The episode's talk about how Sadie Hawkins was all about female empowerment really felt like just that: talk. It was a loose framework to make girls pine for men, and sing torch songs that felt anything but empowering. "I Don't Know How to Love Him"? And I'm not sure even Ally McBeal ever convinced me to hear "Tell Him" as a girl-power anthem.
Then there's Finn. Sure, he's just a fill-in, not an actual teacher. And his character isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the box. But his lesson plan to force the girls to sing to the guys they wanted to take to the dance? On how many levels was that terrible? What if the girls don't want to go to the dance? What if the guy they want to ask isn't in Glee club? What if -- exactly what happened to Tina -- they get rejected and humiliated in front of the whole group?
Speaking of poor Tina, the character hasn't had a plot line in ages, and now she gets saddled with a crush on an unattainable guy. I suppose at least that's a high-school-authentic story, but it's sad that Tina has only ever been defined by either the man she's with or the shadow she's under (playing second fiddle to Rachel). Though maybe it took the sting off it a bit to put Blaine in the same boat, pining for an unattainable guy himself.
Nothing could take the sting off the horrible Puck-Kitty pairing. As bad as last season's "Puck's Hot for Teacher" story with an older woman was, at least that wasn't potential statutory rape played for comedy.
And doping Warblers? Finishing the rest of the season without competition was just too good to be true, I guess.
All this bad writing, and it's topped off with a snub of geek-rock-god Jonathan Coulton. The episode featured a performance of Sir Mixalot's famous "Baby Got Back," but quirkily altered from a rap song into a slow bluegrass jam. This interpretation was a knockoff of a recording made by Jonathan Coulton. Obviously, the song was not originally his, so any actual copyright permission to use that version on Glee didn't have to be sought from him. But again, the song was a rap originally. In creating his version, Coulton wrote his own melody and practically created a brand new song. Glee could have at least given him the heads up: "We like your take, we're gonna use it." Coulton's a cool guy, he probably would have said "great!" But instead, he found out last week with everyone else, when the Glee songs of the week went up for sale on iTunes. He was not pleased, and I can't blame him. Sure, what Glee did was almost certainly legal, but a little courtesy would have been nice.
So... buried under all this bad stuff, we had a sprinkling of good jokes, a couple of decent performances ("No Scrubs" and "Locked Out of Heaven" -- maybe "I Only Have Eyes For You" as well, but we hardly heard any of it)... and not much else. It's probably generous to grade the episode a D. Unfortunately, it was the worst Glee has been in a long, long while.
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