The previous episode depicted Finn apologizing and reconciling things with Santana, Britney and their offshoot Glee Club, the Trouble Tones. However, the “here’s what you missed on Glee” guy tells us that “everyone is mad at each other. They just are, damn it!” This established a common Glee theme that would be present throughout the episode: Just telling the audience what to think instead of actually telling stories [1]. Remember that bit where Finn apologized to Brittany and company, and they had a tender reconciliation? Of course you don’t, because the announcer dude said that didn’t really happen. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
We begin with Puck doing a voiceover about how much he loves Shelby. This is a shockingly similar voiceover to every other time Puck has liked a girl [2]. Puck tells of how he looks forward to 4th period where Shelby is subbing as an English teacher. This morphs into a Glee Club performance of “Hot for a Teacher”. During this song, Blaine and Mike frequently grab their penises with both hands. Out of all the ways to grab your own penis, this one is the oddest. Think about it and try it at home[3]. Weird, right? They also put microphone stands between their legs and parade around as if these were their members.
There is a funny moment when Mr. Schuester assumes that he is the teacher they are hot for and leaps up yelling “Wow! Awesome!” Thinking quickly on his feet, Puck diffuses the awkward misunderstanding by saying that he just likes Van Halen a lot.
Puck attempts to pursue Shelby, telling her that he loves her and that he wants to be a father to her baby. She spurns his advances because she would lose her job—her job as a Glee Club director that is not paid by the school, but by a third party. Later, Puck confesses to Shelby about Quinn’s plan to get the baby back. This boils to an emotional climax where Shelby yells at Quinn with as much sincerity as she can muster, “I KNOW ABOUT THE HOT SAUCE!” You gotta wonder how Idina Menzel feels about herself. Once, she had original roles on Broadway in hits like Rent and Wicked and now is trying to keep a straight face and be dramatic while saying, “I know about the hot sauce.”
With political savvy akin to Herman Cain, Sue Sylvester runs smear ads against Burt Hummell, a write-in candidate who voters would otherwise not even know about. These ads are ridiculous, claiming that Burt has a baboon heart and is married to a donkey. However, the ads are not intended to be funny. Instead they are treated with outrage and the utmost severity because the people of Ohio eat this shit up (because we are stupid). Kurt storms into Sue’s office yelling,“PEOPLE ACTUALLY BELIEVE THIS STUFF! OHIOANS ARE STUPID!” Sue explains that she fights dirty because she has a cause: “I hate the arts and…” This is her only cause. This comes just a few episodes after Sue vowed to abandon her anti-arts platform and make her campaign about health care for people like her deceased sister, who had Downs syndrome. Unreal. We are starting to think that this episode might be an alternate timeline. Sue also brings up that Kurt is going to lose the student body president race because he refuses to go negative, and instead he just campaigns for healthy lunches to fight obesity in the school. This is simply not a thing that happened. Remember what we said about Glee just telling the audience what to think instead of actually telling stories? Fuck[4].
Shelby and Schuester are on good terms and they speak about how they will be going up against each other at sectionals. Apparently, it is just totally cool to enter two teams from one school. Also, weren’t there a few episodes dedicated to a rule about how a team had to have 12 members to compete in a show choir competition? Even with the handful of nondescript extra girls to fill out the Trouble Tones, both teams are quite short. Also, wasn’t the whole point of the Trouble Tones that they gave everyone a chance? Why do they just use the same three girls for every song? Anyway, Shelby and Schuester are concerned about how much their Glee Clubs hate each other, despite being completely congenial last episode. They fear that the kids may be bipolar[5]. They decide to exploit this negative atmosphere and establish a competition between their teams, in order to get ready for sectionals. Finn, now no longer caring about reconciliation, decides the best way to go about this situation is to try to trash talk to Santana. She informs him that he can’t win in this battle of insults because of the toughness she gained from her rough upbringing. Here, Glee writers forgot that they accidentally wrote her father in as a doctor last season. Sorry, Glee. Do you think we are happy that we know this information? We aren’t.
Before the “Mash Off” contest, the Glee Clubs decide to settle things informally with a game of dodgeball. Everyone participates and it seems to be good fun as people are laughing and running around. It doesn’t appear to be a competitive atmosphere as two players dedicated themselves to wheeling the former football star, Artie, around. Employing a new strategy that, while still poor, makes more sense, the New Directions begin allowing balls to hit them directly in the face without trying to protect themselves at all. After the Trouble Tones win, Santana and a few other girls throw a couple bouncy balls off of Rory’s back. Somehow this makes his nose bleed and Kurt throw a fit. He cannot stand the barbarism of this game that he just fully participated in. Also, shouldn’t he be way more concerned with the danger of these flying leaps through the air?
By the way, those flying leaps are just asking to get hit. You’re on a parabolic flight, your enemy can track your trajectory, and you can’t avoid a ball while in midair, let alone when you’re lying on the ground. Also, how does everyone get hit in the face? Face shots are rare—and frankly, quite foolish. You throw low, that way your opponent has a more difficult time catching the ball. As a side note, if any of you make a Dodgeball movie reference in the comments, we will be very mean to you.
We move to the school presidential debate. Kurt’s motives for running started out as just selfishly wanting to add “school president” to his resume for college applications, but later he appointed himself as a vitally important candidate for future gay students at the school. Then he was anti-obesity, championing healthy lunches. Next, he was praised for never going negative in his campaign, despite yelling about how Rachel needed her jowls airbrushed out of her posters. Now at the debate, he is anti-bullying and anti-dodgeball. He declares that violence is unacceptable. At this point, it’s not even flip-flopping, he’s just going in so many different directions that we can’t even keep track. Britney gives a speech about being anti-tornado. This is incredibly strange because her campaign started out with her shedding the stupidity label and being all about empowering women. Glee had to shoot this down because it meant that positive attention would be going somewhere besides Kurt. This is the same as when they destroyed the Karofsky storyline when it became more compelling than Kurt’s. Rachel concludes the debate by endorsing Kurt because he is the only one who never went negative. Oh yea, forget about how he called Rachel a sociopath for wanting to be school president [6].
The end is really unbelievable even by Glee’s standards. After the dodgeball match, Finn and Santana have another argument in which Finn says “Hey Santana, why don’t you just come out of the closet?” He thinks the reason she is mean to everyone is that she won’t admit that she is in love with Britney. Well, a senate candidate had a niece who over heard this high school student calling another high school student gay, and he decided to base his entire campaign on this. He runs an ad that slams Sue Sylvester for allowing someone who a high school student called gay to be a cheerleader [7]. The ad also doubles as a pizza commercial and features a gavel repeatedly hitting a pizza [8]. Again this seems like it should be played for laughs, but it is met with complete seriousness. Fingers are pointed, tears are shed, and Mr. Schuester, who is not even Santana’s Glee director or connected with her in anyway, is called in for a meeting to comfort her. Also, Burt is there. You know who isn’t there? Her Parents. Or Figgins. COME ON.
After the Trouble Tones slaughter a few Adele songs [9], Santana and Finn argue again. Santana blames him for outing her, while Finn says that “Everyone in the school knows and they don’t care!” This school apparently has made a joint decision to be alternatively accepting and awful toward gays. Last time they were terrible, so it is time to be nice again. It is also time for Finn to get slapped for saying something that someone overheard.
Remember kids, violence is never the answer. Unless the question is “I’m gay and sometimes people aren’t nice to me. In that case, shove people into lockers, intimidate them, and above all: slap the ever loving shit out of them.
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