Welcome to the fourth recap of the sixth season of Glee, a lively sitcom about four extraterrestrials who are on an expedition to the inferior planet Earth, where they must pose as a human family in order to observe the behavior of human beings.

In this week’s episode of Glee, entitled “The Hurt Locker, Part One,” nobody scissored and barely anybody sang and when they did sing, it was super-weird. If you had high hopes that this season would attempt something resembling redemption or, at the very least, entertainment, I suspect your hopes were dashed on Friday night. Furthermore, if you were hoping for a “Papa Don’t Preach” Brittany-Needs-A-Wedding-Dress Montage, hope no more my friend. Hope no more. (Just kidding, good things will probably still happen, like maybe a Brittany-needs-a-wedding-dress montage!)

---

We open in the teacher’s lounge, where Sue’s invited Will for a “Truce Chat” that’ll set up this week’s arbitrary shenanigans. Will drinks milk out of a carton, has a butt-chin, and leaves his stupid little green fork on the table, which sends Sue into a wild maniacal animal rage that she plans to maintain for the next two episodes at least.

This device brings us to Sue’s storage locker, aka The Hurt Locker, where she’s created an A-Lair, replete with a murder board.  “This is where I store my hatred,” Sue tells Becky.

Then the alleged wall of The Lair is triggered by mechanical magic to reveal a larger, more disturbing Lair behind it: A KLAINE SHRINE. Yup, it turns out that Sue, who used to hate everything, has secretly been loving Blaine and Kurt all this time! Why? Why anything, my friends. WHY ANYTHING.

Sue: “I’ve been quietly shipping them since they first met. Apart, they’re so shrill, so whiney, but together, a symphony of self-congratulatory sodomy. I believed their tender man-love was for the ages, and when they broke up I was devastated. Why?! They seemed to be doing so well, and then suddenly it’s over? I hereby pledge to do whatever it takes to get them back together and achieve my ultimate goal, to be flower girl at their fabulous gay wedding.”

Get in line, lady.

But honestly — this scene shocks your system ’cause it requires Jane Lynch to leap dramatically out of character to employ a tone and expression completely foreign to Sue’s character before now. As Heather astutely pointed out in a chat, “I can’t believe this is how they’re spending the final season.”

---

Sue informs Kurt that she’s dedicated to reuniting him and Blaine, but unfortunately, Kurt’s no longer interested in romancing Blaine’s stone.

Also, Sue pulls a Chaiken and creates a little gay lingo of her own:

Sue: You and Blaine are blouses.
Kurt: What are blouses?
Sue: A blouse is a breezy, femmy top. It’s a term I coined for my favorite type of gay. You always know where you stand with a blouse. And they can’t sneak up on you, because for miles you can har their gentle swish, swish, swish in the summer wind.

Honestly, “blouse” is more likely to catch on than “nipple confidence,” but regardless, we mustn’t dwell. Not today. Not on INVITATIONAL DAY!

---

Yup, Sue’s put together a little performance party for the rival Glee Clubs to sing and dance for their worst enemies, a move she hopes will destroy Glee Club forever, but probably will just destroy your Friday night. Rachel’s understandably worried that the impressive twentysomething extras of Vocal Adrenaline will psych out her slapshot hopscatter rigamarole gang of instagram superstars. It could even convince them that they’ll never be as popular or as homoflexible as the original cast.

Rachel reminds Schuster of the Glee 1.0 field trip where she met her gay boyfriend and how challenging it was for the Old New Directions to keep the faith following that lesson in humility. But they managed it, because of high ratings and Santana. Thus, Rachel gamely manages to convince Will to “throw the invitational,” reminding him that if not for the Hallowed Hallways of McKinley High, he wouldn’t be married to Emma Pilsbury, have given birth to their beautiful adult baby or sang so many inappropriate love songs with teenage girls. But Sue’s watching and recording the whole thing via the drone she bought from A or like, the U.S. Military.

---

Now that she’s secured anti-Will propaganda, Sue’s next move is to track down Sam fondling jock straps and period-sex towels in the locker room and hypnotize him into falling in love with Rachel.

Sue: “You will kiss her, and the instant you do, you will wake up and will not remember anything.”

The goal here is to fuck with Rachel’s head by offering and then redacting a gesture of romantic companionship to a girl who’d previously sworn off romance after losing her boyfriend to an unnamed, mysterious and undoubtedly tragic death. Glee: It goes there (unfortunately).

---

Back in the April Rhodes Memorial Pavilion Auditorium, Blaine, Kurt and Rachel have a counterproductive conversation about the Spirit Of The Invitational and Blaine’s lack of faith that McKinley will find more extras to join its little club.

Blaine’s explaining that The Warblers will not, as Rachel requested, take it easy on the New New New Directions, but before they can get too deep into that, Karofsky calls — THERE’S AN INTRUDER IN THEIR HOME! — and the Gleeks travel quickly through space and time to Blarofsky’s Bromantic Rainbow Wizard Apartment…

I thought it was gonna be a mouse and the moral of the story would be that Karofksy seems like a big tough guy but is really a softie who fears rodents, but nope! It’s only the cutest little thing you could ever hope for!

It’s a bear cub. It’s an actual bear cub! Let’s be real, would you rather spend your life with a little bear, or Dave Karofsky? That’s what I thought.

---

We then blow up a hot air balloon and take a scenic flight over to Breadsticks, where Sam and Rachel are on a date. They discuss their not-hobbies (Rachel watches Patti LuPone on YouTube, Sam blows glass) (that’s not all he blows!) and adjusting to the pace of life in Lima, Ohio.

Then they decide to take piano lessons together so they can be more nimble at lesbian sex.

Rachel: I know that this isn’t a date or anything, but I just realized I haven’t spent time alone with a guy for a long time and it feels good to have it be with someone I feel so safe with.

I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean, but I doubt the writers do either, so, let’s say this: Rachel is mildly charmed by Sam’s timeless haircut, his status as only straight male ex-Gleek in this episode and her status as the only Glee Club female that Sam has not already made out with. It’s a match made in hypnosis heaven!

---

We whiz-bang back to McKinley, where an angry Kurt is informing Sue that the bear she sent to Karofsky’s Rainbow Palace was not, in fact, the kind of bear that Karofsky likes dating. That’s this kind:

Kurt reminds Sue that he’s moved on. In fact, he insists, he’s met a nice boy named Walter on the interwebs! He says this as if we don’t already know that Walter’s gonna turn out to be Principal Figgins or Ryder Bieber-Strong or Rory The Irish Chipmunk or Harry Hamlin.

Or, you know, Hannibal:

Sue: Oh, Porcelain, oh no no no no. This person is obviously a cannibal. I mean, look at you. You are exceptionally well-marbled. If I were on a deserted island with everybody I knew, I would absolutely eat you first. It doesn’t even have to be a deserted island, I could be at any number of casual dining establishments and I would still opt to eat you, a mouthwatering, delicious, corn-fed porcelain rump roast.

Honestly, she makes a good point.

---

Sam and Rachel’s first piano lesson with Blaine is interrupted by Sue and Becky, who are doing their weekly bolt-loosening rounds in the April Rhodes Memorial Pavilion.

Sue quickly hypnotizes Sam into convincing their two buddies to skedaddle, which brings us into our first musical number, starring Sue Sylvester as Sue Sylvester. Sue rampages through the hallways (lit up by an ISIS AWARENESS WEEK sign) with a fire extinguisher, somehow shows up in Rachel Berry’s desk drawer and everybody’s lockers and messes up Emma Pillsbury’s office. It’s pretty wacky!

http://youtu.be/ufqfYvwxErI

---

We then speed-skate back to Breadsticks, where Blaine and Karofsky are chatting about how Karofsky can hardly recognize the person he was in high school. I feel the same way but I think it’s ’cause my teeth were closer together than they are now.

Regardless, their attempt at hospitaliano is foiled by Sue, who used some kind of OurChart voodoo magic to summon every Bear in the Woods Who’s Ever Slept With Karofsky to Date Night for unlimited Soup, Salad, Breadsticks and Buttsex.

Sue shows up at the table to really get the point across about her prank:

Sue: David, I took the liberty of asking every man you’ve dated to join you for dinner tonight with Blaine. But that’s not all, I brought you something.

It’s an online geneology chart that claims Blaine and Karofksy are third cousins.

Sue: DNA doesn’t lie. Have a wonderful evening and just remember, you’re about to have sex with a family member.

---

Back at Lets Play Piano Fun Time, Sam tries to get Rachel to believe in herself and her ability to play the piano by reminding her that Ray Charles was blind and holding her fingers gently in his own fingers.

Rachel’s putty in his hands. She tells him he’s amazing. Maybe his hair reminds her of Quinn?

---

We then cram ourselves into a tiny tugboat and row row row ourselves over to Carmel High, a fictitious institution presided over by Abigail Figgins, the previously unbeknownst sister of McKinley’s own Figgins.

Sue: Wait, Figgins first name is “Principal”?
Abigail: Of course! He’s first born.

Sue’s taken this field trip to share her drone footage of Will agreeing to go easy on The New Directions. She implores Abigail to look into Will’s Wiley Ways and reconsider his employability.

---

Meanwhile in this oddly-timed episode that seems to take place in a dimension where there is no time and also endless time (Rosewood?), Kurt and Rachel have searched far and wide to the plummy depths of their tender blousey hearts and selected some tunes for Invitationals. Alas, we never actually figure out what those songs are, ’cause after Rachel plunks around on the piano for ten seconds and delivers an tentative monologue about knowing what they’re up against, we’re pretty much out of time.

Then The New New New Directions each take turns delivering their one line in this episode. The consensus is that everybody feels screwed. Especially me, because Santana isn’t there.

---

Over in Chez Sue Panisse, William yells at Sue for trying to get him fired, and she explains that she had no choice when he left his plastic flatware on the table for her to dispose of.

Furthermore:

Sue: “You are a fatuous, dim-witted, borderline pedarest who tears up faster than a gay Jihadi in a sandstorm. You have befouled the profession of teaching by accepting not only one — but two! — “Teacher of the Year” awards despite not speaking a word of the foreign language you purport to teach. Like the storied predators of yesteryear you pick only the most vulnerable students to favor while neglecting the others, like that gross kid with the dreadlocks or that poor Irish idiot Rory, or the black dancer whose name none of us remember because you rode his back to a win at sectionals and promptly ignored him into oblivion. You practically worship a student if they can do so much as carry a tune, and yet you don’t know a single name of the only true musical geniuses in that classroom – the band! Who have demonstrated, time and again, that at they can, at the drop of a hat, play literally ANY song you can name, and still you treat them like so much nameless human garbage. Your bizarre psycho-sexual obsession with that Glee Club was disturbing from the first moment you stalked a nude student in the showers. You know, I’m honestly surprised you didn’t re-enact what was clearly the formative event of your own teenage years and Sandusky the poor kid right there and then. Oh, and I think those absorbent sweater vests merely hide the fact that you lactate every time you give one of your excruciatingly condescending pep talks. Your charms wore off a long time ago, William, somewhere around Bieber week. So why don’t you take your washboard abs and your washboard forehead and get the hell out of my office.”

Will says he’s heard that Sue’s retiring and therefore he’ll be seeing to it that Glee Club is a permanent institution long after her departure and, presumably, long past the final season of Glee. I can just see the Cartoon Network spinoff now, it’ll be like Muppet Babies or that one episode with the cute kids decked out in GapKids. Or maybe we’ll get a Six Feet Under montage in the final episode and Will will be Billy, still talking about himself while Santana slowly dies of old age. The possibilities abound, really.

---

We then take our pogo sticks back to The April Rhodes Memorial Pavillion, where Kurt’s scolding Figgins for inferior gum-scraping skills when Blaine shows up for his piano lesson with Samchel.

Rachel and Sam are nowhere to be found, however, and therefore Blaine’s takes this moment to complain to Kurt about how Karofksy’s dated every man with a beard within a 100-mile radius of Kings Island and is maybe his third cousin.

Kurt: “Blaine, there is no universe where you and Karofsky are related. Sue is obviously just trying to get you guys to break up so we can get back together.”

Thus, Blaine and Kurt try to convince themselves and each other that reuniting is not a desire they share as well, noting that despite being each other’s first love, they’ve moved on and are ready to be just friends. Then Kurt once again mentions his date with a man he met on The Internet. I hope they met on the Broadway World message boards.

---

Meanwhile, Sam and Rachel are continuing their quest to be America’s Next Top Piano Players by re-enacting Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” music video, which’s basically Chord and Lea pretending to play piano in front of a green screen with fans blowing in their face. It’s a nice little tour of the Fox backlot, though.

http://youtu.be/WP6o276d9tc

At the song’s end, Sam and Rachel inevitably smash their lips together! Surprise!

---

The sad situation gets even sadder when Rachel, unaware that her momentary love interest wasn’t enabled by hormonal animal lust or his seeming inability to fall for pretty much anybody who’s ever had a crush on him (even Blaine, let’s be real), but rather by a bizarre plot device known as “hypnotism,” asks Sam out on a date. He declines ’cause he’s still in love with Mercedes. Okey-doke.

Sue then re-hypnotizes Sam to enact Stage Two of her plan, which will involve “the tormenting of Will Schuster” by stealing utility bills from his mailbox, because this is 1912 and “postal mail” is the only way people become aware that they have utility bills and definitely the only method with which to pay said bills.

---

Kurt’s big date with Walter goes exactly like you knew it would — Walter is not who Kurt thought he would be. In real life, people meet on the internet and fall in love every damn minute. On television, people meet on the internet, lie to each other, meet up, discover said lies, and fall into skepticism every damn minute.

Walter: You look just like your photo!
Kurt: Yeah and — your photo looks exactly like you at… some point in time.

Walter turns out to be a newly-out fiftysomething who somehow, throughout many phone conversations with his prospective pool boy, never mentioned that he has been married for longer than Kurt has been alive and that he has two kids Kurt’s age. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a May/December romance, of course, but it’s immediately clear that it’s not Kurt’s thing.

They decide to be friends and agree to pretend like Walter wasn’t implicated in the murder of Lily Kane.

---

Then we run madly through a series of lawn sprinklers loaded with rubbing alcohol until we reach Will Schuster’s condominium complex, where Sam’s freeing Will’s utility bills from the solitary confinement of the mailbox. When confronted by Will, Sam explains that Rachel asked Sam to steal his utility bills ’cause she wants to throw him off his game.

Sam’s got a whole hypnotic story to tell:

Sam: Between you and me, Rachel’s kind of pissed at you. Yeah, she thinks that your suspiciously constant positivity and encouragement is what clouded her judgement to do her TV show, and um, she also blames you for that time she broke her nose, “Run Joey Run,” and Boko Haram. Which I don’t know what the last one is –
Will: I am so naive, she’s been playing me the whole time!

Okay so this is my least favorite kind of plot, as I’ve possibly mentioned elsewhere in my enormous body of web-work.  This is why I don’t like Shakespeare, ’cause he’s got so many plots in which humans make dramatic decisions based on misinformation! Like KILLING THEMSELVES AND EACH OTHER. Even when executed by a masterful writer like Shakespeare who can infuse any  situation with genuine character development, these plots give me crazy anxiety. But when it’s Glee? Glee doesn’t know how to do this kind of thing correctly, and therefore I feel not only anxious but also BORED. It’s a lazy way to drive a story forward without having to commit to any genuine character development, and, in doing so, also fails to present a fake situation probable enough to make one’s reaction to it remotely relevant or revelatory. Why are we spending time talking about fake things instead of doing real things, you know?

---

We then zip-ah-dee-do-dah on back to The Invitationals, where William’s empowered by misinformation to return his gaggle of gleeful gonads to Plan A, which was “to be awesome.”  But when Schuster plunges his hand through the air to hover above the apex of the circle of friends that is Vocal Adrenaline, nobody joins in. They’ve got gum to snap and butts to scratch, you know?

Will: It’s kinda my thing, we all just get in there and just —
Random Kid: We don’t like you!

So then a bunch of kids we don’t know and probably will never see again perform two songs that scare the pants off the Dalton Wobegon Warblers and the Fabulous Four Members of The New New New Directions.

Here’s “Whip It.”
http://youtu.be/nBW4CIWFYtY

And here’s “Rock Lobster”!
http://youtu.be/YwVy6c6yYeI

The most important part of this situation is that you can basically see Rachel Berry’s entire boobs in this shirt.

And that’s what you missed, on Glee!

---

Next week, things will get progressively stupider and Heather Hogan will tell you all about it:

Pages: 1 2See entire article on one page