Glee Episode V: The Sylvester Strikes Back

[Manic]

Some of those people aren't even given that many comedic things to do on the show. I can't remember the last time I found O'Malley's character funny.

 

[Hunter Rider]

Just saw the promo for next weeks, Sue's disguises!

 

[Speedball]

http://www.eonline.com/videos/v101218_"glee"-exclusive-peek-5/3.html
Love how much all them are into it (except for Quinn, of course).

 

[Primal Slayer]

Kind of feels weird seeing Kurt sit with all of them again.

And do I sense Brittany/Artie tension????

 

[Sawyer]

Quinn, get your formerly tubby ass over it.

 

[Schlosser85]

Hope to see Naya Rivera and Gwyneth Paltrow nominated.

Ironic that Mike O'Malley is nominated for comedic actor, when he's probably the most straight dramatic character on the show.

 

[Primal Slayer]

Thats why they need to add a Dramaedy category.

 

[Pink Ranger]

I don't think Glee belongs in the Comedy category. However, if we accept that Glee is a comedy, then any actor who's good enough should be nominated, no matter how many laughs they give us.

Remember, its Best Actor in a Comedy Series, not Funniest Actor in a Comedy Series. That's nitpicking, I know, but if laughs per minute is a measure of comedy, then Glee would not even rate in this category.

 

[Specter313]

It's usually Comedy/Musical as the category name. That's why Glee is there, because of the musical part.

 

[JP]

For the Golden Globes, yes.

 

[mr. peasant]

Some of those people aren't even given that many comedic things to do on the show. I can't remember the last time I found O'Malley's character funny.

Thing is, the nomination isn't for best comedian. He's being nominated for being a 'supporting actor in a comedy' - accent on 'supporting' and 'actor'. You don't have to be funny to be either of those.

Thats why they need to add a Dramaedy category.

I disagree, for reasons stated above.

 

[Pink Ranger]

Thing is, the nomination isn't for best comedian. He's being nominated for being a 'supporting actor in a comedy' - accent on 'supporting' and 'actor'. You don't have to be funny to be either of those.

Exactly. The strict definition is "actor on a comedy show." Nothing specifically says you have to be funny.

Technically, in terms of volume most of Hugh Laurie's work in House is more comedic than dramatic, yet they're not going to suddenly put him in the same category as Ed O'Neil and Larry David.

 

[Primal Slayer]

So happy that Santana manages to get a good amount of screen time in BTW and then manages to get 2 songs two weeks in a row for Rumors and Prom.

 

[Sawyer]

[YT]qt2tMxWR_l8[/YT]

 

[flash13]

April! So great to see Chenoweth again! But it makes me remember how much I miss Pushing Daisies

 

[Homer J. Fong]

A Night of Neglect

I thought the episode was fine - just that, not bad, not great, but fine. I have to say I was hoping for more from both storylines, the "Night of Neglect" fundraiser and Sue's League of Doom. I'm not sure if any of the artists that were sung, by Tina, Holly, and Mercedes, actually are neglected. Tina did "I Follow Rivers" by Lykke Li, an artist I've only heard of over the last couple of days from hearing this song, I have no idea how long she has been around. Holly did "Turning Tables" by Adele, and Adele I have heard of, but I don't often hear people talk about her, so she very well could fit (but then, I'm not really a music person first, I'm a movie person first). And Aretha is most definitely not a neglected artist - sorry, Mercedes, you not singing an Aretha song every week doesn't make her so. And I hope Sue's plots become crazier or more ambitious than just sending in hecklers next time; kind of a weak start (although there were some very funny heckles, especially Sandy shouting "SHOW TUNES! SHOW TUNES! SHOW TUNES!" at Tina, and I did like Holly's speech to the hecklers). These aren't significant criticisms, just notes.

I love Gwyneth Paltrow on this show, and I do think she has a good voice, but I can understand the backlash to some extent, only because there's been so much press coverage telling us how amazed we all should be at her incredible singing. I thought she did a great job with "Turning Tables," though; that's the most impressed I've ever been with her voice, and I do think it's a really good one. It wasn't a great episode musically, though - even "Ain't No Way," which is a decent song and performed well, made me think they could have chose a better Aretha song to showcase Mercedes.

Some things that I loved about the episode:
-Having Sandy back (loved him referring to himself as "what you call a 'predatory gay'")
-What we saw of the Brainiacs (Brittany apparently being amazing with cat disease trivia, the cap-off of the Hermaphrodite Nazi sympathizers category, and especially Artie lucking out with the White Rappers category - I felt so happy for him!

)
-Mike will never be on my list of favorite characters, but damn, the guy has serious moves.
-The Kurt/Blaine/Karofsky/Santana confrontation; I'm guessing she didn't actually have razor blades in her hair, but really, would anyone be surprised if she did?
-Rachel and Mercedes' scene together in the car. I wouldn't want to her to be this way all the time, but I like when we see Rachel be human sometimes, with feelings and stuff.
-Love Becky as a heckler! Sue is really molding her into quite the henchmen. By the end of the series, she'll be a marvelous supervillain.

My problems:
-There seems to have been the intention to cleanly do a single episode hitting a bunch of "neglected" characters at once: Mercedes, Tina, Mike Chang... It kind of feels as if Murphy, Brennan, and Falchuk are walking off saying, "Okay, see? We do still know these characters exist!" Look, I'm not someone who always demands those characters get a lot more screentime, 'cause I feel this is a generally well-balanced ensemble, with the most interesting characters getting the most time, but I would like to see, say, Tina actually given some consistent characteristics, and maybe a Mercedes story that didn't have her just saying, "How are all of you huge stars while I'm given nothing to do here?!" (Her story this episode was sort of funny, but also pretty contrived.)
-The Will/Holly story played out, beat for beat, exactly as I expected: brief scene establishing that Will's maybe moving a little fast, serious about this while Holly is not, mini-argument with commitment problems surfacing, Holly informs Will that she has a teaching job (4 months max, of course) at another school and breaking things off, saying, "Come on, you know me, I can't settle down. Oh, also, Emma's still in love with you, and thanks to me breaking up her marriage, she's free and you should go for it." I would have liked to have seen an episode where we actually saw Will and Holly as a functioning couple before this one, but I didn't expect this to go on long, because...well, it's Gwyneth Paltrow.

Few other things:
-When I was watching Tina's scene, I thought, "Okay, I am going to read a lot of complaints over the interwebs that Tina keeps getting cut off." I'm pretty sure it's only happened twice, but they've both been really recently. And both of them were funny, but it would be nice to have her get a full number. However, unlike "My Funny Valentine," "I Follow Rivers" was done as a full studio number.
-We haven't seen Jacob in a while. Jacob Ben Israel is not a character I would want to see that often, but in small doses, he's fun...Actually, fun might still not be the word.
-Also not enjoyable on a regular basis but "fun" in small doses: Terri. Bringing her on for a few shows at the end of a season is a good move, but I do not want her to become a regular again.
-I've seen that Sunshine has some big fans...I don't really get that. She's appeared in only two episodes now, and I know that Charice has a singing career outside Glee, and she has an awesome voice, and Sunshine has an appealing quality about her, a sweetness, but I don't see much of anything in that character that could warrant having fans (or haters, but still).

It was a somewhat disappointing episode for the first one after a break (a break that felt a lot longer than it was), a filler show, but it had some great moments. But hey, any episode with Sandy Ryerson AND Rod Remington can't be bad.



Born This Way

I did like "Born This Way" a lot, although it's not among my favorites of the season (I think the comments I've seen/heard saying it's a return to form/reminds them of the first thirteen are overblown, though - plus, I've become really sick of how the first thirteen are so immortalized). What surprised and disappointed me, however, is that this did not need to be a 90-minute episode. Glee usually stuffs so much in that I'd assumed it'd benefit from the extra room, but it didn't really. We did get full song performances and maybe an extra storyline - I don't know that there would have been time for Emma's story otherwise. For a couple of the songs, it was nice to get more time; for others, not so much; I love Kurt, Chris Colfer obviously has an extraordinary voice, and his performance of "As If We Never Said Goodbye" was something special. Four minutes into it, though, when I was figuratively checking my watch (I have neither a watch nor good enough eyesight to be able to check it, but you see my point)...well, that's not a good sign. "Unpretty/I Feel Pretty" and "Somewhere Only We Know" were the two best songs, so those benefited from a little more time.

The "Unpretty/I Feel Pretty" mash-up was really fantastic; it was so great to hear Quinn sing again, not just in a group number, and she was lovely here. Her and Rachel's voices blended so well together, too. Plus, I did not expect this to be such a successful mash-up - it did not feel like an unwieldy mix or like they were just alternating one song to the other, it felt very natural, it almost felt like just the same song. "Somewhere Only We Know?" Well, what do I have to say: great song, great performance, moving scene.

It was nice to see Kurt back at McKinley and New Directions, but it would have been nicer if the promos hadn't been spoiling it for a week; I mean, we all knew he'd be back soon, but come on, Fox, did you have to put it in the promos?!

What an interesting roundabout way of bringing him back, though, with Santana deciding she wanted to be prom queen, then deciding the way to make herself beloved was to bring Kurt back, then deciding the way to do that was getting Karofsky to feign remorse and kindness, then getting him to do that was by promising to keep him in the closet and be his beard, be each other's beards. The scene with Burt and Kurt and Karofsky and Karofsky's dad meeting about this was very well done - 'though Mike O'Malley may have overdone the, "Give me an Emmy!" shouting mode, he was good as ever. (The real reason Kurt wanted to be back in New Directions was clearly less wanting to be back with his friends there and more wanting to get to Nationals, as he demonstrated when his first words back were, "Let's start practicing for Nationals." )

Rachel's plotline went exactly as expected; it was fine, but the thing that stood out most about it was the worst thing in the episode, and one of the worst scenes Glee's done to date: that horribly inane mall dance scene. I know it served a plot function - it sealed the deal of Rachel deciding not to get a nose job - but how on Glee Earth did THAT in any way serve to convince her of ANYTHING?! It was just a mall full of random people dancing randomly and repeatedly saying, "Barbara Streisand!" That doesn't mean anything! It felt like a big waste of time. Quinn's subplot was nicely executed, and I enjoyed Dianna Agron's and Ashley Fink's performances a lot, but it doesn't quite fit with her season one arc, which was her developing into a person and stepping into the shoes of, say, Mercedes and feeling what it is to be and look different from the perfect-looking cheerleader types. Now we're told that her journey is going from someone who looks more like Lauren and releasing the real person underneath, who is...cheerleader Quinn Fabray. I don't know, it doesn't feel like it fits, but I didn't hate it. Quinn and Finn's little moment at the end left me cold, too, like, "Soooo that's supposed to convince us that they make sense together?"

On the matter of Gaga (and if I had to title this post, it'd be, "On the matter of Gaga"): I was afraid that this would be an actual Lady Gaga episode, (1) because they did one last season, and (2) because after a Justin Bieber episode, I have to fear the worst. It was not a Lady Gaga episode, though, it was just taking one of her songs and its message and making it the theme here, and did so pretty well. The "Born This Way" performance was good, I have to say, and I also have to say that I don't dislike that song - for Gaga, it's rather good. But then, I probably like it because it sounds like a Madonna collage: little bit of "Vogue," little bit of "Like a Prayer," great heaping of "Express Yourself" (all songs Glee has covered, by the way), and those are great songs. I was a little confused about what the shirts were supposed to be, but the characters may have been a little confused too - were they the things that you'd probably rather change about yourself, were they flaws, were they just things that made you different? I mean, Kurt's was "Likes Boys" and he obviously wouldn't change that if he could, he's just alone in being open about that at MicKinley High. Tina's was "Brown Eyes," which is not something that makes her unique. Ditto Will and "Butt Chin." It was interesting. And Santana being shown wearing Brittany's "Lebanese" shirt was a nice moment.

 

[Speedball]

T l; d r

edit- ****in hype, let me caps lock it!

 

[Sawyer]

Will's shirt should've said Bad Teacher.

 

[Manic]

I was a little confused about what the shirts were supposed to be, but the characters may have been a little confused too - were they the things that you'd probably rather change about yourself, were they flaws, were they just things that made you different? I mean, Kurt's was "Likes Boys" and he obviously wouldn't change that if he could, he's just alone in being open about that at MicKinley High. Tina's was "Brown Eyes," which is not something that makes her unique. Ditto Will and "Butt Chin." It was interesting. And Santana being shown wearing Brittany's "Lebanese" shirt was a nice moment.

Their shirts were all embarrassing things about themselves that they think or society thinks they should change, but they must accept about themselves. Society tells Kurt to be straight, but he accepts that he "Likes Boys." Tina's been wearing blue contact lenses because magazines tell her that's beautiful, but she accepts her "Brown Eyes." And Will had a chin shaped like someone's ass.

 

[Pink Ranger]

Their shirts were all embarrassing things about themselves that they think or society thinks they should change, but they must accept about themselves. Society tells Kurt to be straight, but he accepts that he "Likes Boys." Tina's been wearing blue contact lenses because magazines tell her that's beautiful, but she accepts her "Brown Eyes." And Will had a chin shaped like someone's ass.

But the real question is, whose ass??!

 

[Manic]

Terri's

 

[JP]

I've become really sick of how the first thirteen are so immortalized

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Specter313]

April! So great to see Chenoweth again! But it makes me remember how much I miss Pushing Daisies

At least most of them seem to still be getting work. Lee Pace was just cast in the Hobbit.

 

[flickchick85]

At least most of them seem to still be getting work. Lee Pace was just cast in the Hobbit.

Yay, he's finally gonna be in something that I'll actually see (eg, not Twilight or Marmaduke)! He's SUCH an underrated actor, imo. And a decent singer to boot. If he ever wanted to stop by for a Glee guest spot, I certainly wouldn't complain.

And yes, the pedestal that the first 13 episodes are often held up on is all kinds of ridiculous, imo. I remember all the same complaints people have now emerging as far back as "Acafellas." Glee has always been up and down, hit and miss. I don't think "consistency" was the thing that ever kept anyone watching.

 

[Jennifer Walters]

Consistency is a term best not used for a show run by Ryan Murphy. I feel the same thing can be said of Nip/Tuck and even the bit of Popular I've watched.