This episode started with a shocking twist—do you remember that slap that Santana gave to Finn? Well, Glee fucking followed up on that shit. We would have bet money that little plot element would have been discarded to the “Artie’s Legs” pile, but apparently the writers thought they could execute something truly awful based on that slap, and execute they did. They took all the emotion and meaning that could have been gleaned from this situation, made it kneel down, and shot it in the back of the head, disposing of the pistol in a storm drain. OK, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the Schue/Shelby/Santata/Finn/Figgins meeting was a pretty awful little scene, containing everything we hate about each of those characters. Bottom line is this: Finn has a lesson plan for both Glee clubs, and it involves Santana. What is this lesson plan? We can’t tell you yet, because this review is chronological. More pointedly, how does he get to just set lesson plans all of a sudden?
Rachel is concerned that she might have to go to New York without Kurt. Of course, she’s a shoo-in because she was the female lead in the musical. Realistically, there are 18,435 High Schools in the U.S., and if only 25% of them have musicals, and we’re also considering male leads as competition, that means Rachel is one of 9217 students. But it’s OK, she has a letter or recommendation from the former Vocal Adrenaline coach! This might be pretty good for another student, but for Rachel, this just means that she got a letter of recommendation from her Mom. Anyways, don’t worry about it, Rachel is fucking in. As for Kurt, he needs to be class president, or else he doesn’t stand a chance. On a personal note, one of us actually went to school for music, and shit like this doesn’t really matter. It’s all how well you can sing or play. That’s really it. However, we look forward to the tearful Tumblr posts from the leagues of Glee fans who became class president, only to not be accepted to a good music school.
Anyways, Kurt is distressed that the polls are against him, and suggests that he might have to pull a “JFK”—an obscure reference to an alleged act of voter fraud that we had to look up on the internet. Well, we didn’t have to, because Glee tactlessly explained it in an aside[1], but we figured they were probably wrong about their history, and it turns out that they probably are. Anyways, don’t you worry your pretty little head, this still doesn’t make Kurt a bad guy, because, as he says: “What choice do I have?”. Gee, We dunno Kurt, maybe apply to a couple backup schools?
We know you’ve been wondering about that whole Glee assignment, and here it is: “Lady Music Week”. Music created by ladies, and for ladies! Spoiler alert: this description does not turn out to be wholly accurate[2]. Have you ever heard Pink’s “Perfect”, and thought “This is great! There is so little art in it, but could there be less?” Well, you’re in luck, because Kurt and Blaine did exactly that. In this shallow anthem about people not understanding you, Kurt is clearly singing from his heart, having had a good portion of his sweater bullied off on the way to Glee practice.
Somehow, this tender song can’t melt Santana’s heart. It is too early in the episode for that, so she quips the shit out of it. Next, we get to hear Sue go through a list of sexual candidates. You see, her campaign has been damaged by accusations that she is a lesbian, she must now find her own Marcus Bachmann. After going down a hilarious list of hookups, she finally finds an adequate choice—who is it? Hold your fucking horses, we are going strictly chronological.
After having been treated to this beautiful vignette of Sue as a sexual being, we are now treated to a taste of Beiste’s sexuality. Well, first, we’re treated to a fun little Turducken joke that one of the writers squirreled away in 1993, serving to drive home the fact that Beiste is large, and not particularly feminine. This is followed by a description of her sexual activity from the previous night—just kidding! It’s a joke!It’s just her describing a workout, but she doesn’t get the joke, because she’s so manly and desexualized! But somehow, she has decided that her workout buddy is “the only one”.
Next, Puck sings a song. It makes us sad.
Here’s the thing, though, he sings the song to Shelby, which Quinn notices, and blah, blah, blah Quinn wants to have sex with him. Exhibiting an odd interest in insect-based zoophilia, Puck posits that he would “rather raw-dog a beehive”. In order to better understand this statement, we crafted a visual depiction of this.
To our surprise, this turned out to be kind of a beautiful and serene piece of art, leaving us to question whether even we would rather have sex with Quinn than raw dog a beehive. THANKS, MUCH CHEAPER CLONE OF PHOTOSHOP!
Next, Finn tries to get Santana to admit that his assignment is “pretty cool”. He further explains about how they had sex once, and that the whole point of this thing to to get her to not kill herself. Because now is apparently the time to bring up the gay teen suicide angle. After softening her up with the whole “golly, I hope you don’t kill yourself” bit, Finn drives it home with a weird, weird performance of “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”. Girls desiring a good time has never been this depressing and it makes us a little concerned that Finn himself may be thinking about suicide.
Alright, put that suicide thing in the pile with Artie’s legs, and lets move on to Sue’s new beau: Cooter Menkins. Dun DUN DUN. If you don’t know who this is, good for you, you haven’t been sucked into this thing too deeply. It’s Beiste’s workout buddy, and Beiste is none too happy when she runs into the two of them at “Breadsticks”. Also known as OH GOD OLIVE GARDEN PLEASE SPONSOR US™. Anyways, she’s understandably crushed, but less understandably acts very vulnerable about it, possibly because no one on the writing staff can figure out what this fucking character is all about[3].
Back on the ranch, it’s election day, and due to issues with the filming schedule, both the Congressional election and Student Council election are held in the same scene. Sue is there, macking all up on Cooter[4], and that drives Beiste[5] to sing the White Stripe’s classic “Jolene”.
So, now that Santana is out of the closet, she’s getting some pretty skeevy looks from guys in the hall. We’re not sure how this is different from before when she was a slut, but hey, Glee is clearly telling us that this is unacceptable. To drive the point home, the Rugby captain comes by to offer his penis services. Apparently, the Rugby team is the new Hockey team which was the new Football team. Who’s going to be the next set of bullies, the Tennis squad? Anyways, the rest of the Glee girls show up to sass the shit out of Captain Rugby, and then proceed to sing the title track of this episode “I Kissed a Girl”. No, not the more topical and accurate song by Jill Sobule, the sexy, popular version that will make more money. Look, we’re not going to get into a whole thing about how this was a terrible choice, because there’s a whole internet full of outrage about it. We’ll just leave this here.
We will say this, though: the internet needs to chill the fuck out about this episode. Yeah, it’s awful, but not really any worse than the rest of this season (or last). The main source of this outrage seems to be coming from people incensed at Glee’s decision to trivialize the outing of a gay teenager, but to those people we say: you haven’t been paying attention. Glee has gay characters, but that’s about it. They are not really good characters, and they don’t do anything to advance gay rights, except by making teen girls think that gay dudes are just adorable. If you see Glee as this miracle show that’s changing the world, then it’s understandable that you might be very angry at this episode, but really? You should have seen this coming.
So it turns out Kurt had the most votes in the election, but someone stuffed the ballot boxes! Oh NO! But just a little earlier, Kurt was talking about how he might need to stuff the ballot boxes! Could it have been him? No, of course it couldn’t have been. Kurt has never done anything wrong, and will never do anything wrong. He is the Messiah come again, and he shall redeem you through increasingly ridiculous wardrobe choices. It was Rachel, she did it so that he can get into NYADA. But here’s the kicker, Kurt is going to get in trouble for cheating, and then he for sure won’t get into that school that we’re not going to mention by name again. Oh. No.
Next up, Santana’s already come out to her parents, and they were really chill about it, but her grandmother is pissed. This would probably be a big deal if we ever saw that grandmother ever again in this show. Maybe they will bring her back in an episode where she dies, and the Glee kids can throw a really neato Wonka funeral for her. That would be fun.
In other terrible storylines, Puck’s kid felt and cut her lip, which is pretty terrible for the kid. However, it turns out to be pretty great for Puck, since the sight of a child’s blood apparently causes Shelby’s privates to become engorged, and she leads Puck in a mating dance that ends in coitus. Afterwards, she realizes that this is a really stupid storyline, and tells Puck to leave. He gives this really nice speech about love, which is actually quite moving—that is, until you flip it around and imagine that he’s a 17 year old girl, and she’s a 40 year old teacher. Then you throw up.
Feeling jilted, Puck heads on over to Quinn’s place, where she immediately expresses a desire for Puck to impregnate her. Puck finds this odd, as there is no baby blood on the floor that could excite such passion, and he quickly deduces that she is crazy.
Back in the Glee room, it’s time for a final, tearful montage song, sung by our newly minted Lesbian. During this moving number, we are treated to images of Kurt being very sad about an envelope addressed to NYADA, and Rachel being very sad about some hallway. When the song ends, we find out the twist—it was not that hallway she was sad about! She’s sad because she fessed up to stuffing the ballot boxes, and Kurt is getting off scot-free, but she’s getting a two week suspension! Now, the only way for her to get into that school is for her to donate her hair to locks of love, and then crab walk three miles! Can she do it? TUNE IN TOMORROW. Or better yet, pirate a couple days from now.