Mash Off

I'm taking a brief break from vacation stories here to catch up on the new episode of Glee that ran earlier this week. This episode, Mash Off, started off with a some big strikes against it in my book. First, it was continuing the oh-so-creepy storyline of Puck and Shelby's kiss. Secondly, it was to be an episode featuring mash-ups, which I generally speaking find to be some of Glee's least compelling musical numbers (for reasons we'll get to).

Imagine my surprise to find it a pretty great episode. It certainly helped that Shelby immediately took the right course of action with Puck and rebuffed his advances as those of a schoolboy crush. She walked the tightrope she probably had to walk to keep the biological father of her daughter as a possible presence in her life, but never left any room for romance on the table. As it should be.

That plot also concluded in the only reasonable place for Quinn -- Shelby finding out the truth of what Quinn tried to do, and putting her in her place. As I said of the prior episode, Quinn's actions were unforgivable, and I'm glad the show is not asking us to forgive them (right away at least). Instead, we're going to see Quinn spiral on downward.

The class president storyline took an interesting turn as Rachel performed an uncharacteristically selfless act (spurred on some by Shelby) and backed Kurt for the job. Her speech to the small assembly was good, but her explanation later to Kurt was better still -- that part of the dream for college was sharing it with Kurt. These two really are one of the best character pairings on the show, and this moment really showed why.

The same storyline gave us Kurt's impassioned speech against dodgeball. That made me want to stand up from my couch and cheer. I have no idea whether dodgeball is actually still played in schools, but it was when I was in elementary school. And it's exactly what Kurt described: brutal, institutionalized bullying, sanctioned by the school system. From the picking of teams that batters esteem to the game itself that batters the kids, it's horrible. And the writer of Kurt's speech spoke of it with the voice that could only come from someone whose experience sucked as bad as mine. Alright, I don't suppose it scarred me for life or anything -- I honestly haven't thought of it in forever. But if I had a kid, I wouldn't want him or her going through the same experience, not as it was for me, and certainly not as the bullier either. Nice shot close to home, Glee.

Speaking of which, we then had the plot of Santana's outing by Finn. It was tough to watch, because it was painfully honest. And everyone was equally to be liked and disliked, too. Santana's insults have been dialed up a few notches in the last few episodes, to a point where I think many of us were asking, "wait, wasn't she spearheading an anti-bullying group last season?" Now we see that it was all part of a plan (wow, Glee had a plan and executed it!) to build to this moment.

Santana went too far with Finn this week, unprovoked, for no good reason. So you can't fault Finn for firing back. And yet, you can't forgive him for the bullet he fired back with. For someone who hasn't lived it, I simply can't think of an analogy for the sense of terror that goes with leading a life in the closet, afraid that somebody is going to "find out" when you aren't ready to acknowledge it on your terms. But I can tell you exactly what it looks like; Naya Rivera's reaction as Santana in that scene was the one of the most brilliant and subtle moments of acting that's ever been shown on the series. Yes, the later scene in Sue's office (with Will and Burt) was strong too, but the fear and horror of that first reaction was amazing. I'd put her up for an Emmy. I'm not kidding.

I'd be on my way to giving this episode an A, but it stumbled a couple times musically. So here's my problem with mash-ups. Sometimes -- and I think this is the exception -- the two songs in question do actually blend together in a satisfying way. The Adele finale of this episode ("Rumour Has It"/"Someone Like You") was one such rare example. Each song is sparse enough to leave room for the other to have equal voice.

But then you have the Hall & Oates number ("I Can't Go For That"/"You Make My Dreams Come True"). The staging and fake mustaches were pretty awesome, but musically, it sounded like one group of people trying to sing a song while another group of people were rudely interrupting with a repetitious single phrase from another song. No blending at all. (And the entire number was heavily auto-tuned all around for extra injury.)

Somewhere in the middle was the dodgeball number ("Hit Me With Your Best Shot"/"One Way or Another"). It started off in the "will you shut up a second, I'm trying to sing this song!" camp, but finally reached a place of almost-meshing near the end. It didn't help that Naya Rivera's voice completely outclasses Cory Monteith's.

The Shelby/Will mashup of Lady Gaga (really? again?) and Eddie Rabbitt with Crystal Gayle wasn't as potent as I would have hoped two of the stronger voices on the show could deliver, and the staging was pretty dull too. Necessary shoe leather to push the plot along, and little more.

But we did kick off with the pretty awesome "Hot for Teacher," complete with an avalanche of homages to the Van Halen video. And kind of totally dirty, just like the original too. So call the episode of bookend of strong musical numbers with some questionable stuff in the middle.

In all, I'd call the episode an A-. Solid stuff from Glee.