.  She then asks the entire student body to join her in a rendition of Christina Aquilera’s Beautiful, that, in my opinion, was by far, the best performance of the evening.  (Then again, maybe that’s just because I’m not a big fan of show tunes.)  You can hear Mercedes, in all her glory, here:

After the performance, a nervous Sue Sylvester . . .

 . . . meets with the journalist, who she is convinced will berate her for the impromptu performance.  And, initially, it seems as though he will do just that.  “The minute I met you, I instantly disliked you . . . Twice you called me Rerun, and I was also beginning to think you were a little racist.”

NOT the journalist!

While the journalist initially had plans to expose Sue for her bad behavior, he was pleasantly surprised by what he saw during the pep rally.  Assuming that Sue had orchestrated the whole thing, he calls her a visionary, and promises to “open doors for her,” by writing a highly laudatory article about the cheerleading coach.  To Sue’s credit, she ACTUALLY looks like she feels kind of guilty about all the undeserved praise she is receiving.  But just like the other few times us viewers have been made privy to Sue’s softer side, I’m sure it won’t last very long . . .

• That’s all folks.  It was definitely not my favorite Glee episode, but it had some good moments.  What did you think?  Are you excited about the prospect of Kurt and Finn as step-brothers?  Were you as shocked as I was that Jesse St. James had NO lines during this episode, and Rachel only had one?  Would you watch a Bravo show starring Mercedes and Kurt?  If you were Brittany’s cat, would you read her diary too?

 

Hey, remember that show Party of Five? Do you think Dr. Jack Shepard does?

 

Matthew Fox IS Dr. Jack Shephard.  And I am pretty sure he will continue to BE Dr. Jack Shephard, for better or worse,  LONG after Lost airs its season finale.  However, when the first season of Lost aired, back in 2004, I found that I couldn’t look at “Jack” without thinking, “Hey, isn’t that the guy from that show I used to watch back when I was a kid?  The one with all the hot orphans?”

Dude, you’re just burying your dad NOW?  Hasn’t he been dead since 1994?

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Party of Five was an hour-long drama that aired during the mid through late nineties.  The show revolved around the five Salinger siblings, who were forced to raise one another, after both of their parents were killed in a tragic drunk driving accident.  The clan included, early twenty-something Charlie Salinger (Matthew Fox), teens Julia and Bailey, young violin prodigy Claudia, and baby Owen.  

The acting on Party of Five was top notch.  It is no wonder that many of these “child stars” went on to have major movie and film careers.

Aside from Mathew Fox, there was . . .

the adorable Scott Wolf, who now stars in ABC’s show V;

Is it just me, or does this guy never age?  According to IMDB, he’s in his 40s now, and could probably STILL play a high schooler (well . . . maybe college).

Neve Campbell, who you might remember from the Scream movies;

Lacey Chabert of Mean Girls fame;

Ghost Whisperer Jennifer Love Hewitt; and

Jeremy London, who I always confuse with his twin brother, Jason.  He used to be pretty big in the ’90s. Now, I think, he just does a lot of Lifetime movies . . .

As a child, who was still a bit young to understand the true tragedy that had actually befallen the Salingers, I remember thinking about how much fun it would be to live in a house run by teenagers.  To eat pizza every night for dinner.  To sleep in a tent in the living room, like the Claudia character did (I was about that character’s age, at the time the show aired, so her living arrangements made TOTAL sense to me).  To not always have to clean up after myself (but, if you absolutely HAD to do chores, there would inevitably be singing and dancing involved). . .

Plus, I was an only child.  So I would have killed for a cool older sister, like Julia, to emulate, or a cool older brother like Bailey to pal around with.  And if I couldn’t be Claudia, and have Bailey for a big brother, I would have loved to date him like the shy bookish girl-next-door, Sarah Reeves.  I had a HUGE crush on Scott Wolf back then.  And even though I was closest in age to the Claudia character, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Sarah reminded me most of myself.

Like most teen dramas, the show dealt with the typical issues that young adults face during their adolescence: friends, dating, academics, puberty, peer pressure, etc.  However, it also had added layers of complexity, involving the unique challenges associated with raising a family at a very young age.  Additionally, there were a couple of really powerful episodes, during the first season, that addressed the death of the Salinger parents, and how each character coped when forced to come face-to-face with the drunk driver who killed them.

Because you tend to watch television shows very differently in your pre-teens than in your twenties, I took the liberty of Netflixing the first season of Party of Five a few months back.  I am pleased to report it has withstood the test of time.  If anything, I appreciated the show more, upon second viewing, because I better understood its dramatic subtext and complex character relationships.

Like most shows, Party of Five went off the rails a bit in its final couple of seasons.  In my opinion, it became WAY too maudlin.  This is not to say that Charlie’s cancer storyline, and Bailey’s battles with alcoholism, weren’t well written.  They just weren’t exactly a joy to watch.  Plus, there was that oddly funny, but completely out-of-place plotline, involving the youngest child Owen, and his newfound penchant for cross-dressing.  I guess the show’s writers inserted the story as a means of comic relief, but I sort of didn’t get it . . .

Lackluster final seasons aside, Party of Five was a major player on my ’90s television viewing roster, which is why I decided to give it a shout out here.  And, who knows, maybe clips from the show will pop up in a Lost Dr. Jack Shepard flashback, sometime soon?  Boy would Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen have a field day with that!

Glee’s Noah “Puck” Puckerman – Yet Another Addition to My Ever-Growing List of Current Television Boyfriends . . .

“I don’t care that you are giving me the ‘LOSER’ sign right now. I am still in love with you . . .”

Wednesday nights are currently television-lite for me.  I don’t have any shows to recap, which saddens me a bit (but probably improves upon my ever-dwindling sleep schedule – Recaps take a LONG time to write!).  It also causes me to get a bit nostalgic for a time, not too long ago, when Wednesday night television, literally rocked!  Of course, I am talking about one of my favorite new shows of last year – GLEE!.   

This cheese-tastic, 80’s and 90’s loving, musical powerhouse graced my television set, every Wednesday night, from May through November of 2009.  It took only one episode, for me to become a total “Gleek”.  During those fun-filled prime time hours, it wouldn’t be at all unusual to find me bopping around the apartment like a drunk girl at a bar, singing at the top of my lungs, or clapping and hooting when the first bars of songs I recognized were played on screen.  After the first season finale aired, my typical television withdrawal-fueled depression was tempered, only by the fact that I now have EVERY song ever aired on the show in high rotation on my iPod.

Musical obsessions aside, one of the major draws of the show, for me, anyway, came by way of a certain mohawk-wearing, bad boy jock, with the body of an Adonis, and a last name that sounds like a kiss.

Here are 10 reasons, that I have decided to elevate Noah “Puck” Puckerman to fake boyfriend status:

(1) Mohawk Man: Puck sports a hairstyle that went out of style around the time that I was born.  But he makes it look GOOD!

Nice try, Vanilla Ice.  But SOME things should be left back in the ’80s,  where they belong . . .

(2) Varsity Boy: Puck is a total, card-carrying, jock.  This  means, as his faux-girlfriend, I get to wear his slightly oversized varsity jacket, when we go out on dates . . .

(Personal sidenote – Back in high school, I was on the track team, and actually had my own varsity jacket.  This didn’t stop me from secretly hoping that the right high school athlete would let me wear his . . . )

(3) Underdog: Puck spent most of the first season on the unrequited end of a love triangle.  In my book, brooding men, who want what they can’t have, are a total turn on . . .

(4) Father Figure:  Rather than run away screaming (as many lesser men would do), Puck has shown that he’s willing to step up the plate and help Quinn to raise their baby.  He even raised money to help her to pay for her medical bills.  So what, if that meant getting all the kiddies high, by selling them pot brownies?

That just means he’s a good cook!

(5) Abs-haver:

If I even have to explain this to you, you have no business reading this blog . . .

(6) Shalom Sayer:  Puck is Jewish.  And it is high time that television portrayed Abraham’s people as something more than math geeks and mama’s boys . . .

Say what?  You didn’t know Jews were cool?  Have all 80 installments of my Hanukah song taught you nothing?

(7) Non-Perv Maker: Sure, Puck is only in high school.  But the actor who plays him, Mark Salling, is a twenty-something, like me.  This makes me feel WAY less guilty for drooling over him.  The fact that he and I could date in real life, without me (a)  being mistaken for his mother; or (b) being charged with a crime, is a definite selling point for our make-believe relationship.

(8) Renaissance Man: Puck plays three different sports at the varsity level, cleans pools, bakes brownies,  sexts like a champ, sings AND plays guitar.  Is there anything this guy CAN’T do?

. . . currently working to single-handedly solve the Health Care Crisis.

(9) He doesn’t mind getting dirty . . .

Hint, hint, wink, wink . . .

(10) He gave me this . . .

Need I say more?

Glee returns to Fox on Tuesday, April 13th.  Watch with me.  But keep your mitts off Puck, OK?  He’s MINE!

Freaks and Geeks – The Best Show You Probably DIDN’T Watch (and neither did I), But We Should Have

Before Katherine Heigl got Knocked Up, before Jason Segel spent an entire Hawaiian vacation Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and before Steve Carell endured the ignominious label of The 40-Year Old Virgin, there was a funny New Yorker named Judd Apatow, and a little  television show called Freaks and Geeks.

Although the show aired roughly ten years ago, I didn’t come across it until fairly recently.  I was looking for a prospective candidate to fill my ever-dwindling Netflix queue, at the time.  The show was described as a “period piece” of sorts, in that it took place at a Michigan high school during the 1980-81 school year. 

Now, as you can probably tell from this blog, I LOVE my high school dramedys.  Plus, I have always been a bit obsessed with the ’80s as a decade, despite the fact that I was itty bitty during most of it.  (The Breakfast Club was the first R-rated film my mother let me watch on video.  It is still one of my favorite movies of all time.)  So, I figured this was right up my alley.

The Pilot episode opens with a clichéd jock and his clichéd cheerleader girlfriend engaging in a vapid discussion about the nature of their relationship, while cuddling on the bleachers at the high school football field.  Within moments, the camera pans beneath the bleachers to reveal the show’s real stars: a group of stoners smoking weed, and a trio of nerds discussing Star Wars.  I was instantly hooked.

The series follows the lives of Lindsay Weir (played by Linda Cardellini of ER), a shy overachieving mathlete who becomes disillusioned with her dull life and quickly falls in with a “bad crowd,” and her younger brother, Sam (John Francis Daley of Bones), a good humored and intelligent, but diminutive and undeveloped (his voice still hasn’t changed) high school freshman.  Lindsay hangs with the titular Freaks of the show, played by James Franco, Busy Phillips, Jason Segel, and Seth Rogen (all of whom have gone on to become regular staples in Judd Apatow films).  Sam’s friends comprise the Geeks, who are played by Sam Levine and Martin Starr. 

Rather than creating a glossy and stylized version of high school, as most teen dramas tend to do, Freaks and Geeks portrayed a more realistic version of the teen years, one rife with awkwardness, discomfort, growth spurts and acne.  Unlike most teen shows airing during that time, the actors here actually looked like real teenagers (even Cardellini, despite the fact that she was already 25 when the show started taping).  They even talked like real teenagers — their speech rife with the trademark inarticulate umms and uhhs that characterize “teenspeak” (and, on occasion, my own “speak”).

Freaks and Geeks  stood out from other teen television shows, in that it was primarily NOT about romance.  The “couples” in the show weren’t portrayed as soul mates, star-crossed lovers, or adults trapped in young bodies.  Instead, the Weirs’ respective relationships much more closely resembled those of  my limited high school dating experience.  Namely, they were frightening and cringe-inducingly uncomfortable. 

I love, for example, how Lindsay’s “love interest,” Nick (Jason Segel of How I Met Your Mother), is not smooth or cool at all.  In fact, he is kind of smothery and more than a tad creepy at times.  Lindsay generally sticks with him because he is part of her social circle, and because she wants to have a boyfriend.  Unforunately, I too have been there . . .

Freaks and Geeks also took risks with its storylines.  One episode dealt with a hermaphodite student in a way that was surprisingly tasteful and heartfelt.  In another episode, viewers spent a good deal of time watching the Geeks watch a pornographic film.

So, if your Netflix queue has been looking a bit anorexic lately, and you are in need of some quality programming, I highly recommend Freaks and Geeks.

Oh, and did I mention James Franco looks really hot in it?