Glee Review - 3.9 'Extraordinary Merry Christmas'

Posted by Dimitri Dorlis on 12.14.2011

It's Christmas time, which means helping out those who are less-fortunate. Or, if you are a member of New Directions, it means going completely out of character to film a Christmas special instead of helping the poor. Also, Rachel continues to be the worst in this week's episode of Glee.

So UCLA hired Jim Mora, Jr. Go ahead and mock, you can’t hurt me any more than I can hurt myself.



Let’s start this off with an observation: when I went to write down all the songs for this episode, I noticed just how many of them there are this week. Of all the episodes in the year, this is the only one where they can get away with it, because there are just so many Christmas songs you can do.

Ok, now on to the actual episode. New Directions is hired to take part in a local station’s Christmas special. Well, take part is putting it lightly, as they basically are the Christmas special, directed by Artie. Oh, but there is that thing about Sue asking the Glee club if they could help her at the homeless shelter, and wouldn’t you know it, both events are scheduled to occur on the same night.

Yeah, the story isn’t anything new, but what I liked the most about this was who was cast in what role. Sue is in the right for once here, and her intentions are pure for once; it’s her first Christmas without her sister, so she’s just trying to keep busy, and there’s no better way to do that then helping out those who are less fortunate. Meanwhile, the Glee club, which for the entirety of the show have been cast in the light of being good people, chose relative fame over helping the homeless shelter. It’s a complete 180 from last year’s Christmas episode, where the Glee club was collecting gifts for sick kids while Sue tried to steal all the gifts. And honestly, it was probably the wrong way to go here. A simple solution to the problem would have been to have Artie convince the station manager to rent out a few buses and bring everyone from the homeless shelter to the studio, so that the Glee club could perform for them. I mean, what else could the station manager do? If he says no, New Directions could walk and then he’d be out of a Christmas special. THIS IS NOT HARD WHY DO YOU MAKE THINGS DIFFICULT GLEE?!?

But anyway, we did have a Christmas special, and kudos to Chris Colfer for mimicking a Christmas special host down to every detail. Hell, the whole thing was incredibly well-done, with special marks going to Mercedes refusing to not stare at the Camera, the “studio audience” clapping after every line they could, to the mentioning of a cause. Glee doesn’t do parody that often, but this one was extremely good. It makes me wish they would do more of this. Plus they got in a few good Star Wars jokes, which I always appreciate.

Ending the Christmas special with Rory apparently going off-script to read the story of Christmas was also a good choice. Mark this date down, because I’m about to give kudos to the producers of Glee, and lord knows this doesn’t happen that often, but kudos to the producers for actually having the balls to have a character read the story of Christmas on national tv. Too many producers would have stuck with Santa, but mentioning the real reason for the holiday was a nice touch. This would also probably be a good time to mention the mini-plot of Rory being homesick during Christmas, and Sam offering to be his Christmas sponsor, whatever that means. It really wasn’t bad, but it didn’t add anything.

Meanwhile, over at the homeless shelter, Sam and Quinn had decided not to participate in the Christmas special, choosing instead to help out. The rest of the Glee club shows up with more food, having had the last parts of their special cut thanks to Rory going rogue. We get one last song with New Directions bringing cheer to the homeless.

There was also a plotline involving Rachel being the worst girlfriend during Christmas. Finn tries to appease Rachel while thinking about his limited budget, while Rachel continues to make outlandish demands. Yeah, it gets a little “Gift of the Magi” at the end, but I was ok with it, as Finn actually had a good bit of dialogue near the end about the star gift, plus Rachel realizing she needs to stop being so needy is hopefully a sign that she’ll back off a bit during the second half of the season. Yeah ok, that’s never going to happen, but one can hope, right?

Stray Observations
- Your song list for the first episode is (with the best song in bold): “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey, “Blue Christmas” by Elvis Presley, “River” by Joni Mitchell, “Extraordinary Merry Christmas” which is an original composition, “Let It Snow” by Ella Fitzgerald, “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid.
- Your best-dressed award for episode one (or as I like to call it, the “Which Girl Looked the Hottest” award) went to the Cheerios during Brittany’s number.
- Your Real-Life Does Not Apply to the Gleeverse Moment of the Week: McKinley High must have an amazing drama department with how good those sets are.
- I wish Glee would have more scenes like that locker scene at the beginning. Just so much right about it, and every male character did something.
- Rachel Berry: worst girlfriend.
- “You said you considered homeless people ‘urban campers.’”
- Your random callback of the week: Kurt having a mini-freakout about Rory possibly singing about Jesus. Callback is for “Grilled Cheezus”. CONTINUITY!
- Random callback of the week part 2: Tina mentions that Artie’s leg-thingy broke the next week. Callback is for “A Very Glee Christmas.”
- “I am absolutely delighted that our channel’s Christmas special is being directed by a teenaged disabled boy. You’re like a modern-day Tiny Tim. Oh, I’m sorry, Tiny Tim could walk.”
- A Star Wars Holiday Special is underrated. I will fight anyone who disagrees.
- Funny note: a week after Community out-Glee’d Glee at a singing episode, Glee proved that Community also had a superior episode based around filming something.
- “MIKE CHANG and Tina Cohen-Chang, no relation.” Dammit that was a good line.
- Sidenote: where did Sugar go?
- “We thought we heard Santa Claus, but with the climate change and end times, we just don’t think Santa Claus is coming to town.”
- Not going to lie, “Christmas Wrapping” won best song for 2 reasons. 1) Hot Cheerios. 2) It’s one of my favorite Christmas songs.
- Rory’s brother is named Sheamus. FURTHERING MY IDEA THAT SHEAMUS SHOULD GUEST-STAR AS RORY’S BROTHER.
- Rachel saying “Happy Hanukkah” was another nice touch.
- Second-half of the season: Will proposes to Emma, Finn talks to an army recruiter, Sam joins synchronized swimming, Becky hits on Artie, and Sugar actually shows up. Should be a thing.

The 411: As far as Christmas specials go, this wasn’t an all-time classic. Like I point out above, Community managed to have a better Christmas episode involving song last week. But we’re not judging this episode against other Christmas episodes; we’re judging it against other Glee episodes, and as far as that goes, this was a very good episode. The good thing for Glee is that it went into the break with two strong episodes, giving it a ton of momentum heading into the second half of the season.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]