Glee S2E2: Britney/Brittany

"It's a Britney Spears sex riot!"

Well. Glee is back.

And that isn't an excited "Glee is BACK!" It's a disappointed "Everything that used to be wrong about the show is still wrong about the show." We'd have to rewatch season 1 to be sure, but at the end of last night's episode, we turned to each other and agreed that it was one of, if not the worst episode of the series.

And it really didn't have to be. On paper, using Britney Spears as a jumping off point should be a perfect fit for the show. One of the problems was that the writers somewhat lazily took the Madonna episode script, crossed out "Madonna" and put in "Britney Spears" in all the dialogue. Seriously, all that "She's an inspiration" stuff was a little heavy-handed. And you tell us: Is Britney THAT big a deal to 16-year-olds anymore? We can't imagine that she is. Then again, we can't imagine that Madonna is either.

What really shocked the hell out of us was how lackluster the numbers were. Let's get the first two out of the way, because they don't count:

We knew Heather Morris was a good dancer. We had no idea she was an AMAZING dancer. "I'm a Slave 4 U" is probably one of the best numbers in the show's history. "Me Against the Music" was good, but coming directly on the heels of the first number, it felt a little repetitive.

No, Brittany was not one of the problems of this episode. In fact, she was the highlight of it. Which is why it's so strange that they gave her all these funny lines and two great numbers right in the beginning of the episode, and then mostly dropped her to focus on Rachel and Finn drama (ugh), Will and Emma drama, and a little bit of Artie and Tina drama. Her name was in the title of the episode. She is tailor made for Britney Spears homages. Why didn't they give her more to do?Why did they try to pack 3 relationship storylines into this episode? Bad idea.

You know what else was a bad idea? This:

SHOCKINGLY bad. Tom turned to Lorenzo after the number and said, "Well, they finally found something Lea Michele can't do." She just isn't suited for certain pop numbers and she's definitely not suited for sex kitten vamping. Leave that to Santana and Quinn.

And why didn't Mercedes get one of these numbers? HELLO? Rachel gets two numbers (one of which is totally wrong for her) and Mercedes gets none? Bah. We would have loved to hear her take on "Stronger," but they gave that one to Artie.

Which is fine, he's a good singer and the song actually works when you switch it from a girl anthem to a boy anthem. Still, it's not heading to our iPod any time soon and while we like when they use the football team and the cheerleaders in the numbers, this one felt a little flat to us.

But then they busted out the weirdest number of all:

Doing "Toxic" Fosse-style doesn't sound like such a hot idea to us, either on paper or in reality. We realize that there's a running joke about how Mr. Schu occasionally loses sight of what's appropriate behavior for a teacher, but even for him, and even for Glee, this one stretched the bounds of credibility. He was all but slapping his students' asses in front of the whole school. And frankly, we doubt that seeing Fosse jazz hands is going to whip any group of teenagers into a sexual frenzy.

And it represented one of the major problems this show has always had; wildly inconsistent characterization. At the end of last season, Will was a slut, but now everyone in his sphere has decided he's too uptight - and in typical Glee fashion, this point is hammered home again and again and again. Does Will reflect on this information and make changes? No, he veers off wildly in another direction. It's fine if that's his character, but it's hard to reconcile "the best teacher in the school" with this incredibly immature, inappropriate, unstable mess.

Look, we NEVER expect realism out of this show, but we do expect the writing to make a little sense. This whole Will thing just didn't. Suddenly, Emma's calm and stable and Terri has morphed from a quirky mess into a stereotypical bitch ex-wife. None of these developments thrilled us or made much sense.

Good to see John Stamos, though. That man has aged very well. He's about a thousand percent hotter than his Uncle Jesse days. Looking forward to a Carl vs. Will showdown number.

And finally, they give Rachel a number better suited to her:

But we even had problems with that. For one, she already got a number this episode. For another, aren't we all just a little tired of her cry-singing? Sure, getting tears to roll down your face when you hit the high notes is a talent, but still.

And just how far are they willing to take this "Rachel is horrible" business? Because in this episode? She was horrible. Oh, they sung it out in the end, but you can't keep doing that and expecting the audience to root for them. Frankly, we were rooting for Finn to dump her. She deserved it.

So, yeah. Disappointed, to say the least. If this had been stuck somewhere in the middle of the schedule we might have been easier on it, but this is the 2nd episode of their 2nd season and it was highly anticipated because of the Britney angle. They should have done better than this.

And by the way, what was the point in having Britney on at all? She spoke 3 lines and was onscreen for a total of about a minute. We realize she's not exactly the greatest actress of her generation or anything, but they could have given her a bit more to do than that. Give her a number for Pete's sake. If there's one thing Britney Spears can do pretty much without thinking, it's lip-synching and dancing.

Okay, we're done ranting and bitching. Here are your quotes. Almost all of the good ones came from Brittany.

"I hope you'll all respect that I want glee club to remain a place where I, Brittany S. Pierce, can escape the torment of Britney Spears"

"I don’t brush my teeth. I rinse my mouth out with soda after I eat. I was pretty sure Dr. Pepper was a dentist."

"This room looks like the one in that spaceship where I got probed."

"Are you a cat?"

"I'm more talented than all of you. I see that now. It's Brittany. Bitch."

"Suddenly, you're way hotter to me. Weird."

"I look forward to the day the paparazzi provoke me and I attack them."

"It looks like a Jewish cloud."

"Finn can fly?"

[Screencaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com - Video Credit: hulu.com]

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Labels: Glee, Glee Season 2