Category: tv

While I feel like I’ve spent most of the summer making lists of shows I wish I could keep up with and write about (The Newsroom, Political Animals, and a cut of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies not edited for US TV. Since that spectacle was about the importance of storytelling in forming identity — whether for children or for nations — I really had wanted to write about it), Ryan Murphy’s gone and got himself on Twitter and has released a spate of deleted Glee scenes.

These have included the infamous box scene (in which Blaine gives Kurt a promise ring), the bridesmaids scene that leads up to Rachel and Finn not getting married due to Quinn’s car accident, and an amazing first season moment between Rachel and Jesse set to “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love” from A Chorus Line. That Rachel and Jesse scene, in particular, merits a significant amount of time an attention all to itself, because it focuses on Rachel’s relationship to sexuality as both tool and reward, which are ideas very much in play when she loses her virginity to Finn in the third season, also present around the evolution of Emma and Will’s relationship, and nearly completely absent from the Kurt and Blaine narrative.

But, since there’s also a long lost Dalton scene that’s just been released, Rachel and Jesse are going to have to wait.

“I Want You Back” was originally slated for the “Michael” episode, and it’s another moment where the fallen Warblers under Sebastian Smythe come off as sexually menacing. If the performance had appeared where it was supposed to, between “Uptown Girl” which just hints at some darkness having contaminated the Warblers, and “Smooth Criminal,” in which it becomes clear just how much of the “Michael” episode is at least metaphorically about rape and response to rape, we wouldn’t have had to connect the dots on the Internet, because Sebastian’s escalation from coveting something, to pressing for something, to taking/ruining what he can’t have, would have happened far more clearly on our screens.

The flip side of that narrative would have also been clearer from Blaine’s initial sense of being flattered and uncomfortably interested in Sebastian to Blaine being annoyed and feeling like he can’t say no to him. Kurt’s complete unwillingness to leave Blaine’s side in “I Want You Back” is telling, because it doesn’t read like jealousy or possessiveness, it reads like fear for another person who’s already vulnerable.

Of course, Blaine is not the only target or illustration of Sebastian and the fallen Warblers. That Artie’s chair has to be carried in and out of the room where the confrontation takes place is extremely telling. In Blaine’s era, Dalton was a place for everyone, and while we didn’t see anyone who used a wheelchair at Dalton during that time period, I feel sure were supposed to assume that Dalton was enthusiastically ADA compliant given how Blaine spoke of the school.

But there’s no room for someone like Artie there now, and it speaks volumes both that New Directions cooperates to get him into and out of that scene, and that it’s through Blaine’s ongoing need to deal with the Warblers that Dalton is only able to become vaguely and inadequately accessible to Artie once again.

Santana and Rachel also get targeted in this scene. With Rachel, that menace is brief, and sexual, and it almost seems like Sebastian loses interest in trying to intimidate her when it seems like she’s not even entirely clear on what she should be afraid of from him. Santana, however, is another story — there are too many ways for Sebastian to target her: sex, race, and class are all weapons he uses against her, in this scene and others, with abandon.

Class, in particular, becomes an explicit, if unexplained, issue in a way it usually doesn’t on Glee at the end of this scene, because Blaine — whose family wealth and social class is a matter of intense debate on Tumblr and in fanfiction circles — tells Sebastian he was proud to be a Warbler because, in part, they were “classy,” and this display wasn’t.

This rather ineffective and uncomfortably delivered attempt at a put down implies two really fascinating things about Blaine.

The first is that while he is relatively good at ingratiating himself into a given environment, Blaine is terrible at code switching. He certainly fit into Dalton when he was there, but when he tries in this scene to insult the Warblers on their terms after he’s left, he can’t quite pull it off. When you’re a person who lives in and between multiple worlds (which is an ongoing issue for Blaine on several fronts because of his school history and the passing issues he encounters related to race, gender, and sexuality) and you’re bad at code switching, one of the things it can mean is that while you usually seem to almost fit in if no one looks too closely, you actually never do — not with the people you’re like, and not with the people others think you’re like.

The second thing the “classy” remark brings up is Blaine’s relationship with sex. Because while Blaine might be criticizing the cruel and threatening way he and his friends were just treated, he may also just be criticizing the ridiculous and over accentuated hip action of the choreography. After all, let’s not forget Blaine’s “not for sale.” Blaine’s narrative bounces between sex-positivity, slut-shaming, and what eventually seems to become real fear in the face of Sebastian’s aggressively sexual advances, and that doesn’t get any less unsettling just because this scene happens to fill in some blanks. This moment is very much in line with things about Blaine’s past on which I’ve speculated before, and the way Kurt keeps close to him really underscores that for me.

Finally, there’s one other sort of delightful yet horrifying nod to class issues in this scene, that I have no way of integrating into the rest of this article, but is too amazingly weird not to mention: Kurt Hummel is wearing white shoes. To Dalton. I don’t know how commonly known this slang is any more or if it is used much outside of my region, but a “white shoe” firm historically refers to old, moneyed, and highly successful banking, law, or consulting firms that serve blue chip corporations and are known for their discretion, conservatism, and, to be frank, WASPishness. Many of those Dalton boys surely have fathers at white shoe firms and will one day be bound for them themselves.

For Kurt “one day you’ll all be working for me” Hummel, who is the son of a proudly successful blue collar man, to wear actual white shoes to Dalton, is that character’s personal and peculiar viciousness (and the Glee costume department) at its very finest. Because that type of trivia is exactly the sort of thing Kurt collects and uses all the time, even when no one else in the room is likely to notice; Kurt Hummel is a writhing ball of cultural references, and it’s one of the reasons this show is so much fun for me to write about.

At any rate, in many ways, we did not need “I Want You Back” placed into “Michael” as it ultimately aired — after all, we were able to do the math that this cut now, in some cases confirms, or at least supports. But its release is incredibly valuable not just in forming arguments about what’s really going on in Glee and the faerieland at its borders, but for asserting that there is an actual point to indulging in all this analysis. “I Want You Back” fills in holes in a way that makes it much easier to say to those who disagree that the show clearly does plan arcs and engages in argumentation, even if it, quite literally, has a tendency to replace too many of its numbers with variables.

Hopefully Ryan Murphy will keep treating us to these delicious goodies from the vaults.

Despite the title, and some of the rage viewing that went on while I watched the two episodes that aired last night, this isn’t actually a post about how I’m over Glee. Rather, this is a post about the ways in which magic was absent from last night’s narratives and what that may tell us about what type of show Glee thinks it is.

Because, even with Tina’s weird body swap fantasy head injury — in which everyone is more themselves than when they are actually themselves and the world is a nice enough place that Kurt and Blaine can cuddle everywhere — magic was noticeably absent.

As graduation approaches, Glee‘s all about the real world now. Even songs that segue out of the choir room into what I think we’ve come to understand as a fantasy sequence on the show, do so onto an empty stage with limited effects. Everything is stark; everything is a future that can’t be imagined. Sometimes, everything is a future that you don’t even want to imagine (see: Beiste and Puck, considering knives).

For me, frankly, the de-magicing of these two episodes of Glee was frustrating, but Glee, while explicitly set up to ultimately be a victory story for all its characters, really only knows how to show us victory in relatively naturalistic terms. We can understand Will getting an award, Finn getting the girl, New Directions winning the prize, Quinn getting her dream school.

But when it comes to transformational stories, about being seen and heard (Tina getting a song, Kurt getting a yes), Glee tends to falter, as if if doesn’t know how to use its style to explicate victories that are, even in front of an audience, innately more private.

That so much of the Nationals-related issues in these episodes center early on around Kurt performing in drag was a narrative device with multiple purposes and potentials, including giving Kurt an opportunity to define the type of queer person he is to a WMHS that might actually be listening for a change. It is, of course also framed as an opportunity for him to be a hero (as boys are), while also taking one for the team (as girls do), emphasizing the way that characters that are perceived as inhabiting liminal spaces at WMHS are always framed both as magical and as suffering burdens of those unasked for and supposed gifts.

That Kurt wants nothing to the drag number is spot on and connects with the ways Glee tends to link authenticity and gendered positioning of its characters. But in the fall-out from Kurt’s disinterest, so many narrative opportunities aren’t just lost, but alluded to in a way that makes their absence even more frustrating.

Puck’s appearance in a dress and fight by the dumpsters with Rick the Stick, for example, represents a gorgeous transformation from the kid who once threw Kurt into dumpsters for not being a certain type of man, yet Puck’s speech about the dress missed the point — in ways Puck actually usually doesn’t.

Kurt, too had an opportunity, to be contrasted with Rachel. They’re both characters who have expressed at times a desire to do anything for fame (and in a way this was underscored by Kurt and Blaine’s reality TV obsession and Halloween costumes), but Kurt has a line regarding his own truth that Rachel has not personally encountered her own version of yet. But he is willing to be a spy (again), indicating a willingness to perhaps compromise his honor his Self. In a set of episodes about the intensity, nature and appropriateness of Rachel’s ambitions, where was an examination of the motivations of the constant moon to her sun?

And of course, there was everyone being offensive about Unique. And I get it, WMHS and Lima are offensive places, where people don’t know how to deal with folks who aren’t cisgendered, and while I’m a big fan of asking audiences to understand that the things that come out of the mouths of characters on Glee are offensive all by themselves, this is one where large swathes of America just don’t have the tools. Even a line where someone asks about what _is_ appropriate, or a well-meaning but painfully awkward PSA from Blaine (he’s good at that, and I felt like the script crept there once and then didn’t deliver) would go a long way.

But that doesn’t happen, and in the end, Unique’s threat to New Directions is more Rachel Berry (powerhouse voice and star power) than Kurt Hummel (liminal magics). I, frankly, love this as a choice, as last night’s script framed Unique more as her true self, than as a performative identity of Wade (which is what we got in the character’s introduction), since Glee’s always run a little bit of a risk around the idea of magical queers (it’s not why Kurt is magical, but as last night’s episode shows, it’s exactly the mistake everyone around WMHS tends to make).

For me, so much of last night’s episode felt like the people with magical roles on the show had checked out or had their own distractions, and it was, to say the least, frustrating. But often, when I write these things, I find my own answers.

Just as Rachel tells us Tina has no idea what it’s like to be her (even as the audience is supposed to identify with her every step of the way), we really have no idea what it’s like to be Kurt who tends death, makes people love him with a song, and is constantly expected to make everything better by becoming — for good or for ill — something other than the mass of shifting colors he often is.

While the New Directions victory is huge for all the characters, and for us as viewers who surely had to have expected this moment, most of the characters are actually more worried about other battles right now, and are waiting — as in all the numbers that took to the WMHS stage in this pair of episodes — in the dark.

This shift to other battles even as the obligatory one dragged on, means that the real question left for the finale is whether graduation means an end to the magical world of Glee and the otherness and liminality that often drives it, as practical, logistical concerns take over for those who depart, or whether our magicians are about to face even greater magics then their own — after all, it looks like Rachel and Kurt are off to meet the wizard (and we’ll talk about the danger of that during hiatus, I think), or at least, see Oz.

But while the New York setting of Glee‘s next season remains one type of magical question mark, so does the situation back at WMHS, especially for Blaine and Tina, both of whose narratives increasingly seem to be about the consequences of being rendered powerless.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about Glee and its faerie courts. Faerie mythos is completely not my department of expertise, so I’m mostly throwing this out there for you all to continue to be excellent in comments, but there was some truly fantastic stuff going on regarding Puck, Kurt, the prom crownings and gender in last night’s episode.

Because one of the things that came out of the series of crownings that took place, and how they took place, is that kings mean less than queens. Not only has the prom queen title always been more important to the girls of WMHS than the prom king title has been to the boys — as evidenced by the way women have consistently pitched strategies for winning the times to the boys, but not the other way around — but the prom queen title has always come with a lot more power, whether to wound or to elevate.

Certainly, it’s the prom queens and queen bees who confer that power in “Prom-asaurus.” Santana and Quinn, in a strange, and incredibly messy, plot overrule the will of the people (let’s face it, their people, even if they’ve both significantly fallen from grace over the last three seasons) to declare Rachel the victor. Not only does it not remove any of their true power (they are acting as regents here), it makes them more powerful, not only by declaring Rachel queen, but having a secret they could always choose to use against her later.

Meanwhile, with Dave Karofsky (who was only ever prom king because of Santana’s machinations) is missing from the scene, and Kurt is left to crown both Finn and Rachel, passing on his own power (because the shame of what was done to Kurt went both ways; he shamed that audience that tried to mock him in recognizing his power when he accepted that crown last year) to his brother and his closest friend for a single night in merely symbolic form.

Rachel and Finn still don’t really learn anything from the events of the prom, but Kurt’s blessing of magic will be enough to get them to New York, one imagines. Certainly, Rachel hopes so as she grabs her tiara (not a full crown like Kurt had, she is a lesser power) from Kurt to fasten it on her head herself. But Kurt still retains control of their power, taking their scepters for safe keeping as the dance begins.

Interwoven with this, we have Puck, who opened the door for Kurt’s entrance into faerieland (Dalton) in S2, and has been struggling with his own powerlessness this season, crowning himself so that he can crown Becky queen of the anti-prom. It gives them the power to attend the prom proper and to be part of the broader WMHS world that Puck has felt increasingly marginalized from and that Becky, while a central figure of (and a queen bee like Santana and Quinn herself), has always existed in with her power overlooked, misunderstood or condescended to by too many of her subjects (something which, by the way, brings up some narrative parallels for Kurt and Becky, which I should totally tackle another time). Of course, granted her power, Becky then pulls of the thing Puck’s never been able to do: spiking the prom punch, and we all know the power of libations and food in faerie.

All this talk about crowning of course, raises the question that Deconstructing Glee raised earlier today: is Kurt still pregnant? I’m not sure, but the answer may depend on whether Finn and Rachel are ready to go out into the world on their own under his aegis.

And finally, of course, there’s Blaine, and who’s always been faerie and onion and changeling, showing this time what is, we think, his true form. But whether that means he’ll rule at prom next year or never rule again remains to be seen. It depends on what Glee ultimately decides to do with its arguments about authenticity vs. performativity and how those things intersect with power and gender.