The Spanish Teacher

Tonight's Glee offered a couple of fun scenes, but wasn't a very strong episode overall.

The main plot revolved around the question some fans have been asking about the show since the beginning: "When does Will actually teach Spanish?" And the answer to that question was revealed tonight -- he's not actually a good Spanish teacher at all; what he really knows of Spanish is a series of stereotypes.

What weakened the episode for me is that while delivering that valid message about stereotypes (punctuated by a great speech by Santana), the episode that was supposed to have featured Latin music totally copped out on that. Hence we had covers of songs by "famous Latin artists" such as... LMFAO, Madonna, and Elvis Presley? Wai--what? At least the Madonna song has lyrics about nominally Spanish things. But other than that, "Latin week" included only one song that actually seemed to fit the theme, "Don't Wanna Lose You" by Gloria Estefan. I for one don't think that translating English songs into Spanish counts. Why not get a song by Selena? Or maybe a more modern option like Juanes? Or hell, in a pinch, maybe some Ritchie Valens? Or would it hurt the iTunes sales too much for them to actually take a risk and get a song by a prominent Latin artist that someone like me probably hasn't heard of before?

Another dark spot on the episode was Will's suddenly amped up jerkiness to service this week's plot. Characters on Glee have been fickle in this way in the past, but with several strong continuing story arcs this season, I was daring to hope the writers had left those days behind. It might not have been so bad here, except that Sue was telling us in this very episode that she admired Will for never acting exactly like this.

Yet another dark spot came in awarding tenure to the guidance counselor who, in this very episode advised that two students having communications difficulties should agree not to speak to each other at all for a period of time. Huh?

Fortunately, the episode wasn't a total loss. I already mentioned Santana's speech as a great moment. Watching Sue get out-Sued by the synchronized swimming coach was another. And Kurt's pep talk to step-brother Finn was another.

But mostly, I found this episode to be a mess. Toss in a few more saves by some of the funnier lines of dialogue to appear on Glee in quite some time, and I average it all out to a C-.