Glee-Cap: F U, Glee, for making me tear up

Sorry I didn't get this week's Gleecap together terribly quickly, the show did cast focus on a couple of its female characters this week dealing with the harsh concepts of humiliation and reputation. While it had its share of laughs and ARGHS there were two really strong scenes that shed some light on my two favorite characters and even dealt with consequences.
First, Quinn,
While her big scene came at the end of the episode, it once again called attention to Quinn's depth as a character.

Mr. Schuster confronts Quinn privately about a list of Glee Club Members organized by their sluttiness, which had caused the major conflicts in the episode. The scene reveals Quinn's remorse, but also, the complexities of her social situation. She wrote the list in a hope to be seen again, having lost her popularity, social power, her position on the cheerleading squad, her boyfriend, her lover and control over her body to pregnancy. At the time, she thought having a bad reputation would be preferable to being invisible.

"People would part like the red sea when I walked down the hallway..."
"You're going to give that baby to a family that loves it, that really wants it and you're going to go on to do incredible things"
"You really think I can get it all back one day?"

"No, I think you can get something even better, I mean Come on, You're Quinn Febree, those people didn't move down the halls... you moved them."

"Thanks Mr. Shu', you're a really good teacher, even if everyone is calling you a manwhore"

This scene took me by surprise, especially after:


When Rachel decides to use all they guys she's ever tried to have any romantic relationship with in order to make herself seem desirable, or bad. Possibly real teenage behavior, sure, consequences, sure I suppose, but her response still seems... uncomprehending? There is a real distasteful element to using the guys like that, and I hope that there is some note of how using three girls in a video and playing with them like that would be similarly inappropriate, I can't think of a bit that Glee has done previously that did that... just don't break my heart with a double standard, Glee. I compel you, Glee, with the AWESOME POWER OF THE INTERNET, don't break my heart.

Ms. Pillsbury slut-shamed Mr. Schuster– and while slut-shaming of any gender is lame– he did make out with another woman and she's learning to stand up for herself. The funniest thing about Ms. Pillsbury to me is that she's really learning a lot from the cruel criticisms of Sue Sylvester.

Ah Sue, It's time I talked about you.

Sue is a fantastic villain, she has real skills and is an incredible ability to turn a situation to her advantage. Like in this episode, when she faces humiliation for the first time when an embarrassing video of her is posted to YouTube. She skyrockets to Internet infamy and draws the attention of Olivia Newton-John with whom she makes a response video and earns a boatload of cash.

While Sue's methods are ruthless and often involve blackmail, manipulation, cruelty and other terrible means to her ends, one has to love a good villain. The Glee Club learns more from fighting her than they would otherwise, grow in response and become stronger because of it. Her attempts to take them down to save her insanely large cheerleading budget only help turn them into more refined performers.

Sue is aspirational, she speaks her mind (even when her opinions are repulsive) and she IS the holder of national championships with the Cheerios Squad that bring positive attention and funding to the High School. She gets the best lines and she doesn't hide her opinion of people from them, she's brash and honest (even if her opinion of truth is skewed) and she is fearless.
The true magic of Sue's character though, is that the show gives the audience insight into Sue that no one else sees. Sue has a disabled sister who she cares for, dotes on, confides in and adores.
Throughout this and other episodes, we see scenes where she has sincere, sweet moments caring for her sister. While Sue is often comedic, the sincerity she shows with her sister, and in respecting the disabled as people, adds superb depth to her character and to the show.

In another episode, Sue put a disabled girl on the Cheerios Squad and had to face criticism that she was expecting too much of the girl, which bore out as implying that by expecting her to do the same things she expected of other cheerleaders she was somehow being cruel. Her methods proved to be ultimately brilliant, the girl proved to others and to herself she was capable of the same rigor Sue expected of anyone else. That character is still on the Cheerios Squad and is clearly accepted by her peers.

Sue's interactions with her sister do not seem tacked on, though it could easily have seemed that way, but for the magnificent acting of Jane Lynch. Who really loves the character and brings both the comedy and quiet drama out of a character who could easily have become a caricature.

From an interview:

Q. As awful as Sue can be, one of her great moments this year came when she showed tough love for a Down syndrome cheerleader. Was that one of the highlights of the season for you?

Yes. That was the "Wheels" episode. Sue Sylvester's sister, we find out, has Down syndrome and is in a home. It's a more touching episode, and we get to see a softer side of Sue. I think there's a decency to Sue. There were three or four different moments where you saw a kind of a decency and rationality.

Q. But then, in the blink of an eye, she can turn nasty again.

Absolutely. Good Sue is very short-lived. She just really enjoys being an awful person. She really gets great glee, if you will, out of being a terrible person. I think she just really enjoys shocking people.

I love laughing at and with Sue and I love that the same character regularly brings a tear to my eye.

Previous Glee-Caps: The Madonna Episode, Am I Taking Crazy Pills?

My Super First Day: I write fiction, Beware!!!!

This is my entry for the massive distributed storytelling effort My Super First Day:

"Remember that day, one year ago, when you woke up and discovered you had a superpower? We do, too! This is an exercise in massively collaborative storytelling. Contributors from the farthest-flung reaches of the interwebs have come together to tell us about that wonderful (or horrible!) day when their lives suddenly became supercharged."

Please forgive me this break from our regularly scheduled punditry and try to get through...

Tacky Clothes make even Tackier Bedfellows…
Caitlin Burns’ Super First Day

It was a dark and stormy… completely sunny 88 degree afternoon in Phoenix with literally no clouds and I was lying on my back on a plasticized picnic table in my high school’s parking lot. My friend, Therese, was splayed out atop an inflatable alligator that was shimmering atop the burning hot concrete in its own ineffable manner, its plastic smile creased by the weight of her physics textbook. Jim was attempting a handstand on the nearby grass, his juvenile gymnastic prowess diminished by his adolescent chunkiness.

Therese was trying to explain to me precisely why physics would be applicable to me in my daily life, other than getting into college and moving about in space are concerned. Of course, I assumed that the calculus involved was something that would make sense eventually, probably on my deathbed I would care more about functions and infinite sums but at that point I simply could not be bothered and the standard issue Arizona heat was not helping.

Jim spotted a maroon Subaru turning the corner into the parking lot, which was a full block and literally a quarter mile from where we were lazing about. It was 4:45 and Jim’s mom was here to pick him up along with Therese. They lived in the area closer to Camelback Mountain, the dromedary-like fixture that poked above the smog layer and loomed like a cigarette warning above my childhood.

I bid my friends farewell and unlocked the door of my ’89 Honda Civic stepping aside as I opened the door to the backseat so that the blast of heat wouldn’t hit me in the face. I proceeded to shove in the inflatable Alligator, threw my book bag on the passenger seat and, pulling my sleeves over my hands, gingerly gripped the burning hot wheel and turned the key. Nothing happened, I checked the break, Nothing Happened, I got out and checked the radiator fluid, nothing strange but also, the car wouldn’t turn on. I sighed, grabbed by bag, locked the car and rummaged through it for a caramel apple pop setting off across the parking lot and across the running track to the entrance to the labyrinthine alleys that would take me home to where my more mechanically inclined father would be waiting.

I lived three-quarters of a mile in the other direction from the mountain, in a comfortable Middle-Class buffer area that insulated the ritzy Arcadia Suburb from the lower-class area across 40th, demarcated as such things often are, by a decrepit house with aluminum foil over the windows that was occasionally busted as a Meth Lab. Ironically, that street may has well have been the Pacific Ocean for all it affected the neighborhood next to it and I had no concerns walking home.

As I meandered down the rows of Oleanders and more quickly past one particular yard that usually contained a barking Rottweiler, Shirley Manson vamping out of my Discman, I heard a loud whistle. I stopped, turned around, and there was no one there. I assumed that it was someone in a back yard, despite the fact that nearly no one other than teenagers walking around in alleys ever ventured into their own back yards at this time of day.

I started walking again and about 10 feet down the alley I heard the wolf whistle again. This time I pulled the Carmel Apple Pop from my mouth and, yelled,

“Hello?”

No answer but the cicadas and the chattering of a Blue Jay on a power line above me.

Only after I’d yelled did I realize how much a horror-movie cliché that is, and feeling like an ass I turned back towards my goal, rolled back my shoulders and stepped forward.

“Hey Baby, TwoooT!” loudly squawked the bird above my head.

I nearly choked on my lolly pop, instead it caught on my tongue stud and in my efforts to disentangle myself I managed to get caught in my headphone wires, get my arms stuck in the strap of my book bag and, long story short, ended up on my butt in the dirt as the Jay laughed uproariously at my expense.

“Nice job,” the feathered jerk mocked– if birds had tear ducts he would be weeping with laughter at this point. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but your shoe is untied too, also your shoes are ungodly ugly.”

“I thought birds liked shiny things?” I said wrestling with the lace of my aqua, glittery high-heeled Sketchers.

“Even people who like shiny things have SOME standards,” the Jay retorted, at which point he opened his wings and flew away.

Well, that was it, I could talk to birds… you would be surprised how many of them are assholes.