This week on Glee… don’t say it, don’t say it… “Glease”… is the word. Damn, couldn’t help it. McKinley High stages Grease, and our New York posse comes to see the show, on a trip that ends badly for pretty much everyone involved. Other McKinley grads have a nicer return to Lima, and in case you haven’t noticed, Kitty is a psychopath. Read our full Glee recap below.
This week we open in the choir room where Will is making some bad life choices. Wow, must be Thursday. In this case, he drops the bomb about leaving for Washington and about Finn taking his McKinley position. Apparently it’s the first the club has heard of any of it – he didn’t cat-on-the-roof them at all. The older club members freak out – Tina, particularly, starts angrily shouting, and Artie objects saying “but Mr Schue, glee club is your life” in a not particularly complimentary way, which is the truth, while the newer members exchange looks of ‘what the hell is wrong with these people,’ “I mean, it’s not like we know him that well or anything,” Unique mutters to Marley and Jake. Tina continues to dress down Finn as the ex-captain tries to keep calm and convince the club that he will be competent, when they’re interrupted by Sue demanding Will and Finn’s presence in the principal’s office.
Sue, due to the fact she’s bugged the choir room’s portrait of Lillian Adler, has discovered Finn’s appointment as the new glee coach and she’s just a fraction more upset about it than Tina. “This is just another one of your ill-conceived, bizarrely sentimental schemes that displays absolutely no forethought and appears immediately ridiculous to everyone in America… except you,’ she says, but she actually makes some good points about why the plan is unreasonable. Figgins, however, points out again that glee is an extracurricular, so that teaching rules don’t apply, though his support of the situation may stem from the fact that Finn – the most level-headed one in the conversation – is apparently taking on this role without payment. When Sue’s objections are shot down on all fronts, she loses her cool, stating that if Finn is appointed, her shaky peace with the glee club will be over, and she storms out, overturning desks and bludgeoning students in the hallway, in a good old-fashioned Sue rage black-out. I guess Glee ran out of ideas of things for Sue to do, because it seems we have our season 1 antagonist back. Cool. Or something.
In the lovely NYADA dance studios, Cassandra July has called in some of her upperclassmen to partner the freshmen and help them improve. Brody makes a beeline for Rachel and as they jete across the floor they catch up on all the gossip, stuff like Rachel’s breakup, and Rachel’s first off-Broadway audition, and Brody’s forearms. Cassandra listens in on every word, tells Rachel that she’s not ready to work with the tough and crazy director, whom she herself has auditioned for before. Rachel non-abrasively says that she can manage it, but manages to insult Cassandra when suggesting that she should audition as well, for one of the older roles. Cassandra then pulls Brody aside and asks him to pledge his life and every waking minute to her as her new toy boy, I mean TA. Brody jumps at the chance, though requests some time off over the weekend to help Rachel prepare for her audition.
Backstage on the Grease set, Tina – who’s apparently still wardrobe bitch as well as playing a bit part, despite being promised the spotlight in her senior year – is fitting Marley for her costume, which just isn’t fitting. “Maybe it’s stress bloating,” Tina ungraciously offers, but we soon find out the real reason – when Kitty wanders over to berate Marley about her weight gain and genetics – “I usually don’t believe in the lame-stream media’s definition of ‘science,’ but it just makes sense that your metabolism is grinding to a halt. You’re getting the body you were destined to have,” – we see a flashback to Kitty sneaking in at night and altering Marley’s costume. Kitty does try to play a friend to the other girls, though, and talks about accepting who you are, the way she has accepted the fact that she’s a loner because everyone assumes that due to her popularity, she’s too busy. She claims she joined Grease to attempt to make some real friends, and invites Marley and the other girls – including, with reluctance, Unique – to a Grease-style sleepover at her house.
Look, on one hand, I like Marley’s mom, I do, but when Marley goes to her after this in order to debrief and ask when she could expect her own genetics to kick in, I’m not sure the advice of not being a quitter, taking control of her body and going on a diet is the best example of support. I get that Mrs Rose doesn’t want Marley to face the same unhappiness she did, but my first response would have been to say “You’re beautiful,” not “You’re thin and beautiful,” to say “you don’t look any different to yesterday, let’s weigh and measure you because something weird might be going on,” and to say “you just be you, don’t worry what people think.” Mrs Rose seems to have a very set idea of what will make Marley happy, and what’s important for her to achieve, and at this point I’m just not sure that the same things are important to Marley and she only feels like they are because other people make such a big deal of them.
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