Glee-Asian F

This was hyped as the BEST EPISODE OF GLEE EVER. It obviously wasn't, but I imagine many people liked it a whole lot. If you were willing to watch and think very little then it was an hour of well produced, well staged, and well performed television. My main issue with it was the fact that the four main storylines weren't really designed for me to ever love it but still, I don't think it's entirely my fault. Lets go through the reasons one-by-one, just to try and keep my ideas vaguely contained thematically.

A) Rachel vs Mercedes.

My disliking of storyline is, at least in part, linked to my hated of ambition and competition- I am never going to enjoy a Diva-off. This I realise more my issue than everyone else's but Mercedes not accepting the double casting just seemed petty and stupid. Yes it's always been the Rachel Berry Show but just suck it up. A year ago you wouldn't have even got this far. Yes Mercedes, one day you can give Rachel the (metaphorical) kicking she probably deserves but not right now. I obviously approve of Mercedes having more confidence, but the difference between confidence and arrogance seems lost on the writers. You can believe in yourself and not be a total bitch (I thought we learnt this in Night of Neglect-apparently not).
Even with Rachel's very high bar, Mercedes won the biggest bitch of the night. Side note- did this new arrogant cow persona need to be instigated by a boyfriend (whose name I still don't know); can't women ever become confident by their own means?

Her joining Shelby's 'reject Glee' also seemed a bit of a tired routine. People have been leaving New Directions because of disagreements with Will, and others, so often that it beggers belief the writers think they can still get away with it. Example: Santana's back this week with only the most throw-away comment to her being very dramatically told to leave in 3x01. I feel like we should have grown out of this petty bullshit at this point in the show; why can't half these people stop being so flighty and tempremental? Is this meant to be what teenagers are like? Maybe they are; I hope I wasn't, although it really wasn't at all that long ago that I was one. I can't ever remember behaving like these kids do most of the time. This continual infernal bickering was wearing thin last season, I really can't face much more of it.

The whole Dream Girls role play thing was bloody weird wasn't it? By the end of it I was kind of into it, but I did spend the first half of it being like “wait what, really?” Maybe it would have made more sense if I'd seen Dream Girls.

B) Mike's Dad getting Changry (sorry being watching a lot of Community recently).

I like Mike getting some back story and it's always fun to see him dance. His audition for Riff, with help from the rest of the team, was great. That said, this whole "my parents don't understand my art thing" is also tired as hell. But it was nicely done. Although it again suggested that being a dancer would be the only way he could feel special. For the second time in as many weeks we have had the idea that working in the arts is the best thing ever and that everything else is shit and not special and for losers. How is being a doctor not special? You can save lives- that's pretty fucking special. This awkward entertainment elitism has always popped up in Glee but they seem to doing an even worse a job at hiding it. At least pretend you give a shit about anything else. Also I'm calling bullshit on the idea that Harvard would consider Glee club  detrimental in the application process. I don't buy that even a little a bit.

Also, was anyone else kind of concerned about Mike's mental health after Tina egging him on turned out to be a hallucination? Is he hydrating enough? While we're on the subject of Tina, surely her talking about Principle Figgins and his “Spicy Curry Blood” is like 8 levels of offensive and racist? Like for serious, what the hell- that is just straight up not ok. It also seemed totally unnecessary. I imagine that it was decided that it was there for humour, but the humour from that scene was linked to the fact Figgins thinks vampires are real. That's humour enough- we don't need random racism to make it funnier. I like close to the knuckle humour, but Glee isn't set up in the kind of way so it doesn't work. Especially with a character like Tina, if Sue had said it that would much better because she's generally pretty offensive to most people, and her statements are never meant to be anything other than funny jokes. Tina isn't that character at all; it doesn't make sense that she would joke about that so it's just offensive.

C) Ginger Pride.

Look, I just don't like Will; simple as that. He's not a good teacher and he's not a good person most of the time. He's crazily self involved; he really does think that everything revolves around him. If you're girlfriend is massively repressed and OCD surely it's a relatively safe bet that she has a difficult relationship with her parents. Also bearing in mind that she was not subtle about her love for him throughout the previous seasons, why would you automatically assume she was ashamed of you? Fix You would have worked for this storyline if it had just been Will singing it to Emma in their bed room, but the whole of Glee club doing it in clichéd white clothing thing did not work- talk about hammering the message home. Christ it was as awkward as the end song of High School Musical 2.

Also how weird was it him showing her his porn collection which he seems to hide in a weird wicker basket with a fold out lid? What person has EVER had a specific wicker box thing to put their porn in? No person- that's who. What was the point? just to yet again remind her that they haven't had sex? To let her know his sexual kinks for when they do? “Oh you subscribe to Nipple Clamps Weekly good to know!”.  Also, I'm not loving the fact that the women has a secret wedding stash and the man has the porn; women like weddings men like sex, when will these stereotypes die? That said, prizes for storyline that upset my feminist principles the most goes to....

D) Girls Run the World?

The more I think about this, the angrier I am about it all. In theory I should love this, I'm a women and I'm all about empowerment. But if this is empowerment, then frankly women kind should send patriarchy a post card saying “Well Done you win! Now we're off to make you dinner”. Sure, the song is fine in its message, but watch it with the sound off and it's just another dance routine seemingly designed to turn men on; the moves and the clothing are totally geared to the heteronormative male audience. How was this empowerment? How was I meant to come away from this with anything other than a sense of dread about the state of the world? Its basic message seemed to be "girls if you want a job in politics you need to sell your body and sexuality" (and I mean female sexuality through a completely straight male frame of reference) because that's all you have to offer. What are Britney's ideas about how to change the school other than have a women leader? No idea? A fact that apparently doesn't matter.

Female strength is equated to women accepting sexual objectification of themselves. It's admitting that the oppressors of women have been right all along, and the we can't beat them so we might as well join them. I notice how most of the crowd shots during this scene are filled with a much higher number of women than normal. It's like they've realised the flaw in the routine, tried to compensate and failed miserably; watching all the women dance along just made me more sad. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing women that this dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p80pq_2iKCk) counts as empowerment and women taking control of their own sexual self.

Also, it's not equality if women are only voted in because they are women and men have fucked up so far. Having a uterus doesn't mean you are automatically going to be a better leader. Equality means gender should not be a feature; women should be respected and treated the same as men. Yes, I would like more women in roles of political influence but I'm never going to vote for a women purely because she's a women; that's also doing us a disservice. Brittany's campaign manifesto of "vote for me because I'm a (hot)women" is meaningless and her victory would be shallow unless she had actual policies and had won on an intellectual playing field. Given the three options of Kurt, Rachel and Britney. I would clearly vote for Kurt, not because I believe in male supremacy over women, because he is a) sentient b) a good person, most of the time.

On a different note, I didn't spend the whole hour shouting at the computer- there were some bits that I genuinely loved. Seeing Kurt grow enough to admit Blaine will be a better Tony, the flower zig zag scene was very sweet. That said, it was nice and realistic that during the scene where everyone found out their roles while he congratulated Blaine he was still every so slightly visibly disappointed. I actually loved that whole bit, each character was completely believable in their reaction and that little bit was probably my favourite contained scene in the whole episode. When it comes to best lines/character, there was a clear winner- Beiste, because well knock me for six if she wasn't the best thing in this whole episode. If I was going to do a list of quotes I loved, they would all be her! This character is really coming into her own with a consistency in her warmth and subtle depth which sometimes seems awkwardly rare on this show. She seems to be one of the few genuinely nice characters and easily in the top three I would want to spend time with. It would be great we could eat delicious creamy pasta and talk about the tragedy of Ace of Cakes being cancelled.

Also, I didn't notice until the promo for the next episode came on that we hadn't seen Sue throughout. She was not missed. Don't get me wrong I have some serious love for Jane Lynch but Sue has slipped into farcical caricature. Her hatred of Will, Glee and now the arts in general have been run into the ground. Just stop; let Jane Lynch go onto other things. Speaking of that promo- was it trying to suggest that Shelby and Puck might be a thing, that better not the fuck happen. If it does, wow, I can't describe how much I don't want that.

When I first finished this episode I quite liked it, now after thinking about it and writing this I kind of hate it. I do realise that there is distinct chance I'm taking this way to seriously. But then sometimes I think Glee asks us to take it that seriously and then when it fucks up it try to dismiss it by being like “well it's only a fun singing show” It can't be both, well it could, but right now it seems incapable of doing so.