You smell like Craigslist.

[ellydash]

Okay, first things first: I have a lot of Sam, Quinn and Mercedes feelings that might be best resolved in their choosing to have a polyamorous relationship. I’m just saying.

First off, Sam. SAM. SAAAAAAAM. I feel like I can’t write his name without threatening some kind of devolution into hysterical typing where I just interchangeably henpeck the letters S, A and M in various orders while shrieking with joy. This dude is legitimately my favorite character, and he’s almost definitely going to get ruined somehow now that he’s back, but until then, I’m just going to put a lot of really happy words about him on the internet. Yeah, he wasn’t perfect tonight – that condescending speech to Quinn about her “rich white girl problems” really bothered me – but I’m so thrilled to see him that I can’t find it in me to spend much time kvetching or, you know, have perspective.

Instead, I’m just going to focus on how starry-eyed the Sam/Mercedes moments tonight made me. The grin threatening to burst on Mercedes’s face when she was walking away from Sam down the hallway; how proud Sam looked during the Troubletones performance; that embarrassed and thrilled reaction she had during ABC: all of it was magic. This is all so unfamiliar to me – getting to see one of your OTPs actually become/be canon. I feel like I should talk to some Kurt/Blaine shippers to figure out how to process it. It’s like eating a lot of really great gouda when you usually don’t have any extra money to buy really great gouda, and you’re overwhelmed by how full you are, but the gouda is just so awesome that you want to keep eating. MORE GOUDA, GLEE. BRING THAT SHIT ON.

Mercedes herself continues to be flawless. She’s grown into her own this season, and she’s done it on her own terms; I especially love that she refused to come back to ND without making sure first that things would be different. It feels weird saying I’m proud of her, because lol fictional character, but you know, I’m really proud of her.

And then, Quinn. I just, Quinn’s storyline leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. It feels all wrong to me, like they’ve just thrown her into the mud and let her wriggle there for episode after episode, without bothering to ask questions about why she’s this messed up. It seems like we’re supposed to think Quinn’s problems have to do with her lack of perspective, judging by the “fix” she got tonight – apparently it’s as simple as getting her to appreciate her youth and the time she has with her friends. But what we’re being shown is Quinn leaping from irrationality to irrationality with no contextual acknowledgement that if she’s this divorced from reality, there’s something majorly, majorly wrong with her, and she needs way more help than her friends can give. It’s frustrating as hell, and I can’t bring myself to care about it as much as I’d like to, because there’s no sense that anyone involved in writing her has any interest in making this psychologically realistic.

The way she reached out to Mercedes at the end, though? That was beautiful. I’ve missed seeing their friendship so much, and seeing them dance together made my heart happy.

Is it heartless to say I didn’t much care for the Papa Chang/Mike/Tina storyline? I feel like that’s probably a very unpopular opinion. I didn’t hate it, but it felt so familiar and overdone, and tbh I kind of understand where Mike’s dad was coming from. Not that Mike shouldn’t embrace his dreams, if that’s what makes him happy, but a solid backup plan is a really important thing when you’re going for a career in the arts (or, hell, the humanities in general), and a little gray area would’ve gone a long way here. It was nice to see Tina speak and do things, too, but would it be too much to ask for her to have her own plotline that doesn’t revolve around her boyfriend? Don’t answer that.

Other things:

- Fuck it, the Troubletones should’ve won. I’m totally biased, and ND was pretty solid, especially during ABC, but the Troubletones killed. The music tonight on the whole was actually way better than it’s been for a long time, and I loved hearing so many different voices in one episode (especially Tina! Yay, Tina!). “We Are Young” was one of those moments where the song paid off because it benefited from storylines and context, and it reminded me that when it comes down it, my real OTP for this show is everyone/everyone.

- Finn did things tonight that were worth talking about, I guess. Whatever, I'm sure they were offensive somehow even though I didn't really pay attention.

- Kurt and Rachel singing along with Harmony. ♥_____♥

- PUCK PUCKERMAN, WHAT IS YOUR HAIR AND IS THERE EVEN A CURE FOR IT ANYMORE THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE A NUCLEAR OPTION. Like, is that an actual life choice Mark Salling made? Did he lose a bet? Are the hairstylists on the show trying to confuse him? Is he hiding all those unsold copies of Pipe Dreams in that waxy wave? I swear, I missed entire stretches of dialogue because I was giggling too hard to hear anything.

- I lost it at Will’s creepy “Hey guys, I’m here now, yeah! Aren’t we awesome? Hey, remember when I was a major character on this show? Wasn’t that fun? That was cool, right?” laugh at the very end. Like, legitimately got teary from cracking up.

- RIP Troubletones. ;______;

Comments

[ellydash.livejournal.com]

All in all, I don't know that it was good, exactly, but I liked it, and I think that's how I'm judging the show these days. :)

This is a very good barometer, imo. Basically, if I don't end the episode filled with rage, I'm more or less happy, and if there were things I actually really enjoyed? That's an awesome bonus. (This show, man. Setting new standards for increasing low expectations.)

The one exception is that Sam's speech to Quinn didn't really bug me. He's never actually been around for any of the most traumatic, screwed up times in her life, and I can see how "Quinn dyed her hair pink and went punk for a while" (which is probably all he heard about it from Finn and Rachel) would read to him as "rich white girl problems."

Yeah, Sam being judgmental doesn't actually strike me as OOC or not understandable - considering what he's been through lately, Quinn angsting around without any visible problems would probably strike him as self-indulgent at best. I just felt like the audience was supposed to agree with him, and we've been around for her traumatic moments, or at least some of them, so I didn't like the way it came off on screen.

Totally get your POV on the Mike and Tina storyline, and that's a fair point, about a Plan B often being a distraction from your focus. It just seems to me (and of course this is speaking from personal experience/the experience of friends in the industry and in academia, so bias freely admitted) that while you might know the intellectual risks when you're getting into your field of choice, the hard slog of the reality is often something very, very different and punishing. I definitely don't agree with Mike's dad, either, because he was expressing his concerns in a really unproductive and critical way, and Mike obviously shouldn't go into something like medicine when he doesn't want to, but - I don't know. Not sure that there's a way they could've done this plotline that would satisfy my misgivings about it, tbh. /overly critical opinion

YES re: Quinn actually doing something productive instead of destructive, for once! I'd even take one step further your argument about the popular kids needing glee club as much if not more than the originals, and say that the popular kids, overall, are the ones who've developed the most as characters since joining ND. I've started rewatching the show, and it's so weird to see Santana in Showmance and realize how far she's come.

I think Shelby resigned? They really didn't make that clear. Guessing it was a case of "the Troubletones storyline is over/Idina only signed for X many episodes/probably no one will notice we just dropped that anyway/lol Glee."

[lennoxave.livejournal.com]

. . . the hard slog of the reality is often something very, very different and punishing. . . . Not sure that there's a way they could've done this plotline that would satisfy my misgivings about it, tbh.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's one of those situations where you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. And I absolutely agree that just because you're intellectually aware of the risks doesn't mean you're really prepared for them. I think maybe this plotline is inherently dissatisfying because it's a dissatisfying *life* situation, where you don't know if you've done the right thing until you've got five or ten years of perspective on it.

(I also think it's weird for the audience because, while not all of the people on the show are triple threats, basically everyone is really good at some aspect of performance, so there's this strange disconnect between seeing these very talented people being worried about making it, because they clearly *are* talented enough to make it; that's why they're on this show. I dunno, that's just always something that puts me off a bit when they do these talent-based storylines.)