The episode opens with the shocking revelation that Jesse St. James has transferred back to Carmel High, and he and his Vocal Adrenaline compatriots commandeer the McKinley auditorium to lay a little "funkification" upon New Directions' collective behind -- and by "funkification," I do not mean that they tap their inner Bootsys to work that sucker to death. No, "funkification" for Vocal Adrenaline involves invading a rival team's space to show said rival team what Vocal Adrenaline intends to bring to the competition, thereby sending said rival team spiraling into a deep funk. It also, for whatever reason, involves TP-ing the rival team's rehearsal room, which so enrages the Puckasaurus that he and Frankenteen retaliate by slashing the tires on the 26 Range Rovers Vocal Adrenaline's extremely well-endowed booster club purchased for their kids after Carmel's victory at Sectionals.
Of course, not an instant goes by before wicked Idina Menzel's figured out who's responsible for the heinous acts of late-night gas-guzzler vandalism, and Puck and Finn are forced to pay for the damages by getting part-time jobs... at Sheets 'N' Things! Yes, tonight's episode marks the triumphant return to the small screen of the fabulously psychotic Terri Schuester and her perpetually whimpering peon, Howard Bamboo. Terri, of course, is most displeased with her new hires, but because they agreed to work "for less than immigrants," she had little choice but to add them to the Sheets 'N' Things sales force. However, because she's feeling a little vulnerable after finally signing her divorce papers, she soon warms to Frankenteen and decides to help him with this week's Glee Club assignment. And what does this week's assignment entail? Well, you know. Check the episode title.
Yep, after consulting with the much-missed Sandy Ryerson -- who insists that the deep, dirty grooves of the episode's titular music style are beyond the reach of Vocal Adrenaline's soulless automatons -- Mr. Schue has the kids present various funkadelic options for Regionals. Quinn, Puck, Finn, and Mercedes all give the assignment their best shot, though Quinn manages to come out ahead in the end thanks to that prancing posse of pregnant teens she brought in for backup. Meanwhile, Will himself offers us all his funkophonic interpretation of an early-'70s classic after he decides to seduce Miss Sue Sylvester in order to break her spirit right before the Cheerios head to Nationals, much like Jesse St. James did to Rachel. Will's devious plan works all too well, and Sue takes to her bed in the throes of a deep depression, thereby sending her suddenly directionless cheerleaders spinning into a variety of weepy and brain-addled tizzies through McKinley's halls until Will drops by Sue's trophy-laden lair to apologize for his caddish ways. The Cheerios regroup to win their sixth straight Nationals title (thanks to Kurt and his all-French Celine Dion medley), and great was the rejoicing across the land. I'm guessing.
And in the end, New Directions lays a little reverse-funkification upon Vocal Adrenaline's collective behind -- this complete with Soul Train Line, natch -- and Vocal Adrenaline heads into the season finale extremely rattled, even though the McKinley kids' presentation was hardly funkalicious. Then again, this is Ohio we're talking about, and the standards for funkaliciousness are perhaps a little different there.
Featuring performances of Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" by Vocal Adrenaline; Rufus's "Tell Me Something Good" by Mr. Schue; Beck's "Loser" by Puck and Finn; James Brown's "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" by Quinn and The June Taylor Dancers; Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations" by Puck, Finn, and Mercedes; Parliament's "Give Up The Funk" by New Directions; and frequent teases of En Vogue's "My Lovin'" by the anonymous a cappella group that does all of the incidental vocalizations for scene transitions.
Previously on Pee-Wee's Playhouse: "Theatrical." Also, Jesse St. James took his mackable hair and his dangerous eyebrows and "left the Glee Club" off screen at some point during the last two weeks during a scene that apparently was left on the virtual cutting-room floor, which: 1. WHAT THE HELL? and 2. WHATEVER! and 3. I will shut my outraged mouth and accept this insulting bit of Major Plot Point Revealed During Casual Aside In The Previously Sequence as fact lest my brain explode long before we hit the episode proper.
School. Flanked by Kurt and Mercedes, Single-T Tina wheels Artie through the swarming halls as the quartet gabs about New Directions' vastly improved chances at Regionals now that "The Ohio Show Choir chat rooms" have decided Vocal Adrenaline's "lost a step." Kurt, who apparently missed certain vital bits of information during the Previouslies, gloats, "The judges know all their tricks, and now that we have Jesse, they've lost their best performer!" Cue Rachel, who darts in from points unknown at DEFCON 1 to blurt, "You guys have to come to the auditorium! It's an emergency!"
Cut to the auditorium, where the now heavily pregnant Quinn's cooling her sure-to-be-aching heels with Santana Lopez, Brit-Brit, the Puckasaurus, Gaylord, Finn, and Butt Lunch, and I swear to God, Quinn's fetus has gained thirty pounds in the last seven days. That kid is going to be a monster. I hope she opts for lots and lots of drugs. And a C-section. And then some more drugs. To hell with natural childbirth. In any event, the hallway gang arrives to join the Glee Clubbers already present, and their collective attention is immediately drawn to the stage, where Jesse St. James emerges from a black-and-blue clot of Vocal Adrenalines to announce, "I've transferred back to Carmel High." So, if he's telling everyone this now, why did Mister Wacky-Voice Of The Generally Unnecessary And Misleading Glee Previouslies feel the need to include that bit of information in his dizzy monologue at the top of the hour? I can't begin to pretend to care, so let's keep this moving. "I'm sorry that it's come to this," Jesse St. James continues, "but you guys were awful to me -- you never accepted me, and you never listened to my clearly superior ideas." Frankenteen lumbers forward from his slouch against the upper tier of seats to wonder why Vocal Adrenaline's chosen to invade McKinley High's performance space. "The blogs and chat rooms say that we're finished and that you guys are ripe to topple us," Jesse St. James offers rather snidely by way of explanation. "We just wanted to show you something we came up with a few days ago to see if you agree with that assessment."
And with that, Jesse and his Carmel compatriots take their positions for a severely truncated yet undeniably hot version of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." As far as Vocal Adrenaline numbers go, it's got absolutely nothing on "Rehab," which remains the gold standard, or "Mercy," which killed it dead with the choreography only to resurrect it so it could kill it dead with the choreography again some more, but it's miles above "Highway to Hell," which was just embarrassingly bad to watch. Speaking of "Rehab," Jesse St. James's partner for this number was heavily featured in that performance over a year ago, and after this "Giselle" person is done running her incredibly lucky hands all over his body for the minute or so the routine takes to play out, she flips her hair around and sasses, "Thanks for letting us borrow your auditorium, guys! It's quaint." And Lucky Giselle should know from quaint, I'm guessing, given the fact that she's forty-five years old. Regardless, she and the other Adrenalines snicker nastily and pirouette on out of there like the West Side Story badasses they are, leaving the dangerously sweaty Jesse St. James alone on the stage for a very long moment so he might exchange A Look Fraught With Significance with a visibly miserable Rachel. Woof.
Back in the hallway, a thoroughly dejected-looking Kurt takes point with his fellow Glee Clubbers trailing bleakly behind him as an all-knowing Artie explains, "It's a Carmel High tradition -- they psych out the competition a few weeks before the big show. They call it a 'funkification,' meaning they show us what they've got, and we spiral into a deep, black funk." Finn, spasmodically shrugging his shoulders around while uncontrollably blinking his eyes in order to indicate that this sort of hazing is no big deal, tries to lighten the mood by pointing out that the McKinley High football team does that sort of thing all the time, forcing Puck to point out, "Yeah, well, the difference was, our football team sucked -- those guys are golden!" Kurt pulls himself together to try to bright-side that it's going to take more than a brutally hacked-up sixty-second excerpt from one of Queen's greatest hits to toss New Directions upon the dark hill of depression, but the words die in his mouth when they arrive at the music room to discover it's been thoroughly defiled with immaculately clean toilet paper by Jesse St. James and his wicked Carmel High crew. Title card.
Music Room. Aftermath. Mr. Schue's joined the gang to stuff tremendous wads of immaculately clean toilet paper into various oversized garbage cans, all the while assuring the kids that Vocal Adrenaline's jus jellass. Or something like that. Incidentally, Artie's rather amusingly donned an industrial respirator to prevent contamination from the filthily clean toilet paper he's fussily tamping down into the trash with a broom handle. Hee. Anyway, Mercedes disagrees with Mr. Schue's amateurish assessment of Vocal Adrenaline's current frame of mind before wondering, "They had all that equipment -- how'd they even get in?" "I gave 'em all keys and helped 'em do a sound check over the weekend!" Sue Sylvester breezily admits as she strides in from the hall with a teeming school of drafting class flunkies caught up in her wake, one of whom totes a massive trophy. You see, the Cheerios are heading to Nationals this weekend, and as Sue expects to return "with a comically large first-place trophy" for which she no longer has room in her own office, she intends to have the drafting class flunkies convert the music room into her very own "trophy annex" the instant New Directions loses at Regionals. She then proceeds to flagrantly ignore Will and turns to her flunkies to instruct, "It has to look like Elvis's gold record room at Graceland, except I'll be wanting far fewer morbidly obese white women waddling around and crying." Sue Sylvester is love, people. Will sets a determined expression on his face and orders Sue out of the room, so she flagrantly ignores him yet again to address New Directions like so: "For those of you whose hearing has not been damaged by massive doses of Accutane, listen up: In a few weeks, Glee Club will be finished. Now, how do I know that? Well, I recently checked the odds with my Vegas bookie, who told me that you're forty-to-one underdogs at Regionals. You are going to lose, and your dreams will be crushed." Will too-casually asks to see Sue's trophy, which she gladly hands him, and which he just as gladly smashes against the wall, much to the startled shock of everyone else in the room. Well, everyone except, of course, Sue Sylvester, who doesn't even bat an eye at all of the mayhem and destruction and instead licks her lips in anticipation before turning to Will with a delicious smile on her face. "For me," she explains as she advances menacingly upon him, "trophies are like herpes: You can try to get rid of them, but they just keep coming." "You know why?" she rhetorically asks as she leans in close to his face. "Because Sue Sylvester has hourly flare-ups of burning, itchy, highly c
ontagious talent." Awesome. "Enjoy your last few days here," she finishes with a grin. "This room is mine." And with that, Sue floats off into the hallway, leaving a thoroughly shell-shocked Will to flail about impotently amid the piles of disgustingly clean Carmel High toilet paper.Chez Schue, later that evening. Will sits silently across the dinner table from Terri as their divorce lawyer passes them the final papers to sign. There's a moment's hesitation before the two scribble out their signatures, and a painfully awkward silence ensues after their Asian-American attorney wishes them a merry "Mazel tov!" and heads on his way. Eventually, Terri rises to leave as well, but before she goes, she crosses to Will's side of the table and reaches a gentle hand towards his shoulder. She quickly thinks the better of that particular parting gesture and instead murmurs, "You're still that sixteen-year-old boy to me. You always will be." Terri then places a quick kiss on Will's forehead furrows and vanishes.
The day, Mr. Schue determinedly strides into the music room to proclaim, "Today I want to talk to you about regrets. Who has some?" Rachel, draped morosely across the grand piano, replies, "Giving my heart to Jesse just to have it crushed like the stage floor at a performance of Stomp." "Thinking 'Trust me!' was a sensible birth-control option," Quinn sighs from her seat on the risers. "We all have them," Mr. Schue agrees before he inappropriately confesses, "I just finalized my divorce, and I regret living in a relationship that wasn't working, letting her put me in these deep funks and not fighting back." Santana Lopez, regally reclining across a couple of the room's plastic chairs, rather magnificently wonders, "Besides creeping us out, why are you telling us this?" Heh. Mr. Schue spouts some convoluted explanation for his unseemly overshare that basically boils down to this: New Directions needs to retaliate against Vocal Adrenaline lest everyone present regret not doing so after Regionals have come and gone. Quinn mockingly asks if this means they're to TP the Carmel rehearsal space. "Whatever the better, cooler version of that is," Mr. Schue wrinkles, thinking fast, "like, uh, maybe we should steal their school statue!" Kurt, barely able to hide his weary contempt for the entire ridiculous idea, eye-rolls, "Their school statue is a giant bronze of a great white shark eating a seal pup. It weighs three tons." Mr. Schue, undeterred, starts brainstorming other incredibly lame options. Fortunately, the camera decides to focus in on Puck, who tells us in voiceover, "Everyone knows this is gonna come down to me. Revenge, fear, the merciless infliction of pain? These are my kingdoms!" "First time I gave a wedgie to a kid," his voiceover reminisces as Puck himself smiles wistfully at the fond memory, "I was four years old." "Finn and I may still hate each other for some reason," Puck's voiceover continues as he tosses a manly side-eye at the Frankenteen in question, "but we both know that defending the honor of New Directions is going to be our dirty job." By this point in the internal monologue, Finn and Puck are nodding grimly at each other, so it's not terribly surprising to find them...
...slashing the tires on Vocal Adrenaline's fleet of black Range Rovers under cover of darkness in the very scene. This should work out well for everyone involved. Or not, as anyone who's ever watched a television show before could have guessed, and with another quick cut, we find ourselves deep within...
...The Maharishi's Sanctum Of Suspicion, where the Maharishi himself levels a baleful glare in the Puckasaurus's general direction until Puck completely cracks and shouts, "Yeah, I did it! And I'm proud!" "They got what was coming to them!" Puck adds, pivoting in his seat to scowl at Finn, who apparently can't be bothered to back a brother up, but that's not terribly important at the moment, for Wicked Idina Menzel has trekked over from Carmel High for this little conference, and she now raises her voice to protest, "A few of my students TP'd your choir room, you slashed the tires on the Range Rovers of all twenty-six of my performers!" "Those were gifts for our win at Sectionals!" Idina notes with appropriate amounts of injured outrage. Mr. Schue: "I'm sorry -- you bought all your kids Range Rovers?" Wicked Idina: "We have a very active booster club!" Active and well endowed, as I believe I mentioned in the recaplet. Mr. Schue shakes that off to argue that the entire unfortunate incident amounts to little more than "a harmless prank," but Sue Sylvester -- who for whatever reason is also present for these proceedings, even though neither Puck nor Finn's mothers could be bothered to attend -- jumps in to disagree like so: "That's what they said about a young man in Chicago in 1871 who thought he'd play a 'harmless prank' on the dairy cow of one Mrs. O'Leary. He successfully ignited its flatulence, and the city burned, William!" "That young terrorist," she adds a bit ominously, "went on to become the first gay president of the United States: Abraham Lincoln!" Well, she's sort of right. Maybe. Maharishi Figgins calls an end to this nonsense and -- again, with neither student's parent present -- announces that Puck and Finn have been expelled. Wicked Idina, however, intercedes on the boys' behalf, and offers to drop whatever felony charges Finn and Puck might have pending if the guys pay for the damage they inflicted. Finn immediately agrees, the better to kick-start his minuscule subplot for the evening, and Maharishi Figgins expresses his admiration for Wicked Idina like so: "Miss Corcoran, you are as wise and magnanimous as you are beautiful." Wicked Idina and Sue Sylvester shoot each other side-eyes, all, "Was that a...? Never mind!" before Wicked Idina gracefully takes her leave from all the silliness. For her part, Sue offers Will a few sharp and condescending words before marching straight into this evening's first commercial break. Well, that was awkward.
Later that day, perhaps, Will's meeting beneath the football field bleachers with the fastidiously attired Sandy Ryerson to purchase a bit of the Chronic Lady for his own personal use. "I'm just really depressed," Will explains. "I don't sell to the clinically depressed," Sandy replies, neatly tucking the Chronic Lady envelope into his perfectly pressed shirt pocket. "You'll throw yourself off a parking garage, and I can't have that on my conscience." No comment. Except for the part where...yeah, you get it. Anyway, Will whines about his thankless job and the impending Regionals disaster for a bit until Sandy snatches Will up by the latter's lapels to reveal, "Vocal Adrenaline has a weakness!" DUN!
Well, not really, but whatever, for we've shot back into the music room, where Mr. Schue's just now scrawled this week's secret word in gigantic capital letters on the whiteboard. "Funk!" Mr. Schue reads aloud for the especially dimwitted in the audience. "Use it in a sentence!" he commands, only to be met by the listless stares of his thoroughly demoralized students, so he calls upon Rachel to give it a try. "This cheese smells funky," Rachel apathetically replies. "That's 'cause it's fromunda cheese," Puck needles her, deploying what I was going to call "appropriate hand gestures" until I realized exactly how grossly inappropriate those hand gestures actually are. "SHUT IT, PUCKERMAN!" Rachel amusingly snaps back, and it falls upon the apparently clueless Mr. Schue to wrangle the topic back to where he wants it to be by offering them an example I'll not be bothering to transcribe, after which he finally -- finally -- gets to the point: Vocal Adrenaline's weakness just so happens to be the musical genre from which this episode receives its title, and to that end, this week's assignment involves "turn[ing] McKinley High into Funkytown." Mercedes assures the group that she's got this one covered, but Quinn speaks up to protest that she'd like a chance to get funky, too. Derisive snorts of laughter of course abound until Quinn howls something princessy about possessing the necessary levels of soul and anger to make a funk cover work, and I'll be leaving the retort to Mercedes on this one: "Let's be honest -- when white people try to be funky, you end up with KC and the Sunshine Band." You speak the truth, my brassy hag. Quinn haughtily elevates herself above the generalized tittering to announce, "Mercedes's racism aside, I will have something prepared tomorrow." Mr. Schue's all, "All-righty, then!" and dismisses the class, but not before requesting that Rachel speak with him in his office, and...
...long story short, as the a cappella fairies on the soundtrack tease us with a couple of bars of En Vogue's "My Lovin'," Rachel devolves into a blubbering clump of damp tissue and smeared mascara while ranting about Vocal Adrenaline's pernicious plot to have Jesse St. James seduce and dump her right before Regionals, the better to force her to choke under the competition's pressure, all of which gives Mr. Schue an ugly, terrible idea. A foul, hideous, reprehensible, vile, and utterly disgusting idea.
A foul, hideous, reprehensible, vile, and utterly disgusting idea that's about to play out in the soft pink lighting of The Music Room After Dark. Sue storms in to order Will on out of there, pronto, as she's got a nefarious Flamin' Hot Cheetos ring to bust up, or something, and Will's about to meekly comply with her request when he pulls himself up short to breathe, "The way the light hit you just now? You look...stunning!" "You're radiant!" he continues, and oh, for Christ's sake. Sue squints at him as if she knows something ridiculous is afoot in The Music Room After Dark and dismissively attributes her appearance to the placenta mask and microdermabrasion sessions in which she indulges herself every year before Nationals, but Will won't let it go, flattering her again before obsequiously begging for her advice on a funk number New Directions intends to perform at Regionals. For whatever reason, Sue agrees to have a listen, so Will hits the Play button on his mini-boombox, and... this is just asinine. Will launches himself into a supposedly down-and-dirty version of Rufus's deeply funkalicious classic "Tell Me Something Good," and how Sue manages not to erupt into peals of contemptuous laughter during what follows, I'll never, ever know. Will shakes his scrawny-looking derriere around at the piano for a bit before accidentally-on-purpose knocking a few papers to the floor, and after he's slowly bent over to retrieve them -- the better to present his ass to her like he's a baboon -- he strips off his black leather jacket to roll his hair-product graveyard of a mop around on her shoulder before pushing her into a chair and, like, humping her leg, or something. And when it's over, Will too-innocently wonders, "Was I too dirty?" Her voice entirely devoid of emotion, Sue immediately replies, "I didn't notice -- I was bored." However, she's clearly -- and rightfully, if you ask me -- unsettled by the experience, and flees The Music Room After Dark as fast as she can, leaving Will alone to pant and heave from all of his recent exertions, wondering if his foul, hideous, reprehensible, vile, and utterly disgusting plan to seduce her is working. Hint: It is. Against all that is right and good, his foul, hideous, reprehensible, vile, and utterly disgusting plan to seduce her is working. Commercials.
Back from the break, we find ourselves loitering within the color-coordinated depths of that big-box Hell known as Sheets 'N' Things, where Terri's trying and failing to school Puck and Finn on the finer arts of sham folding. "Can I go shirtless under this apron?" Puck interrupts. Yes, please. Oh, I'm sorry -- were you asking Terri? In that case, the answer's no, because Terri's feeling just a wee bit stressed out over her recent divorce and the accompanying dramatic decline in her cash flow, and besides, she only hired Puck and Finn because she's "desperate to increase [her] quarterly sales," and the boys "will work for less than immigrants." And before this all turns into an incredibly tedious lecture on creative retail management strategies during The Great Recession, the perpetually put-upon Howard Bamboo shuffles over from points unknown to gloom, "The guy who gave me Bell's palsy is back again today." "So?" Terry hisses back. "Help him! He's our best customer!" Terri flounces off in a frazzled huff, leaving Howard Bamboo to mope his way over to Finn with a tremulous, "You need to go help him." "But...she just told you to do it," Finn hesitantly counters. "I have seniority over you two losers," Howard Bamboo sulks, "which means you have to do what I say." "Then I need to kick your ass," Puck eyebrows, mellowly enough, but it's enough of a threat to send Howard scurrying when Bell's Palsy yodels "Bam-booo-ooo!" from elsewhere in the store.
Thus left to their own devices, Puck and Finn amble aimlessly through the aisles until eagle-eyed Sheets 'N' Things connoisseur Sandy Ryerson spots them in his peripheral vision and imperiously summons the "apron boys" over for a consult. "You're not gonna fondle us, are you?" Puck pouts, and do you really want to tempt the poor man like that, Puckerman? Fortunately for Puck's unblemished virtue, Sandy's there simply to shop 'til he drops, mainly because he's recently redone his bathroom as "an homage to Miss Jayne Mansfield," so he'll be needing that cunning little cat-shaped toilet-brush holder in rose rather than amaranth, thank you very much. Of course, neither Puck nor Finn has any idea what the insane old closet case is talking about, so Sandy launches himself into a brief tirade regarding the utter uselessness of The Kids Today before sending Puck off to switch on the Muzak, because Sandy Ryerson cannot shop for rose pink bathroom tchotchkes without his goddamned Kenny G!
And in this episode's most entertaining musical interlude, Puck stomps over to switch on Sheets 'N' Things' in-store stereo system, then spins around to throw himself into a fantasy sequence set to Beck's "Loser" in which, eventually, he's joined by several of his fellow drudgery-deadened sham-slingers including Finn, Terri, and Howard Bamboo, right before everyone in the store gathers around the registers to howl the chorus at the indifferent heavens. Of especial note: Puck cruising Sheets 'N' Things for MILFs while singing about "beefcake pantyhose," whatever that means, and Howard Bamboo's solemnly authoritative "Yo." Hee. Unfortunately for everyone involved -- particularly the audience -- reality intrudes all too soon, and the number's cut off almost before it really gets going when Real Terri bolts for the stereo system to adjust the volume down to something approaching non-hemorrhage levels. She unleashes a thoroughly harassed sigh, then spins around to find Puck still strumming his fantasy guitar in the middle of the aisle. "I thought Jews were supposed to be smart," Terri sniffs. HA! She sends him off to restock the space heaters, then finds herself completely addled when Will materializes in a Sheets 'N' Things uniform to wonder, shyly, if Mrs. Schuester could show him how to fold a sham again. Of course, because Terri's actually lapsed into a momentary fantasy of her own, it's really Finn who's asking that question, and Terri flusters about for a bit before she thinks to wonder how old he is. "Sixteen," Finn replies, clueless. "Oh!" Terri exclaims, her eyes suddenly afire once more with her trademark batshit psychosis, and I will say this right now: If Terri decides to go all Mrs. Robinson on Finn's dimwitted ass in Season Two, I will have absolutely no problems at all with that storyline.
"Dear Journal," Sue's voiceover begins. The camera's cut over to the journal in question, which Sue has rather beautifully decorated with an intricately detailed and gory cartoon of Will's post-guillotine head lolling around in a puddle of its own gore. "WHOOPS!" shouts the cartoon. "NICE HAIR." Hee. In any event, Sue's voiceover continues like so: "Something strange happened yesterday: I felt something below the neck. Dare I admit it? I have feelings for one Will Schuester. Sexy, non-murdering feelings! Oh, it all makes sense now, Journal -- true love always springs from true hate. I'll admit in the past that I fantasized about waking up with Will's head on the pillow to me, except now I picture it attached to the rest of his body." And that journal entry almost makes this ridiculous subplot worth my time. Almost. In a cleansing burst of synchronicity, the object of Sue's unlikely lust arrives at this very instant with a bouquet of carnations that perfectly match her chosen track suit for the day, along with a tub of Extreme Challenge CarboGels Dietary Supplement in her favorite flavor, appletini. He even had to drive all the way down to Dayton to get it! And long story short, Will continues to lay it on with a trowel until Sue agrees to have dinner with him at Breadstix that Wednesday evening. "You know what Wednesday is, right?" Will asks just before he exits, offering us all his best Lauren Bacall in the process. "Hump day!" And with that, we head into the commercial break not knowing if we'll ever feel clean again.
Sheets 'N' Things, where we get little but another tease for Terri's impending Mrs. Robinson storyline with Finn. Of relevance to this evening's episode, though, is the bit where she decides to help him on this week's Glee Club assignment by typing "funk" into "the iTunes" to see what comes up. So, yeah: Now you know who to blame for the embarrassing early-'90s-inspired debacle that's scheduled to arrive later tonight.
Music Room. As promised, Will turns the floor over to Quinn for the funk assignment's first presentation, which Quinn chooses to begin by delivering this Unwed Teenage Mother Manifesto that has both Mercedes and I vigorously rolling our eyes long before Quinn's reached the middle of her first sentence. And as it is obviously a part of the pure genius that follows, settle in whilst I endeavor to transcribe it for you: "For some of us, just simply getting to class takes a little bit longer. When you're pregnant, you're responsible for two lives, and you're walking down the hallway, oppressed by the man." Here Mercedes audibly groans, "Oh, my goodness, she is not about to go there!" Hee. Raising her voice a touch to speak above Mercedes's grumbling, Quinn pointedly continues, "People call you fat." This unfortunately shuts Mercedes up for the remainder of the monologue, and as Quinn haughtily carries on with, "Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes you have to stop and hold that precious life and say no!" she's joined by six shabbily attired "heavily" "pregnant" "teenaged" "girls." "This is offensive," Artie interjects. Point to Artie. "Who are these girls?" he asks. "We're the Unwed Mothership Connection," Quinn replies, and here's where the acid kicks in.
The full orchestra Quinn's got parked on one side of the room flings itself upon the opening tremolo of what turns out to be James Brown's "It's A Man's Man's Man's World," and as she steps over to the magically spotlighted microphone to attack the song with her little white-girl cadence, Quinn Fabray's Prancing Preggos make like the goddamn hippos in Fantasia behind her. And I'm sorry, but did I say that Puck's version of "Loser" was this episode's most entertaining musical interlude? Well, you'll have to forgive me, because I LIED. Quinn Fabray's Prancing Preggos are doing Swan Lake, people! Right there in the music room! While singing backup like they're in a Lamaze class! No, seriously! "Hee-hee-hee, hoo-hoo-hoo!" Over and over and over again! And then they're all writhing around on the floor in the most inappropriate manner imaginable before they suddenly pop back up to offer Quinn a little physical support before Quinn enters the song's final lyric, and did I miss the bit where they go "Bump-bump-bump-bump-bump!" while jiggling their distended bellies in circles around each other? How did I miss the bit where they go "Bump-bump-bump-bump-bump!" while jiggling their distended bellies in circles around each other?
And then all the fabulousness is over, and they have to go and completely ruin the moment by having the entire damn Glee Club leap from the risers to offer the poor little put-upon pregnant princess a round life-affirming hugs. Well, the entire damn Glee Club save for Mercedes, who's sitting there with the exact same "The fuck did I just watch?" expression plastered all over her face that I've got plastered all over mine. Atta girl.
Breadstix, and this asinine subplot has suddenly become sad and more than a little cruel. Sue Sylvester sits alone in a booth, for her date has of course stood her up. She's clad in the red track suit with white stripes Will claimed he liked so much, and she's accessorized that with a tasteful double strand of pearls. Okay, fine: The track suit accessorized with a tasteful double strand of pearls is hysterically funny, but Sue's bleak, humiliated expression set to jaunty Italian accordion music is just more than I can bear. !
Chez Schuester, where Will's lounging in front of the television set with a bowl of cheese balls. How appropriate. There's a knock at the door, in response to which Will snidely mutters, "Right on time!" before rising to answer, and it's Sue, and mighty and righteous is Sue Sylvester's wrath. She excoriates him for leading her on, he counters by accusing her of meddling in his failed marriage (among other things), she screams her frustration and utter mortification, and he coldly escorts her into the commercial break, slamming the door on her once she's gone. Wow, Will's a dick. Not to mention an idiot, because you know Sue's going to grind him and his precious little Glee Club into the dirt over this one. Jackass.
McKinley High, the following morning. Will enters the main hallway to find a disturbingly disheveled Santana Lopez weeping copiously into a box of Kleenex she cradles in her arms as if it were some precious talisman protecting her against the inexplicable onrush of existential blackness now threatening to swallow her world whole. Or something like that. Several other similarly disheveled Cheerios carom off the lockers before vanishing into the blurry distance until Will corners Kurt to wonder what gives. "Coach Sylvester won't get out of bed," Kurt replies, indicating that Sue's also cancelled McKinley's participation in Nationals that weekend. Dun-dun-DUN! Kurt's fine, of course, because he's got Glee Club to fall back on, but his fellow Cheerios have, as he puts it, "sort of lost it." Four of the ladies might forfeit the athletic scholarships they were depending upon for college -- just go with it -- and "the rest are just depressed and confused." To prove Kurt's point, Brittany appears at this juncture, tugging desperately on Jewfro's arm while pleading, "Please love me! Please?" Heh. Kurt finishes up by noting that while Sue Sylvester might not need another championship trophy, plenty of her protégés do.
Music Room. Remember how I warned you about an embarrassing early-'90s-inspired debacle scheduled to arrive later tonight? It's here. Puck and Finn, with a crucial assist from Mercedes, offer the rest of the group their trenchant interpretation of Marky Mark's deathless classic "Good Vibrations," and what you need to know about it is this: Brittany's got her cheerleading uniform on backwards. HA!
And when it's over, Mr. Schue notes as gently as he possibly can that there is no way in hell Marky Frigging Mark represents the musical genre from which this episode has received its title. Eventually, everyone involved in the horror looks suitably ashamed, Artie Eeyores something unimportant, and we head over to...
...some random study hall, where Quinn appears to have the entire place to herself. Mercedes enters, plants herself opposite the knocked-up princess, and invites Quinn to move into Stately Jones Manor until her alarmingly large fetus is no longer enwombed because "us sisters got to stick together." And that's...one to grow on! !
Casa Sylvester. The place, as one would expect, is packed from floor to ceiling with trophies, several of which are obviously meant for bowling. I mean, they've got the little guys on the top with the bowling balls drawn back and everything. In fact, now that I'm really looking around the place, most of the trophies seem to have been designed for every sport except cheerleading. You think Sue just breaks into random high schools and empties their trophy cases into the back of her SUV? I think she's got a Heisman packed away in there, for Christ's sake. In any event, Will enters and asks Sue's housekeeper if he might have a word with the lady of the house. Imelda's not so sure about that, but to her surprise, Miss Sue agrees to see him despite her weakened state. There follows what I am certain is meant to be A Very Touching Scene Indeed, but because I am even more certain that whatever Very Touching Lessons these two learn tonight will have been forgotten by the finale, let's skip to the point, shall we? Will apologizes for his beastly behavior, and Sue gets out of bed. !
School. Rachel's aggressively sparkly cell phone rings, and it's Jesse St. James. "Meet me in the parking lot," his dangerous eyebrows croon. Rachel beams.
Parking Lot. Jesse St. James waves to her from the end of a row, and everything grinds down into deliriously clichéd slow motion as she runs to him like she's Babs and he's Bobby and this is The Way We Were, but alas! As she approaches him, his face darkens, and his dangerous eyebrows angle downwards as two dozen Adrenalines materialize from the bushes to pelt Rachel Berry with raw eggs. And I'm sorry, but that shit is hilarious. The only way it would have been funnier is if she'd tripped first. Not so hilarious, however, is when it speeds back up to real time and Lucky Giselle The 45-Year-Old Chorine taunts Jesse St. James into cracking his egg directly on Rachel's forehead. Okay, I take that back, because as he steps up to her, Rachel melodramatically challenges, "Do it! Break it like you broke my heart!" and Jesse St. James matches her overwrought emotionalism with a truckload of his own as he responds, "I loved you!" And then he smashes the egg all over her face. Hee! Jesse St. James and The Adrenalines hop into their Range Rovers to speed off into the commercial break, leaving Rachel to wallow in her egg yolks alone.
Music Room. Aftermath. "And now I just keep having nightmares of all of the mothers of the little baby chicks coming after me for revenge!" Rachel quavers. "This is bullshit!" Puck would rage were this not broadcast television. "[Frankenteen! Butt Lunch! Gaylord!] Come with me!" The football players plus Artie and Kurt join Puck as he heads to the door "to go all Braveheart on Vocal Adrenaline," but Mr. Schue intervenes at the last minute to insist that violence is never the answer. "Mr. Schue?" Kurt impatiently interrupts. "Rachel is one of us -- we're the only ones who get to humiliate her!" Mr. Schue orders them all back to their seats, and even though Kurt is the only one to comply, the others hold up at the door anyway so Mr. Schue might lecture them all on...something I totally don't care about until he stumbles across a cunning plan. "Rachel!" Mr. Schue barks. "Dial Jesse's number on your phone!" As Rachel hastens to do so, Santana Lopez heaves a world-weary sigh and wonders, "You haven't deleted his number yet?" God love her. In any event, the call connects, and Mr. Schue tells Jesse and The Adrenalines to meet them at the McKinley auditorium that Friday at 3 PM sharp. Rumble!
At some later point on this episode's convoluted timeline, Will's lounging around at home while an overly enthusiastic Fox Sports Net reporter congratulates Sue Sylvester on the Cheerios' sixth consecutive win at Nationals. "Let us know about the decision you made," Overly Enthusiastic Reporter Guy prompts, "to have Kurt Hummel here do a fourteen-and-a-half minute Celine Dion medley entirely in French!" "Well, I'll tell you what, Brett," Sue replies while corralling an especially perky Kurt into the shot, "I'm all about finding a freakish, depressed kid and showing him what winning is all about!" Will rolls his eyes at that on Kurt's behalf, but Kurt himself couldn't be more thrilled at the moment, and he shouts out, "Vive la différence!" before high-kicking his tiny self right on out of the frame. "Where are you going to put that mammoth, skyscraping trophy?" Overly Enthusiastic Brett asks. The camera closes in on Sue's face as she promises, "I know just the place!" Ding-dong! And wouldn't you know it? It's Sue, accompanied by Santana Lopez, Brittany, some lunkhead of a Cheerio we've never seen before, and that mammoth, skyscraping trophy they all just won! What are the odds? Lunkhead deposits the mammoth, skyscraping trophy in the middle of Will's living room, after which Sue's minions beat a hasty retreat, with dear little Brit-Brit whispering, "Sorry, Mr. Schue!" as she goes. Aw.
Once she's thus been left alone with her unreasonably coiffed nemesis, Sue announces, "Let me break it down for you, William -- you're standing at a crossroads, and you have two choices: Number one, this trophy will be installed in the choir room in a custom-built, bulletproof case, as a daily reminder of your failure as a man and an educator." "And what's choice number two?" Will unwisely dares to ask. Sue pushes herself into his face and sneers, "You can kiss me right here, on the lips." Pause. "With tongue." Hee! Will leans in for option number two, but at the last instant, Sue snarls, "You know what? I'm not gonna do this! Even your breath stinks of mediocrity, and it's making me sick." I told you the magnificent Sue Sylvester would grind this twit into the dirt for standing her up at Breadstix. Moron.
And to add musical insult to Will's Sue-sponsored injury, "Loser" kicks in again on the soundtrack as we cut ahead to the music room, where Will watches impotently as Sue's drafting class flunkies wheel that mammoth, skyscraping trophy into the custom-built, bulletproof case they constructed in the last three seconds, and I must admit, the display looks fabulous. Sucks to be you, bonehead!
McKinley High Auditorium, the following Friday, 3 PM sharp. Jesse St. James and The Adrenalines patiently and politely wait in the center section of seats until Rachel greets them with the following: "After your brazen escalation of our growing dispute -- which we were willing to put to rest -- we decided the only way to truly funkify you is to show you the one thing we know you can't do, so enjoy!" As the camera's risen on Rachel from somewhere deep in the orchestra pit, it's gradually revealed a rather psychedelic backdrop behind her, upon which the backlit silhouettes of various Glee Clubbers can be seen. No sooner has Rachel taken her place amongst them than Kurt peels around the corner to thrust himself upon the opening lines of Parliament's "Give Up The Funk," and sure, he sounds ridiculous chanting "Tear the roof off the mother sucker," but what's more important at the moment is the fact that he looks ridiculous. Appropriately ridiculous, I should probably stress, because the costume designer's thrown him into precisely the sort of wrongheaded clothing and accessories an isolated teenaged gay boy from Lima, Ohio, would choose for himself should he wish to appear funkadelic in public, right down to that hideously bedazzled porkpie hat he's got on his head. Bravo. As for the number itself? Well, it's a bunch of suburban Midwestern teenagers covering Parliament for their show choir. It sucks.
The kids have a grand old time with it, though, and the best bit comes at the very end, when Mercedes just wails on some random notes while the others form a Soul Train Line down the center of the stage. They're far too Jazz Hands about it all, naturally, but Jesse St. James and The Adrenalines are thoroughly rattled nevertheless, and when it's all over, Jesse turns to Lucky Giselle The 45-Year-Old Chorine and quietly panics, "They did a funk number. We've never been able to pull off a funk number." "That's because we're soulless automatons," Lucky Giselle sighs, mangling the pronunciation of that last word. "I'm so depressed!" Jesse pouts. And...scene!
week: Regionals, bitches! It's also the season finale, so farewell from me until sometime in the fall. Have a happy summer!
Demian would argue that some things are worth fighting for, but he's feeling a bit sluggish in all this heat. You may send cooling thoughts his way via demian_twop@yahoo.com.
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