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apocalypsosIt helps for me to write the thinky thoughts after I've slept on them, honestly.
Kurt and his dad:
Okay, let me do things this way. There are things that bug me in a lot of these storylines, so I'm just going to get them out of the way first. In regards to Kurt, the thing that bugs me about him as a character is that he's SUCH a stereotype. The show has done a great job of giving him depth beyond that stereotype, don't get me wrong, but there is something vaguely disconcerting about the fact that he is the fashion-loving fey Beyonce-worshipping cliche on the surface.
That said ... the show did him a great service as a character when they made him try out for the football team and he turned out to be a great kicker. It dented the stereotype a bit, and I'm really hoping it won't become a plot point they'll simply toss to the side. I'm hoping that they won't go the route of having him never be shown on the team again simply because he doesn't need to impress his dad with his manliness anymore, and what I'm really hoping for is that they'll eventually bring in a gay character who's not a fountain of femme for contrast ('cause Sandy's not helping either).
The thing with Kurt being so "obvious," not to put too fine a point on it, is that it gives his coming-out to his dad a warmer angle. His dad knows. Hell, his dad's known forever, and looking at it from the angle of a guy who's lost his wife, who's only got this one kid, who's kind of a manly guy and knows his kid's gay and loves him anyway ... well, perhaps it's a good thing on some level that Kurt is as big of a gaydar target as he is. His dad's had AGES to get used to the fact that his son's not straight. Is he comfortable with it? No, not really, but he freely admits that, and he seems underneath it to be a good father who simply does not have a lot in common with his only son. The good thing is that he gets how hard that was for Kurt, and that his immediate reaction wasn't to be awful to him like some parents would. It was really nice to see a coming-out on television that wasn't at least partially horrible.
Rachel vs. Tina/Will vs. Sandy and Sue:
The thing that bugs me about the storyline -- Rachel's need to be the center of attention is getting a bit irritating.
However, I get it.
Rachel mentions over and over again that she doesn't have a boyfriend. She's an only child. Outside of glee club, she appears to have absolutely no friends whatsoever, and freely admitted in yesterday's episode that she's grating and bossy, sure to turn off anyone, I imagine. She seems to have only one thing she can do really well, and that's performing. Singing, dancing ... she knows she's good, and the reason she knows is that it doesn't seem like she's good at anything else.
Glee is almost literally all that she has.
As such, she's focused on this one talent to the point of obsession. She can't fail as a singer and dancer. In the hallways she may get slushies thrown at her, in classrooms she may come off as the stuck-up teacher's pet, with boys and classmates she may come off as uptight and bossy, but on stage she lights up, and even the people who hate her know she's good.
The Rachel vs. Tina situation is a prime example on our screens of why this girl is so socially inept. Is Tina a good singer? Definitely. Is she better than Rachel? Maybe. But there's a part of Rachel that's never going to be happy with anyone else getting a solo in glee club, because not only does she think she's the best in there (a hard point to argue, but you can certainly argue it) but she's working for it more than the others as far as she sees it. Singing lessons, ballet, posting clips to Myspace ... it's like she's training for the Kentucky Derby. While she's annoyingly hypercompetitive, the one thing she apparently has yet to learn well about show business at this point is how to handle rejection.
That's why on some level I'm happy that Will's making a concerted effort to give others in the group the spotlight even though there's a thread of dickishness to it with how pointedly he's cutting Rachel out. Quite frankly, Rachel could use a bit of dickishness, and I'm not saying that in a "girl needs a guy to teach her a lesson" sort of way. Rachel's skin is still teenage-girl thin, and she could use a few more rejections in the one arena in her life that she excels, and yet can't seem to handle it. She's driving all of her upset over her treatment in other areas of her life -- from the popular girls, from boys, etc. -- into her performing, and she needs to learn that's not going to work.
Pregnancies ahoy!/Terri vs. Quinn:
The thing that bugs me about the Quinn and Terri situation: On the surface, it's two women lying about pregnancies to keep a guy, which sucks.
The problem is, that's on the surface.
The most obvious difference between the two situations is that Quinn is actually pregnant (as of now, although I'm not sure I see this ending without an infant, and if it doesn't I see the Terri plotline ending pretty quickly as well for the obvious reason that there'll be no infant to pass as her own) while Terri isn't.
Quinn is a teenager and Terri is a grown woman. It's rather startling on this show how so many of the teenagers are portrayed far more maturely than any of the adults, even when they're at their most immature. Up until now, Quinn's been very much about getting her man back in a somewhat less predatory way than Terri has. Terri could be Quinn in fifteen years if it weren't for the fact that Quinn's simply a better person underneath it all. If it were a teenaged Terri in the same situation -- too many wine coolers, one big mistake -- I can very easily see her happily lying through her teeth about Will being the father while still attempting to find a way to get rid of the real father and not being bothered a bit. At the heart of things, Terri is selfish with momentary flashes of being a decent person, while Quinn -- while certainly not perfect; she's entitled due to her popularity, smug on her own morality at times due to church and the chastity club, and horribly transphobic towards Rachel even though that's sadly in character for a conservative church-going teenager -- obviously knows damn well that what she's doing is wrong, and at the end of the episode is clearly conflicted as hell. Terri doesn't seem to give a damn that what she's doing is horrible. She's more worried about getting caught than doing wrong.
Do I like that they're doing two "girl lies about a pregnancy to keep a guy" storylines? No. Of course, the thing is that for that to be completely true in the long run ... well, Quinn better be having twins, is all I'm saying, because for Quinn to keep Finn she'll have to keep the baby, but for Terri to keep Will she'll have to get the baby. This also changes Quinn's need to get Finn back in a new way -- now she doesn't just want him back for her own selfish reasons, she wants him because he's obviously better daddy material than Puck the pool-cleaning MILF-shagger. The sad thing is that I feel like Puck's one of those characters who'd clean up his life for a kid, while Finn's a good guy who nonetheless would be in the same boat as Quinn expects Puck to be in fifteen years, working a lousy job in Lima, getting an amicable divorce from her but still being a good dad to his kids.
One of the things that's bothered me about Terri from the very beginning is that she was such an awful gold-digging cliche, especially since it's patently ridiculous that she's being so possessive and needy with a guy who's working as a Spanish teacher. For someone who's supposed to be a horrible golddigger, she's kinda terrible at it. And they've been making these attempts the past few episodes to slip in references that, no, it's not about Terri wanting to live in the lap of ... well, not luxury, but whatever you would call it when two people live off a Spanish teacher's salary in Ohio, but it's not quite working the way the writers want, I believe. She wants to keep Will, sure, but it's apparently easier for her to fake a pregnancy than it is for her to stop being a spoiled selfish brat. It highlights what I was saying before, that all of these kids in this school grow up and don't leave Lima and end up as teachers, being ultimately as childish if not more so than the kids they teach.
Going up in comparison to Quinn -- who's upset, scared, and angry (at herself, at Puck, and maybe even a little at Finn) in realistic ways that Terri can't even begin to comprehend -- Terri comes off looking even more cartoonish and monstrous. Quinn's making a mistake in a very human (albeit naive) way, while Terri's only some facial hair away from a good mustashe-twirl.
Kurt and his dad:
Okay, let me do things this way. There are things that bug me in a lot of these storylines, so I'm just going to get them out of the way first. In regards to Kurt, the thing that bugs me about him as a character is that he's SUCH a stereotype. The show has done a great job of giving him depth beyond that stereotype, don't get me wrong, but there is something vaguely disconcerting about the fact that he is the fashion-loving fey Beyonce-worshipping cliche on the surface.
That said ... the show did him a great service as a character when they made him try out for the football team and he turned out to be a great kicker. It dented the stereotype a bit, and I'm really hoping it won't become a plot point they'll simply toss to the side. I'm hoping that they won't go the route of having him never be shown on the team again simply because he doesn't need to impress his dad with his manliness anymore, and what I'm really hoping for is that they'll eventually bring in a gay character who's not a fountain of femme for contrast ('cause Sandy's not helping either).
The thing with Kurt being so "obvious," not to put too fine a point on it, is that it gives his coming-out to his dad a warmer angle. His dad knows. Hell, his dad's known forever, and looking at it from the angle of a guy who's lost his wife, who's only got this one kid, who's kind of a manly guy and knows his kid's gay and loves him anyway ... well, perhaps it's a good thing on some level that Kurt is as big of a gaydar target as he is. His dad's had AGES to get used to the fact that his son's not straight. Is he comfortable with it? No, not really, but he freely admits that, and he seems underneath it to be a good father who simply does not have a lot in common with his only son. The good thing is that he gets how hard that was for Kurt, and that his immediate reaction wasn't to be awful to him like some parents would. It was really nice to see a coming-out on television that wasn't at least partially horrible.
Rachel vs. Tina/Will vs. Sandy and Sue:
The thing that bugs me about the storyline -- Rachel's need to be the center of attention is getting a bit irritating.
However, I get it.
Rachel mentions over and over again that she doesn't have a boyfriend. She's an only child. Outside of glee club, she appears to have absolutely no friends whatsoever, and freely admitted in yesterday's episode that she's grating and bossy, sure to turn off anyone, I imagine. She seems to have only one thing she can do really well, and that's performing. Singing, dancing ... she knows she's good, and the reason she knows is that it doesn't seem like she's good at anything else.
Glee is almost literally all that she has.
As such, she's focused on this one talent to the point of obsession. She can't fail as a singer and dancer. In the hallways she may get slushies thrown at her, in classrooms she may come off as the stuck-up teacher's pet, with boys and classmates she may come off as uptight and bossy, but on stage she lights up, and even the people who hate her know she's good.
The Rachel vs. Tina situation is a prime example on our screens of why this girl is so socially inept. Is Tina a good singer? Definitely. Is she better than Rachel? Maybe. But there's a part of Rachel that's never going to be happy with anyone else getting a solo in glee club, because not only does she think she's the best in there (a hard point to argue, but you can certainly argue it) but she's working for it more than the others as far as she sees it. Singing lessons, ballet, posting clips to Myspace ... it's like she's training for the Kentucky Derby. While she's annoyingly hypercompetitive, the one thing she apparently has yet to learn well about show business at this point is how to handle rejection.
That's why on some level I'm happy that Will's making a concerted effort to give others in the group the spotlight even though there's a thread of dickishness to it with how pointedly he's cutting Rachel out. Quite frankly, Rachel could use a bit of dickishness, and I'm not saying that in a "girl needs a guy to teach her a lesson" sort of way. Rachel's skin is still teenage-girl thin, and she could use a few more rejections in the one arena in her life that she excels, and yet can't seem to handle it. She's driving all of her upset over her treatment in other areas of her life -- from the popular girls, from boys, etc. -- into her performing, and she needs to learn that's not going to work.
Pregnancies ahoy!/Terri vs. Quinn:
The thing that bugs me about the Quinn and Terri situation: On the surface, it's two women lying about pregnancies to keep a guy, which sucks.
The problem is, that's on the surface.
The most obvious difference between the two situations is that Quinn is actually pregnant (as of now, although I'm not sure I see this ending without an infant, and if it doesn't I see the Terri plotline ending pretty quickly as well for the obvious reason that there'll be no infant to pass as her own) while Terri isn't.
Quinn is a teenager and Terri is a grown woman. It's rather startling on this show how so many of the teenagers are portrayed far more maturely than any of the adults, even when they're at their most immature. Up until now, Quinn's been very much about getting her man back in a somewhat less predatory way than Terri has. Terri could be Quinn in fifteen years if it weren't for the fact that Quinn's simply a better person underneath it all. If it were a teenaged Terri in the same situation -- too many wine coolers, one big mistake -- I can very easily see her happily lying through her teeth about Will being the father while still attempting to find a way to get rid of the real father and not being bothered a bit. At the heart of things, Terri is selfish with momentary flashes of being a decent person, while Quinn -- while certainly not perfect; she's entitled due to her popularity, smug on her own morality at times due to church and the chastity club, and horribly transphobic towards Rachel even though that's sadly in character for a conservative church-going teenager -- obviously knows damn well that what she's doing is wrong, and at the end of the episode is clearly conflicted as hell. Terri doesn't seem to give a damn that what she's doing is horrible. She's more worried about getting caught than doing wrong.
Do I like that they're doing two "girl lies about a pregnancy to keep a guy" storylines? No. Of course, the thing is that for that to be completely true in the long run ... well, Quinn better be having twins, is all I'm saying, because for Quinn to keep Finn she'll have to keep the baby, but for Terri to keep Will she'll have to get the baby. This also changes Quinn's need to get Finn back in a new way -- now she doesn't just want him back for her own selfish reasons, she wants him because he's obviously better daddy material than Puck the pool-cleaning MILF-shagger. The sad thing is that I feel like Puck's one of those characters who'd clean up his life for a kid, while Finn's a good guy who nonetheless would be in the same boat as Quinn expects Puck to be in fifteen years, working a lousy job in Lima, getting an amicable divorce from her but still being a good dad to his kids.
One of the things that's bothered me about Terri from the very beginning is that she was such an awful gold-digging cliche, especially since it's patently ridiculous that she's being so possessive and needy with a guy who's working as a Spanish teacher. For someone who's supposed to be a horrible golddigger, she's kinda terrible at it. And they've been making these attempts the past few episodes to slip in references that, no, it's not about Terri wanting to live in the lap of ... well, not luxury, but whatever you would call it when two people live off a Spanish teacher's salary in Ohio, but it's not quite working the way the writers want, I believe. She wants to keep Will, sure, but it's apparently easier for her to fake a pregnancy than it is for her to stop being a spoiled selfish brat. It highlights what I was saying before, that all of these kids in this school grow up and don't leave Lima and end up as teachers, being ultimately as childish if not more so than the kids they teach.
Going up in comparison to Quinn -- who's upset, scared, and angry (at herself, at Puck, and maybe even a little at Finn) in realistic ways that Terri can't even begin to comprehend -- Terri comes off looking even more cartoonish and monstrous. Quinn's making a mistake in a very human (albeit naive) way, while Terri's only some facial hair away from a good mustashe-twirl.
