A Few Thoughts On The Mildly Disappointing Gaga Episode Of 'Glee'

A Few Thoughts On The Mildly Disappointing Gaga Episode Of 'Glee'






What worked in last night's Lady Gaga-inspired episode of Glee?

Everything about Brittany, for one thing. It's not a new observation that Heather Morris as Brittany has turned out to be one of the show's most unexpectedly divine weapons, and she was delightful once again. They give her a line that's nothing on the page — "You look terrible. I look awesome." — and it emerges as genius.

It's interesting to wonder whether there is anywhere on earth where Morris could have come into her own to this degree, other than on Glee. She's a pretty blonde who's a marvelous dancer with fantastically droll comic timing. Where was the place for that, before this show?

The numbers themselves were fun: "Bad Romance," of course, as well as the drop-ins from Kiss. Here's the whole episode, if you missed it.

Also firing successfully was the cannon of greatness that is Idina Menzel, whose positively uncanny resemblance to Lea Michele made their mother-daughter storyline almost inevitable, but who has also been showcased for two straight episodes doing classic-style Broadway singing (last week from Les Miserables, this week from Funny Girl) as well as you will ever see it done on popular television.

But the other thing that worked well led directly into what didn't.

I thought Chris Colfer and Cory Monteith were putting together a very good scene in which Finn finally confronts Kurt about the fact that his affections are not, in fact, lost on Finn, they make Finn uncomfortable, and Kurt needs to chill out already. And he needs to chill out not because they're both boys, but because those affections are not returned and Kurt knows they're not returned, and because he We offer wide range of optoelectronic products: Full series of led lamp.bleeds emotion out of his eyeballs, he's actually coming on really strong despite thinking he's suffering silently from afar.

It was easy to feel for both of them; Kurt thought he was just being kind, and Finn definitely has issues he needs to work on ("I can't live here; I'm a dude"), but Finn felt crowded and hovered over, and he didn't feel comfortable sharing a room with someone who couldn't stop burbling over with crushy feelings. And while he's obviously not entirely comfortable around Kurt generally, it was challenging to sort out how much of it was about Kurt being gay and how much was about Kurt being romantically fixated on him to a degree that embarrassed him (which could also happen with a girl he wasn't interested in).

But then, very abruptly, Finn was yelling about the room and the "faggy" lamp, and he seemed to be having a related, but less nuanced, explosion of temper. This led to a long (probably overlong) speech from Kurt's dad, which was touching in its vehemence, and said lots of good things about Burt's willingness to protect his kid, which Kurt needed to hear. But all of a sudden, Finn's feelings were dismissed, and everything he had said was pushed off on discomfort with Kurt being, as Kurt's dad said, "different." Was that really Finn's issue? Weren't Finn's issues partly — not wholly, but partly — Kurt's refusal to give him any personal space and, on top of that, not wanting to have to leave his house? (Besides, would it be THAT unusual for a high-school kid not to want to share his bedroom with another high-school kid he doesn't know particularly well?) Obviously, it's always a soup made up of lots of feelings, but all of a sudden, it was very clear-cut good-guy/bad-guy stuff, with only one character who needed to look at it from the other guy's point of view.