“And then I said to Justin Timberlake, ‘That’s not eggnog.’”

[ellydash]

This episode was holy glory sandwiched between massively disappointing slices of homegrown sub-mediocrity. Look, I’m not going to pretend to have any objectivity whatsoever about that television special, because the Judy Garland Christmas Show was a Major Thing for me and my dad when I was growing up, and I mean, add Star Wars and oh my god, I was a gibbering mess of joy. But pretty much everything else, with the exception of the opening number? Offensive, OOC, or just plain boring.

There was – no plot. None at all, unless “let’s put on a TV show! And then sing a song unironically to homeless kids about thanking God you’re not dying in Africa!” counts as a plot, which, even for Glee, nope. Most episodes of the show now suffer from a pretty bad case of “characterization serves the plot,” rather than the other way around, but what was really egregious and unforgivable about this one was that the characterization didn’t even serve an actual plot, just a bunch of haphazard, derivative pseudo-emotional notes. Sure, Rachel’s been blindingly selfish before, and I can even buy her giving Finn a gift list, but materialistic? Really? And Sue Sylvester is the passive-aggressive moral high ground? Sure, Sue is manipulative, mean, abusive and downright violent, but passive-aggressive she isn’t. Her scene in the choir room felt so incredibly off to me. At least Finn “I’m giving you the gift of myself” Hudson was as in-character as ever!

The tone was all over the place, too. I get that Rory reading scripture was an homage to the Peanuts special, but it didn’t work at all, and it was so jarring, especially in contrast to the zaniness that preceded it. Sam commenting that the best of Christmas is in its combination of happy things and sad things was a nice sentiment, and one of the few notes that rang true to me. My sense is that the episode as a whole was trying to do exactly that, a kind of emotional mash-up of happy things and sad things - except it failed, imo, to achieve any kind of relatable cohesion.

I did unashamedly, unreservedly love that special, though. They recreated the Judy special’s aesthetic almost exactly; the writing was pretty on point for a parody; Chris did a great job, imo, of affecting Judy’s voice and OTT persona just enough so that he still sounded like Kurt; the overacting was hilarious; Mercedes looked STUNNING; also, that eggnog joke. Kurt and Blaine’s duet was gorgeous and adorable (seriously, what is it about holiday episodes that brings out the best in their voices?), and ngl, my heart did a little shipper pitter-patter during Rachel and Mercedes’s moments during “My Favorite Things.” Throwing Star Wars into that mix makes zero sense, but it’s the kind of chaotic King’s Cup combination that actually works for Glee. I just wish the special had been the entire episode.

Other things:

- If it weren’t for the fact that Rory looks like a baby to me, and is therefore pretty much a black hole of shipping interest, I’d be all over Sam/Rory, but as it is, I’m all about seeing Rory become hero-fixated on Sam instead of Finn. Maybe they could accidentally bump hands while rooting around in the popcorn during a viewing of Alien, and Rory would blush a lot, and Sam would pretend nothing happened, but inside he'd be suddenly super nervous and maybe a little excited.

- There’s just something about Sam and Mercedes grinning at each other that instantly produces these tiny, high-pitched happy shrieks out of my throat.

- Puck, you can’t watch the Yule Log because it is DECAYING ON YOUR HEAD.

- RIB+ really missed a golden opportunity to have Rachel as Princess Leia singing an ode to Life Day Christmas, complete with blank, stoned stare and weirdly angled head.

- Yeah, the Salvation Army plug was awful.

- I seriously cannot get over the fact that the line “Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you” was sung in front of homeless children.

- On a semi-related note, does anyone know if there's any fic with Will in an It’s a Wonderful Life scenario? I’d say I want the show to do that next year, but they’d probably botch it horribly, and I think it’d be way more interesting if we saw the way some of the lives Will’s ~touched might actually be improved if he’d never existed.

- oh shit the episode's ending wait HAPPY HANUKKAH

Comments

[milk-and-glass.livejournal.com]

I just . . . I saw the issues with the episode, and this time, I didn't care, because the Judy Garland-like special was JUST TOO GOOD. Lea must have watched hours of Judy Garland to get that right tone of "stoned and happy!". And I loved Chris, and I normally do not :P I was basked in a warm glow of AWW THIS IS SO AWESOME.

But yes, the end scene fell extremely flat for me. Rachel was OOC with the materialistic list of Christmas stuff - she's arrogant and selfish, but not quite in that vein. But I am a huge fan of A Charlie Brown Christmas so I can't help but love all the references in it, and Rory, as baby-like as he is, is definitely growing on me whereas before I was like, " . . . What? What is he saying now?"

IDK. I think this was MUCH better than last year's. And as for the Will/It's a Wonderful Life? You may have given me a plotbunny . . .

[pee-wee-2005.livejournal.com]

WHAT?! THAT WAS AN HOMAGE TO THE JUDY GARLAND CHRISTMAS SPECIAL?! I HAD NO IDEA. Holy shit, as if I didn't think that could get anymore awesome but it just did.

I loved everything there Christmas special chose to be. Everything. That was the best cheese. Delicious. Lea and Chris fucking nailed everything. Giggling and cackling the whole way through that. Actually, the only thing I disliked about it was "Let It Snow." BICO must have just been one ginormous stars aligning perfectly fluke because every time Chris and Darren have sang together since then it's sounded bad. Stop singing together. Go away.

Puck getting upset over the yule log, I laughed so hard.

I don't know, I kind of loved the episode. A lot. Mainly just for the fact that it was embarrassingly, praise jesus, better than last years fiasco. I went into the episode knowing that it wasn't going to be anything but schmaltzy Christmas fluff, and that's what it was so I was content.

Sam Evans is better than everyone. I liked the Rory/Sam stuff. Damian is just too cute to function. "Blue Christmas," was purrdy. At least it wasn't Finn. His sainthood wasn't shoved down out throats like it was during last years x-mas ep.

I guess the materialism was too much even for Rachel, but all that stuff just made me laugh. Almost felt sorry for the poor boy. Almost. I mean, he had sex with her. It's what he gets :) That first gift was just so Finn, and that's what was funny about it. Maybe I'm just too stupid but because Rachel's vegan, smh still, was that gift really that insensitive?

[merkintosh.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the show should have been forty solid minutes of that B&W special. I was laughing from the title sequence all the up until Rory ruined everything with his random moral lesson about Jesus. Except for that, it was cute, cheesy, campy, biting, yet incredibly funny. It's not like Christmas episode really count anyways so why not go full hog and have two tiny minutes of set up before jumping into the special and making the viewers' hour that much more awesome?

The rest of the episode was such a major letdown in comparison that it saddens me. What was up with Sue randomly shaming them for not showing up when it was obvious by the end that they could do both? Was this some random reverse evil plot on her part? IDGI. And the Finn/Rachel relationship is a total dead end nowadays. There is nothing to be mined from that pairing beyond sadness and despair.

I like to imagine that Kurt fixed up the set the night before and had Blaine stay afterwards so they could screw on all the flat surfaces they could find to really make it their "Bachelor chalet". I also like to imagine there's a reality a sit-com b&w show exists about that wacky couple Kurt and Blaine and their friends. Imagine all the amazing things Rachel and Mercedes are doing in that universe. I like to think of them as a 50s-style Edina and Patsy.

[(Anonymous)]

I gave most of the dumb stuff a pass, because Christmas!episode, but yeah, if I had been watching for any sort of plot and character continuity, I would have been bothered by all the same stuff you were. Thoughts:

*It usually bugs me when the show gets self-deprecating, because I'm like, "If you know what you're doing wrong WHY DON'T YOU FIX IT?", but it made me laugh this week, for some reason. The robot pants broke? SERIOUSLY? Oh, whatever, you dumb show. I guess I was feeling generous. LIKE THE BABY JESUS OR SOMETHING.

*I cannot believe Sue didn't use this opportunity to renew her vow of vengeance against the Glee Club. (The election's over, so she needs another excuse, right? *eyeroll*)

*As much as I looooooooooooooooooooooooooooved the Christmas special, I wonder how it played with people who a) don't love '40s and '50s style musicals, and b) aren't ridiculously enamored with this cast. Like, *I* could watch Chris Colfer and Lea Michele mug at the camera all day, but I wonder how casual viewers reacted to it.

*Oh my god, the Star Wars. Finn's copyright infringement speech. GOLD!

*So, Rachel's characterization was totally out of nowhere, but when Finn gave her the star named after him, I said, out loud (and this is something I rarely say about these two), "Oh my god, you douches are MADE for each other." Because that? Is something Rachel *would totally* do. Like, I love her, but seriously. And I know my statement is patently false, but at that moment, their mutual selfishness met on the astral plane.

*I had forgotten how terrible "Do They Know It's Christmastime" is. And, I mean, it's already terrible, but then WHY WOULD YOU SING THAT IN FRONT OF THE PEOPLE YOU WANT TO HELP?!? WHY?!? By that point, I was on my second gin and tonic (I've started drinking during the show, which is probably why I've been fairly positive about it the past few weeks), and I have to admit, I started laughing. A lot. Because it was just SO BAD that I had to pretend in my head that it was a parody of this kind of thing, and not a sincere expression of it.

I do sometimes wonder if Ryan Murphy and co. are smarter than we think they are, and they're totally trolling us by presenting these completely cheesy and ridiculous and kind of offensive sequences ("Imagine" comes to mind), but I am sadly fairly certain they are not.

[themillersson.livejournal.com]

I've seen a lot of negative reactions to the episode and, okay, I get that the parts with actual plot were beyond offensive and I'm doing my best to repress any and all memories of "Don't They Know it's Christmas," but the holidays special and everything associated with it made me way too happy to care about the other twenty minutes or so.

I mean. Star Wars, Judy Garland, retro cheese, hilariously bad acting, Mercedes in the PSA part, the credits ("no relation"), camp out the wazoo, and what might have been the dirtiest throwaway line they've managed on Glee. There was almost literally nothing about that part of the episode I didn't like - except Rory's reading of scripture, and I'd have been able to forgive that as a Peanuts tribute if it had been worked into the actual plot differently, or if Rachel, Kurt, and Puck had looked a little less enthralled. I am so using "holiday roommate" someday in the future, though. If someone gets the reference, they probably wouldn't care anyway.

And oh my god, Kurt and Rachel during that entire sequence. I just want Chris and Lea to do a cabaret act where they get drunk and impersonate various divas together. I was getting Carol Channeling flashbacks in the best way possible. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGjxgwUufWY)

I'm pretending that the rest of the episode doesn't exist, outside of Rachel's frantic, hurt attempts to get "invited to Kurt and Blaine's Christmas," the collective boyfriend fail of the locker room scene, and the bit where Kurt is ratting his stepbrother out to Rachel. And the costuming, because Lou was on fire this episode (other than whatever the fuck Kurt was wearing in that choir room scene).

[grimorie.livejournal.com]

On a semi-related note, does anyone know if there's any fic with Will in an It’s a Wonderful Life scenario? I’d say I want the show to do that next year, but they’d probably botch it horribly, and I think it’d be way more interesting if we saw the way some of the lives Will’s ~touched might actually be improved if he’d never existed.

I will pay people in wheelbarrows of breadsticks to read this fic!

. I get that Rory reading scripture was an homage to the Peanuts special, but it didn’t work at all, and it was so jarring

*nods* it really brought me out of the scene. It was just so out of place and I can't help staring at Rachel and Puck being so prominent in the scene when Rory is forcing them to listen to a passage in the bible. It just really rubbed me wrong.

[sceptick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I really can't say too much about the ep. I didn't hate it? I didn't really love it either, tho. It was very meh for me, with the exception of the Star Wars stuff. And Mercedes' everything.

Bad stuff:

- Yeah, materialistic Rachel wasn't working for me. I see her more as the grand gestures type, so like, wanting Finn to help her recreate that scene from Elf where Zooey Deschanel gets up and sings and looks pretty and is on television, or something ridic like that. But flipping out over jewellery? That's not really Rachel's thing.

- Finn's gift, in the end, was super IC and douchey, but I'm fairly sure it was meant to come off as romantic :/

- WHY THE SALVATION ARMY. OUT OF ALL THE CHARITIES OUT THERE DOING WORK, WHY THE SALVATION ARMY?

- THAT SONG. THAT SONG.

- The whole Jesus thing didn't really fly with me. It was just sloppy and hamhanded, narratively. (Sidenote: I was having a conversation with a guy today and he started talking about how we're all God's children and the fact that faith is diminishing in this world disgusts him, and I'm just sitting there like... welp. Don't mind me, atheist over here. Enjoy your coffee, dude. In the end, I told him something like "well, those are your beliefs and I respect that, but I just don't share them. No hard feelings." Random anecdote over, okay, on to the good stuff!)

Good stuff:

- SAM/MERCEDES I MEAN HELLOOOOOOOOO GORGEOUS FACES PLS SMUSH TOGETHER NOW. Although, whatever happened to the bf? Didn't make a huge amount of sense, but I'm willing to disregard it for the sake of S/M.

- CAN WE TALK ABOUT SAM? BECAUSE I WANT TO TALK ABOUT SAM. I've seen a lot of people complaining about Sam being super self-righteous and irritating in this episode. I can see where they're coming from, because he was a little judgmental this episode and stuff. But the thing is, and maybe this is just my read on the scenes, it looked to me like he was just projecting all the hell over this charity stuff. It makes a ton of sense, and so honestly I just felt all of the Sam feels while watching. I mean, he's been there, and it has inspired him to help. And yeah, he gets a little angry when no one is going to come with him. Because that was him, you know?

Oh and also he had me weeping into my hankie (not really but you know what I mean) when he was empathising with Rory over not being near family and how hard it is. Just. Sam. And mfy i want Rory to hero worship Sam too. And Kurt can take them aside and tell them about the Salvation Army, and then Sam is like, shit no I'll find somewhere else. Only it's Lima Ohio and they don't have anywhere else, so he... idk. He comes up with one of those crazy ass Glee schemes. Maybe he has the entire glee club learn how to knit (Puck is a pro, obvs) and then they knit ALL the things and hand them out on a cold street corner singing something fantastically inappropriate. (Inappropriate but not as blatantly weird and offensive and srs bsns as Do They Know It's whatever.)

- The black and white was pretty fantastic. I'm not as over-the-moon as most people seem to be, but it was still hilarious. Chris and Lea killed it, for sure :DDD

- I'm js, Sam should have been Luke. And Han. At the same time. Alternately, I would've been down for Mercedes as Han and Sam as Luke, or vice versa. That said, Finn is definitely just entitled and whiny enough to be Luke, although Luke was never as much of an asshole as Finn is. (Puck's hawk should've been Chewie.)

My unpopular opinion

[nonsensesqrd.livejournal.com]

I thought it made sense for Sam's character to volunteer with the Salvation Army. Chances are his family volunteered there with their church or got help from them when his family became homeless.

The part I hated was Rory reading the Bible. As a Christian I was offended by that part. lol. I mean I get that it was supposedly a tribute to the Charlie Brown Christmas but it didn't work and just felt like religion was being forced in because ~ Christmas.

I also hated the end. The episode should have just been a 40 min b&w variety show/start wars/judy garland special with more songs and Puck Puckerman teaching them all about Hanukkah.

[elva-barr.livejournal.com]

Puck, you can’t watch the Yule Log because it is DECAYING ON YOUR HEAD.

+1000 ♥

I mean, let's be real, I love the episode because I'm pretending that it starts and ends with their Bachelor Chalet show, and I have so many feelings about that, I cannot properly express them in words. I think this is the first time that I've really been into Blaine as a character, and I'm not sure what that says about Darren's acting, but it worked for me, so I'll try not to question it. Everyone was spot-on in that scene, from crazy-eyes Rachel to Mercedes' deadpan, to Kurt's perfect Lucy "oops" face at "oh no I forgot to turn on the oven." I want that spinoff now, damn it.

Except for the Sam/Rory, that can stay, too.