This episode was torture, pure torture. The very idea of rewatching this episode so that I can write this recap made my heart cry. In a fit of procrastination, I tried to think of things I would rather do than watch this episode again and I came up with the following: 1. I’d rather watch a sex tape starring my grandparents; 2. I’d rather eat horse testicle soup; 3. I’d rather drink the water in Mexico; 4. I’d rather get lost in Chicago’s South Side in the daytime wearing heels, without my CTA card and cell phone; and 5. I’d rather get crabs.
OK, so maybe I’d really just rather watch Glee again. But at least I’ve made a point to consider that life can be worse (much much worse), right?
Season 2, Episode 22: New York
What I Learned
- Times Square still appeals to exactly one group of people:
Lame touristsTV shows and movies starring lame tourists. You know how when you live in or close to a major city, you start to feel bad that you haven’t done all of the touristy stuff? Yeah. I once felt guilty at having spent so little time in Times Square, so I decided to go to Dave & Busters in TS for my birthday (seriously) and it was exactly as horrible as you are imagining. Not even, like, oh hey remember that time we were accosted by doomsday preachers or hey remember that time we were arrested. No. It wasn’t the kind of horrible you can laugh about later. It was the kind of horrible that you just want to write I’m Sorry letters to the people who joined you, but you don’t because you hope that they’ll just forget about how time-consuming the commute was and how annoying and simultaneously boring the entire evening was. (Sorry, guys, 4 years late.) - Will Schuster thinks this hat looks cool. LOL.
- The only good original Glee songs are the silly ones (think “My Headband” and “Trouty Lips”). This episode did not let us down with Brittany and Artie’s “My Cup,” which is about, surprisingly, a cup. Brittany is OK with it being any sort of cup: Glass, paper, Styrofoam, whatever. Just be a cup, OK? (I went crazy trying to find a clip of this and was only able to find it on a Chinese video-sharing site here.) Brittany is divine. But we already knew that. Most of the glee clubbers, however, are idiotic and make WTF faces during her performance. There is a blink-and-you-miss-it moment of perfection during the song where Santana is stifling her laughs, completely charmed by Brittany’s adorable happy song and dance. They are just the cutest.
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According to Professor Puckerman, you can grow a vagina if you watch a romcom all the way through. I believe him because I now have fourteen vaginas. And one of them went all dentata on me. (Don’t ask which movie did that.)
- Girls totally have pillow fights when alone together. Yup.
- Broadway ushers are TV’s new magical negro. (Word of advice: Don’t do a Google Image search of “magical negro.” Yikes.)
- New York looks good on Finn. For the first time, I thought he was kind of sexy. I’ll take a chance on you. All over your body, that is. (Did I do that right?)
- Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss Sam and Mercedes are an item!!!! I don’t understand their secrecy. Is this going to be a race issue next season or something? Just throwin’ darts here.
What I Haven’t Learned/Remaining Questions
- This question persists: Why is Will Schuster the worst show choir coach that ever existed? Never mind the fact that the original song idea is just terrible in every way. Never mind the fact that he leaves a dozen 16 year olds unsupervised on their very first day in the city for god-only-knows-how-long. No. None of that bothers me. (Actually, both of those things bother me.) But what really gets my fucking goat is that not only has New Directions not spent the few weeks before Nationals relentlessly practicing their routine, but they arrive in New York the weekend of the competition without having any songs or dances prepared. NOTHING. Not only is he setting his kids up for failure, a huge embarrassing failure, but it basically tells us that songwriters and choreographers are getting paid to do what a bunch of ratty ass Ohio teenagers can do in a day or two. THE NERVE. Anyway, he feels guilty about his plan to leave Lima’s high school to be in April Rhodes’ Broadway play and decides not to. Um, WHAT. Is he an idiot or the biggest idiot?
- Another persisting question: Why do they continue to do mash-ups when they are consistently ear-bleedingly bad? That mess of a “New York” song was just, ugh, there are no words. Honestly, I didn’t even realize that those were real songs that already existed because I was so distracted by the awful rhymes (like “dork” rhyming with “New York” and “sad” rhyming with “mad” and “glad,” the last three referring to how other cities make them feel). But oh dear god, it’s from a terrible Madonna song that I didn’t even know was real and now I’m sad for the world because it is real. Is this real life? Yes it is, and I’m sorry for it. God, and people out there tell me that Lady Gaga is a poor man’s Madonna. GTFO.
- Will singing Matthew Morrison’s song–will it cause a break in the space-time continuum in the Gleeverse?
- Why is it that whenever Rachel and Finn sing a duet, they just walk back and forth toward each other and away from one another? Just walking. Walking. Walking back and forth. Walking back and forth together forever. Mouth-breathing and walking and singing and walking and singing and mouth-breathing and over-emoting and walking. And singing.
Miscellaneous
- There is literally no way that Rachel Berry wouldn’t know that Cats isn’t on Broadway anymore. THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY.
- The glee boys singing “Bella Notte” with the accordion (swoon!) as Finn and Rachel stroll down a NYC street, but in a real musical kind of way, with neither Finn nor Rachel actually seeing/hearing them, is exactly the sort of thing I do want to see in Glee. It was charming and cute, and it takes us out of reality a bit. Yes, Glee writers, yes. Remind us that this is a musical and that we should suspend belief! When everything is an actual performance, then the audience starts to expect for everything to make sense all of the time. You’ve made me this way, Glee, is what I’m saying.
- Kurt’s pompadour is amazing. He makes Rachel a better (read: more fashionable) girl. How adorable was their Breakfast at Tiffany’s? How annoying was their Wicked song? (OK, well I never saw Wicked so it was mostly irrelevant to me. I just felt like being an asshole about it.)
- Whenever any of the show choirs sing R&B songs like Usher’s “Yeah,” I can feel all of the fun slip coldly from my soul, never to return again. This time it was sung by a bunch of lovely girls in Grecian dresses. And no sense was made on this day (seems like a Tuesday night theme, doesn’t it Glee?).
- Why is Brittany the sweetest? She is so casual about admitting how much she loves everyone in Glee Club, including Santana (who she loves more than anyone else in the world). If I continue to watch this show next season, I assure you that it’s 90% for Brittany. (The other 10% is Puck. I just like eye candy and sweetness, OK?)
This episode worked so poorly as a season finale because the arc leading up to Nationals was a weak one. Why should the audience feel invested in it when the glee club seemed barely invested in it? As I said earlier, they didn’t even have a song until (presumably) the day before the competition. Even in a musical’s warped reality, it’s absurd and foolish–especially when you consider that they pulled a similar OMG We Have To Change Our Entire Song Lineup At The Last Moment in the first season. The only other arcs this season were the Rachel and Finn will-they-or-won’t-they (of course they will, dummies), and the Kurt being bullied and his blossoming gay love life. Rachel and Finn’s kiss during the performance was obviously so obnoxious and boring and dumb. The glee clubbers blamed their loss on the kiss but fuck that! It was because they sang stupid, trite original songs written by a bunch of starry-eyed teenagers the day before the competition and thus weren’t fucking prepared. THEY WEREN’T PREPARED FOR A NATIONAL COMPETITION. Period. Thank god the writers didn’t treat the audience like a bunch of idiots, I guess. No wonder they threw in that Blaine and Kurt “I love you” scene. The teenage fans eat that shit up.