Episode Report Card LTG: N/A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sue's To Blame!
By LTG | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.26.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Previously, in the Glee recaplets, Demian and LTG engaged in an arms war of escalating links, culminating in the mutually assured destruction of putting links to every song in the recaplet. I was about to surrender and allow Demian to conquer my territory (not like that, you perverts), when a reader wrote to us to express deep gratitude for the links. So now I'm stuck doing them. Curse this congenital niceness!
Okay, so Will discovers that Hot Dentist Carl has gotten Emma into The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and that attending midnight screenings at a vermin-infested low-rent theater has allowed her to start getting over her charming germophobia. Consumed by jealousy, Will spontaneously decides to compete with Carl by having the Glee Club stage a bowdlerized Rocky Horror Show, asking Emma to work on the costumes. Finn and Rachel are Brad and Janet, Artie is the guy in the wheelchair, Quinn and Santana split the role of Magenta, and Tina and Brit-Brit split the role of Columbia. But all the other roles keep getting swapped around. Will wants Kurt to play Dr. Frank-n-furter, but he refuses, so Mike Chang volunteers. But his parents make him give up the role, so Will turns to Hot Dentist Carl. But when he refuses to wear a bustier in public, Mercedes takes on the role. Hot Dentist Carl ends up taking on the role of Eddie, but then disappears at the end and that role is played by Mike Chang. And while Lady Lips is clearly destined to play the role of Rocky, his concern about wearing the gold lamé hot pants causes Will to think that maybe the role is too mature for a kid, so he decides to cast himself as Rocky. And Emma fills in as Janet for one rehearsal of one song -- a rehearsal that ends with her grasping tightly onto Will's shirtless torso. Hubba hubba!
As this train of horrible ideas speeds along to an obvious crack-up, obstacles keep getting raised. Hot Dentist Carl learns about the aforementioned shirtless torso grabbing and confronts Will. Finn, worried that he's too flabby to appear on stage in his underwear, follows the advice of Lady Lips to seize his own inner sexiness by strutting down the school hallway in nothing but his boxers, nearly leading to a month-long suspension. And Sue is approached by two executives from her station (played by Meatloaf and Barry Bostwick) and asked to do an exposé of the tawdry, torrid goings-on at McKinley High (by which I mean the staging of a musical that is entirely inappropriate for a public school). So she ends up simultaneously encouraging Will and trying to help him out all while planning to savage him in the press on opening night. Becky spills the beans, leading Will to learn of Sue's plot, but he ends up deciding that she's right that high school is no place for a production of Rocky Horror, so he cancels the show, which also happens to destroy Sue's scoop and her hopes for a local Emmy. But the kids are so disappointed that Will lets them stage the show anyway -- just not for an audience. (Except, of course, for the audience watching on television.)
Want more? The full recap starts right below!LIPS!
That is to say, the episode opens with a pair of red lips on a black screen, the iconic Rocky Horror Picture Show image. And those lips are singing "Science Fiction Double Feature." It's a nice performance of the song, and a great way to start the episode. I know there was some debate about who was singing this song, but the Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters have informed me that the guy in charge of the show's music has confirmed that it is Santana (also known by her human name of Naya Rivera). If I had any doubts about whose lips these were, they were erased by the tiny smirk they give at the very end of the song. Nobody can convey as much smirkiness with such a tiny movement of her lips as Ms. Santana Lopez.
And as soon as that song is finished, we're right into another. We hear the opening notes of "Over at the Frankenstein Place," and we're in the auditorium, where there's a full set showing Frank-n-Furter's castle from the outside. (And kids, don't forget -- if you ever get a flat tire on a rainy night and your boyfriend suggests walking to the nearby castle to call for a tow, just remind him that castles don't have phones. And then dump him, because he's an asshole.) Rachel, in costume and holding a newspaper over her head, is singing the song. In addition to the set, there's a massive amount of fog rolling off the edge of the stage. Finn's on stage, also in costume (complete with dorky Brad glasses), and he joins in the song. And the other kids, as Rocky Horror partygoers, are singing backup from their hiding places in the shrubbery. The song is cut off as Hot Dentist Carl (played by Hot John Stamos) walks onto the stage, in full leather, and accuses Will (who's sitting in the empty auditorium, directing) of "messing with [his] woman." We get a freeze-frame of Will's panicky face -- he looks like he's trying to chew through a particularly tough piece of gristle. In voice-over, he wonders how "did a production of Rocky Horror turn into... my horror?" I think this question calls for a flashback.
The producers agree with me, as we flash back to the teachers' lounge one week ago (as Will's V.O. tells us). Emma's nibbling on a sandwich like a super cute chipmunk when Will sits down at her table. Will looks at her sandwich and asks her why she allowed the crust, which she normally consigns to oblivion, to stay on the bread. With a puzzled look, she glances down at the sandwich and tells him that she must have forgotten. Wait, does this mean she's from the same place as Fauxlivia? Because I am not coming up with nicknames for an alternate-universe set of Gleeks. Oh, actually, it's just that she had such an amazing weekend with Hot Dentist Carl that she finally unclenched her sphincter for five minutes and didn't freak out over her lunch. Said weekend included a midnight show of Rocky Horror at the local corn-syrup encrusted "revival" movie theater. Emma was apparently unclenched all weekend, because she went to the gross theater and was surrounded by a bunch of gross nerds in costumes and didn't even care about the toast, water, and rice flying through the air. We get a very quick flashback to her at the theater with Hot Dentist Carl, throwing toast of her own. (That's not a euphemism.)