F Me Gently With A Chainsaw

S03E14

I'm just going to stick to the facts for this, lest I fly into an unseemly series of uncontrollable rages: The Glee Club's preparations for this year's Regionals are nearly derailed when news reaches the children of the recently-outed Karofsky's suicide attempt. Much chatter and soul-searching ensues, little Steffi Germanotta's new brand extension gets product-placed, St. Gay Of Lima climbs back up on his cross for a couple of scenes, Wily Sebastian gets an abrupt and unamusing image makeover, and Rachel and Frankenteen decide to push up the date of their hideously stupid nuptials because they've suddenly realized that life is for the living, or some such bullshit.

Despite all this, Regionals goes on as previously scheduled, and of course New Directions triumphs over The Dalton Academy Swallows and Our Lady Of Perpetual Sorrow's Golden Goblets, despite the fact that both New Directions and The Swallows totally, totally blew. Afterwards, a freshly knocked-up Sue lets her rampaging pregnancy hormones get the better of her, and not only does she welcome Quinn back to Cheerios with open arms, she also cheerfully offers Will her assistance for this year's Nationals competition. Meanwhile, Burt, Carole, and the eminent Messrs. Berry desperately try to come up with ways to prevent their children from actually going through with their ludicrously asinine nuptials, but not one of the four is actually able to hack out a workable plan.

And then Quinn gets t-boned by a pickup truck. Fly and be free, Dianna Agron!

Featuring Young The Giant's "Cough Syrup," as performed by Blaine; a version of Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" that I can't find on YouTube, as performed by The Golden Goblets; "Stand" by Lenny Kravitz, as performed by The Dalton Academy Swallows; The Wanted's "Glad You Came," as also performed by The Dalton Academy Swallows; a medley of Nicki Minaj's "Fly" and noted urinator R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly," as performed by the children of New Directions, with prominent solos from Rachel, Santana, Artie and Blaine; Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger," as performed by the ladies of Idina Menzel's now-defunct lady-choir, with prominent solos from Santana, Mercedes and Brit-Brit; Halestorm's "Here's To Us," as performed by the children of New Directions, with a prominent solo from Rachel; and "Chapel Of Love" by the Dixie Cups, which may or may not have been performed by The Glee Gals.

Did this episode mark the end of the Glee couple known to shippers as FaBerry? Hulu's The Morning After show is hoping for the best:

The Lima Bean. Idiot Rachel and St. Gay Of Lima sit at one of the tables, blissfully sipping at their nonfat mochas while flipping through The Knot Book Of Wedding Lists until Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual oozes on up to greet them like so: "Well, well, well! If it isn't a young Barbra Streisand and an old Betty White!" "Where is Gay Cyclops?" he goes on to wonder. "Still trying to stumble his way in?" And with the bitchtastic preliminaries thus so pleasantly dispensed, Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual wastes little time getting to the point of his unexpected visit, which is the engagement present he's procured for Idiot Rachel: A blatantly Photoshopped eight-by-ten of Frankenteen, who's seen sporting a cunning pair of flaming red pumps and absolutely nothing else.

Naturally, both Idiot Rachel and St. Gay Of Lima are shocked and appalled, but wait! There's more! If Idiot Rachel does not drop out of Regionals immediately, Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual will upload the photo "and dozens just like it" to The Wide Wide World Of Web, thereby besmirching Frankenteen's heretofore immaculate reputation forever. "That is show-choir terrorism!" Idiot Rachel screeches. "You give a bad name to the entire gay community," St. Gay huffily sniffs. "And you give the gay community cutting-edge fashion that's usually only seen on Puerto Rican Pride floats," Sebastian witheringly retorts. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you!" St. Gay sings. "I was distracted by your giant horse teeth!" Unfortunately, rather than continuing with this delightful exchange of witty barbs, Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual chooses instead simply to repeat his earlier threat, and after the camera swoops in for an extreme close-up on Idiot Rachel's spectacularly dumb-looking expression of horror and dismay, we hit this evening's title card.

Music room. At some point during the last two seconds, Idiot Rachel and St. Gay Of Lima dashed back to the hallowed halls of dear old McKinley High and informed all of their compatriots of Sebastian's threat, even going so far as to show Frankenteen the Photoshopped eight-by-ten. Frankenteen of course flies into an incoherent rage and lumbers to his ungainly feet to issue garbled threats promising physical violence against The Predatory Homosexual until Lady Lips Von Bieberhausen wheels Artie to the middle of the floor so Artie might read the following passage from Page 72, Bylaw 15, Section 6, Article 44 of the Official Show Choir Rule Book: "Any real or perceived threat of violence, vandalism, or humiliation will be met with the swift and unquestioned disqualification of the threatening party's team with extreme prejudice." Which is why both New Directions and Vocal Adrenaline were thrown out of competition at the end of Season One. Except for the fact that neither New Directions nor Vocal Adrenaline were thrown out of competition at the end of Season One, despite the fact that both New Directions and Vocal Adrenaline blatantly deployed tactics of violence, vandalism, and humiliation against one another during this episode. I guess if they'd simply threatened one another without actually doing anything about it, things would have ended up differently. Good to know.

In any event, the ever-ineffectual Mr. Schue assures them all he'll have a chat with Dalton's headmaster, which leads to a little outraged outburst from Dreamboat Blaine in which he wails about how The Predatory Homosexual "almost" blinded him, which is funny because only an actual blind person would have selected the particular shirt-and-bowtie combo he's modeling at the moment. Idiot Rachel interjects at this point that Sebastian's threats are meaningless, because she has no intention of sitting the competition out. "Even if he's gonna post a photo like this of me?" Frankenteen demands. "I'm not gonna negotiate with terrorists!" Idiot Rachel responds. Meanwhile, up in the cheap seats, the divine Sugar Motta chooses this moment to opine, "If someone posted a picture like that of me online, I'd probably kill myself." "Twice," The Leprechaun agrees, "to be sure I was dead." Is that a promise, Rory? 'Cause if it is, I might finally have to learn Photoshop.

Mr. Schue then offers them all a few words of advice that are so utterly meaningless and unimportant, even the camera can't be bothered to focus on him, and then Frankenteen blows up at Idiot Rachel over her selfishness right before he flounces on out of there, and then it's time for us to shuffle over to...

...Coach Sylvester's office, and for whatever reason, I just can't deal at all with the wildly fluctuating tone of the scene that follows, so long story short: Coach Sylvester informs the just-arriving Quinn that she is now officially "with child" and, after Quinn shares some savvy morning sickness tips with the freshly knocked-up Sue, Quinn wonders if she might be reinstated to the cheerleading squad in time for Nationals. Coach Sylvester pointedly replies, "That wouldn't be fair to the girls who'd been practicing all year long who didn't quit," and unceremoniously kicks Quinn out of her office.

April Rhodes Civic Pavilion. St. Gay Of Lima enters from the wings to find a pensive Dreamboat Blaine waiting for him on the stage along with the ever-mute members of The McKinley Jazz Ensemble. They chit-chat about Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual for a bit, and then Blaine announces he'd like to try out a new song he just found for Regionals. Even though the competition is, like, tomorrow, which means these dolts should have settled on their set list a month and a half ago already.

Cut to the boys' locker room over at "Thurston High," and interesting choice for the school's name, Glee. Mountain Man Dave Karofsky ambles in from the hall to be greeted by the blond meathead he ran into at BreadstiX last week, and as he continues on through the room, the action grinds down into extreme slow motion to indicate Impending Afterschool Special-Levels Of Adolescent Angst And Trauma, even though Max Adler -- God love him -- looks like he's about thirty-six years old here. And no sooner has the camera reversed angles to reveal that someone's spray-painted "FAG" on Karofsky's locker than we...

By Demian

...hop back over to McKinley's auditorium to watch as Blaine throws himself into his rendition of a thoroughly obscure song entitled "Cough Syrup" that was originally performed by something called "Young The Giant," and for the remainder of this sequence, the action keeps flipping back and forth between Dreamboat Blaine, angry-singing for St. Gay Of Lima because he's still pissed off over the fact that Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual nearly blinded him with rock salt, and Dave Karofsky, preparing to kill himself in his tastefully-appointed garret bedroom because someone said something mean about him on Facebook. And after devoting far too much thought to it all, I can quite confidently say this: I don't give a shit. About any of it. A character in whom I have no emotional investment attempts to kill himself to the strains of some whiny piece of subpar alternacrap I've never heard before? How the hell am I supposed to do anything but yawn at that? To be honest with you, even yawning involves more effort than I'm willing to expend on this supposedly shocking development, so I'm just gonna skip to the end of the whole thing and note that we enter this evening's first commercial break not knowing if Karofsky actually succeeds in offing himself or not.

Meanwhile, out in the hall, Frankenteen lumbers over to Idiot Rachel at her locker to apologize for his role in their earlier spat and, after they assure each other they won't be killing themselves anytime soon, they decide to push up the date of their deeply stupid wedding, because Karofsky's suicide attempt has made them suddenly realize that life is for the living, or something. Whatever, you tiresome, self-obsessed morons.

The Lima Bean. Santana, Brit-Brit, Dreamboat Blaine, and St. Gay Of Lima arrive for a prearranged meeting called by Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual, the latter of whom apologizes to Dreamboat Blaine for an incident I still have yet to witness because Michael Jackson raped little boys (allegedly), after which Sebastian promises never to release the Photoshopped images of Frankenteen. Oh, and he's also convinced Dalton Academy to contribute heavily to little Steffi Germanotta's latest and most cynically opportunistic brand extension, despite the fact there's already a perfectly good preexisting charitable organization that's been devoting itself to the same issue for the last fourteen goddamned years. Why this sudden change of heart on Sebastian's part, I'm sure I hear you ask?

Smash to a Scandals flashback in which Sebastian calls Karofsky a heifer. With a tragic eyebrow situation. Which is not exactly untrue, but I suspect I'm missing the point.

Back in the present, Sebastian The Predatory Homosexual spouts a platitude I'll not be bothering to transcribe, and with that, we head back over to...

...The April Rhodes Civic Pavilion, where Mr. Schue has gathered New Directions in a nurturing sharing circle upon the stage, and because the first part of the interminable scene that follows involves The Leprechaun, I'll be ignoring it.

And because the second part of the scene involves St. Gay Of Lima moaning something martyrlicious while clad in a pair of black and white-striped pirate pants, I'll be ignoring that as well.

And because the third part of the scene involves the ever-useless Mr. Schue talking about the time he tried to kill himself because he got caught cheating on a fucking math test, for Christ's sake, I'll be ignoring that bit, too, THANKS, and are we done here? Oh, we're not? First we have to listen as the children tell us what they're looking forward to in life? Well, fuck you, Glee, because I don't give a shit. Isn't this supposed to be the Regionals episode? Why are they not rehearsing? Why haven't we had a musical number in ten minutes? WHERE'S THE GODDAMNED SINGING?

Oh, here it is. While I was screaming, we shot through this evening's second commercial break to land on the opening of this evening's actual Regionals competition, and it would be remiss of me, I suppose, to jump right into the festivities without first making note of tonight's special guest judges. They are, in order of introduction, "deputy zoning commissioner Melba Jackson-Wright," "president of The Ohio Plumbers' Union Local 109, Mr. Harl Beindorf," and "Central Ohio's number-one late-night horror movie host, Svengoobles." Svengoobles is, of course, this show's take on the seemingly-immortal Chicago-area legend Svengoolie, and if you're thinking that's an infuriatingly obscure reference for this show to be making, it might help to know that Svengoobles is being played by Chicago-area native Ian Brennan, who's apparently been a Svengoolie fan for a very long time.

And with all that out of the way, we finally -- finally -- reach the Regionals proper. First up are The Swallows, who open with a startlingly dull a cappella version of Lenny Kravitz's "Stand," which is followed by a somewhat more energetic rendition of yet another bit of bland, boring nothing I've never heard before in my life, the latter of which was originally performed by a manufactured Anglo-Irish boy band no one in North America will ever care about, ever. It's a shockingly uninvolving set, especially considering the fact that it takes up about five full minutes in the middle of one of the series' huge annual competition episodes, but don't think for a second that stops the onscreen audience from leaping to their feet several times to cheer and applaud anyway.

And when it's over, The Swallows quickly exit the stage to make way for this evening's second set of contenders, The Golden Goblets from Our Lady Of Perpetual Sorrow High School. And it would be especially remiss of me were I not to thank the lovely and talented DEM from the forum boards, who let me know that the version of Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" The Golden Goblets begin to sing actually comes courtesy of The University Of Redlands Madrigal Singers. You can listen to the full song here if you're so inclined, and I hope you are, because it's pretty damn good. Not that you'd know that from the episode itself, of course, for barely have The Golden Goblets opened their mouths to lip-synch when the scene cuts over to...

...the music room so we can watch New Directions' final preparations, which seem to consist solely of Frankenteen and Idiot Rachel announcing to the group at large that their asinine wedding will now be taking place immediately following that afternoon's award ceremony.

And when we return from this evening's third commercial break, we jump right into McKinley High's performance set, and...wow. Underwhelming in the extreme. It opens with medley of Nicki Minaj's "Fly" and notorious urination aficionado R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly," and when this first bit isn't busy being jaw-droppingly awful -- that would be the part where Dreamboat Blaine "raps" -- it's busy being boring as hell. I realize it probably doesn't help that I'm not a fan of the original songs at all, but still. You'd think they'd figure out a way to surprise us with an unexpected arrangement, or some innovative staging, or something -- I mean, come on, people: This is Regionals we're talking about. Step it the fuck up! -- and yet what they end up giving us has little more substance to it than that dry-ice fog that's now rolling across the floor. And to think I was excited I'd be getting all of the competition episodes this season. Sigh.

Once that initial assault on the audience's ability to remain awake ends, the fun-loving gals of Idina Menzel's now-defunct yet still-nurturing lady-choir assume control of the stage -- much as they were promised nearly three months ago, natch -- to offer us their version of Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger," and while it's far and away the best performance we've seen yet this evening, that's not saying much at all considering what the other options have been thus far.

And as that's pretty much all I have to say about that, I'll move on to New Directions' final offering, which is a Rachel-dominated cover of Halestorm's as-yet-unreleased "Here's To Us," and the best thing I can say about it is that it is firmly dedicated to being as inoffensive as possible. I think the precious twelve-year-olds this show is now obviously catering to are going to be in for a terrible, terrible shock once they get an earful of the song's original lyrics. They really have turned this into a primetime broadcast version of Kidz Bop, haven't they?

By Demian

And when all of the crushing disappointments and sorely missed opportunities have at long last reached their conclusion, and after we zip through this evening's fourth commercial break, a team of strapping young show-choir roadies wheels Svengoobles out in his oversized coffin to announce the results.

Unsurprisingly, New Directions wins, with The Swallows in second and Our Lady Of Perpetual Sorrow bringing up the rear. [Note: And the third place teams gets EXCITED about coming in third! They clap, cheer and hug when they find out they're last place! -- RS.] Before the Glee Clubbers can react to the news of their good fortune, though, the action grinds down into extreme slow motion to indicate Impending Afterschool Special-Levels Of Adolescent Joy And Euphoria, even though half the cast is rapidly approaching its late twenties, and the other half will never see its late twenties ever again. I'm also pretty sure I'm supposed to be getting all misty-eyed over how young and exuberant and full of promise they all are, and isn't it a good thing none of them have ever killed themselves, and aren't we all so very glad no one's taken it upon himself to pepper The April Rhodes Pavilion right now with a delightful spray of machine-gun fire in order to slaughter them all? Yeah: Not happening, not really, and no.

By Demian

Afterwards, Quinn steps into Coach Sylvester's office at the apparent behest of the improbably knocked-up lady she finds therein, and long story short, recent events -- along with massive injections of pregnancy-preserving bovine hormones -- have led Coach Sylvester to reconsider her earlier position regarding Quinn's request to rejoin the Cheerios. To that end, she presents Quinn with a personalized box containing the latter's old uniform, and Quinn vows, "You're not gonna regret this -- I'm gonna win us a national championship!" We'll just see about that, missy.

Moments later, Quinn's sashaying through the McKinley High halls, her Cheerios carwash skirt all a-flutter, eliciting admiring remarks from the just-passing Dreamboat Blaine as she hustles to catch up with Idiot Rachel. Quinn's changed her mind about Idiot Rachel's asinine nuptials, you see, and with a broad, warm smile on her face, she asks if she's still invited to the wedding. Idiot Rachel beams, all giddy and such, and the two embrace, so I guess that's a yes. Of course, this heartfelt little exchange would have made a hell of a lot more sense had they chosen to retain a deleted scene in which Quinn quite awesomely told Idiot Rachel that marrying Frankenteen was a stupid, awful, evil decision that Idiot Rachel would come to regret for the rest of her sure-to-be-wretched life, but we can't have everything, I suppose.

Saint Agnes Hospital. St. Gay Of Lima enters Karofsky's room, bearing an exquisitely-arranged floral tribute, and I realize this recap is running way, way short as it is, but I just can't with this bullshit. Trust me, it's not the actors' fault -- both Chris Colfer and Max Adler deserve their due for playing the hell out of this scene -- it's that I simply don't care about The Tribulation Of Saint Dave. At all. So, you know, so much for the shameless bit of audience manipulation they're trying to pull on me with this supposedly touching reconciliation scene, in which Kurt and Dave are finally able to interact with each other as equals, or whatever the hell is going on here, because it's not working, and it's not because I'm outraged at the very idea of Kurt becoming friends with his former tormenter, as so many of the most insistently vociferous on the Internet seem to be, it's because I simply do not care. And so, long story short, after the two chit-chat with each other for a bit, and after both have shed many photogenic tears for the Emmy voters' benefit and delectation, and after Kurt leads Dave through a visualization exercise that's either incredibly sweet in its hopefulness or incredibly insulting in its lack of specificity, the former enemies' interaction ends with Karofsky asking, "You said last week you want to be friends?" St. Gay Of Lima nods. "I'd like that," Karofsky smiles, and that settles it: If I ever have to recap him again, I'm calling him Martha Dumptruck.

Somewhere else that isn't either of the locations -- and Jesus Christ, but how goddamned big is the fucking Allen County Courthouse, anyway? -- Idiot Rachel materializes in this Givenchy knockoff and shyly approaches the gobsmacked Frankenteen for a few last-minute...whatever. Not important, at all, because there are only two and a half minutes left in the episode, and we still have to squeeze in an urgent public service announcement regarding the perils of distracted driving. I'd throw in a "You think I'm kidding?" here were it not for the fact that: Come on. I know you've already seen this shit, so I know you know I'm not kidding. This show. This fucking awful show.

So, as "Chapel Of Love" by the Dixie Cups kicks in on the soundtrack, Idiot Rachel receives a text message from Quinn on her product-placed iPhone that reads, "Ran home to get my bridesmaids dress. Be there soon." I should probably note that Quinn's text message is time-stamped "11:01 PM" on Thursday, "Feb 9, 2012," because hey, why not fuck that little detail up, am I right?

Out on the road, Quinn gets stuck behind a slow-moving tractor.

Back at the courthouse, Santana eyerolls, "Face it -- Quinn's not coming." "She said she'd be here!" Idiot Rachel protests. "I don't want to start without her!" The clock on the wall says it's 4:55 PM. Only five minutes until their scheduled appointment with the judge! Oh, no! "We gotta go right now, or we'll lose our slot," Frankenteen announces. "Can we please just wait a couple more minutes for Quinn?" Idiot Rachel begs. "It's now or never!" Frankenteen urgently replies. Idiot Rachel pouts, then picks up her product-placed iPhone to ask of the tardy Quinn, "WHERE ARE YOU???"

"ON MY WAY TO HELL, BITCHES!" the tardy Quinn texts back, and then she gets t-boned by a pickup truck.

And that, dear children, is why you should never go to stupid weddings.

up: No new episodes until April 10th, at which point we'll presumably learn if Quinn lives or dies. Can you stand the excitement? Well? Can you?

Demian can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea. You may reach him at demian_twop@yahoo.com.

By Demian

Out on the road, Quinn gets stuck behind a slow-moving tractor.

"ON MY WAY TO HELL, BITCHES!" the tardy Quinn texts back, and then she gets t-boned by a pickup truck.

And that, dear children, is why you should never go to stupid weddings.

up: No new episodes until April 10th, at which point we'll presumably learn if Quinn lives or dies. Can you stand the excitement? Well? Can you?

Demian can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea. You may reach him at demian_twop@yahoo.com.