Glee Review - 3.11 'Michael'

Posted by Dimitri Dorlis on 02.01.2012

Glee has its much-hyped Michael Jackson tribute episode. Is it any good? Also find out how to turn slushies into a deadly weapon, and who gets to go to college.

I’m going to be honest. I’m dreading this week’s episode of Glee, because I know there’s no way it’ll live up to the hype. Maybe it will, but I’m not that confident.



Also, before I launch into the main review, I wanted to talk about something else really fast. I have a process when I write these reviews for Glee, where I watch the show, grab any quotes or anything else for the stray observations, and also jot down the main plot points before going more in-depth on the episode. After I put my review up, I’ll usually go around to other sites and see what they say, just to see if I agree with them or not. For awhile now, I’ve had pretty similar opinions with Todd VanDerWerff, the Glee reviewer over at AV Club. But the point I really wanted to bring up is that we both agree that Finn’s story last episode should have been spread out over a few episodes, or at least moved to a different episode where it could have been the focal point.

That whole paragraph was brought to you by the Society for Good Opinion Conservation.

Anyway, on to this episode.

So yeah, Michael Jackson episode. I understand why this had to happen, what with his death two years ago, and how crucial he was to modern pop music. And I’m not saying I dislike the music, as I genuinely like Michael Jackson. And as far as mixing Michael Jackson into the plot, they did a very good job, probably even the best job they’ve ever done on this show.

The problem is the show got into the ridiculous area pretty quickly. New Directions decided they wanted to do a Michael Jackson number for Regionals, and Blaine accidentally reveals this to Sebastian, the new leader of the Wrablers. And Sebastian, true to his bad guy trope, decides to steal the idea, knowing that there’s nothing that New Directions can do to stop him. And this is all fine and good up until Sebastian hits Blaine with a supposedly-rigged slushie to the face.

The Gleeverse is pretty established. We’ve had various bad guys before, such as Sue, Jessie St James, and Santana, but none of them have actually caused physical harm to someone. Hell, the closest we’ve gotten up to this point was THE HAMMER picking on Kurt and then making out with him. Glee operates in a world where the bullies are mean, but they don’t cause true physical harm. Maybe that’s why I was excited and disturbed by what they had Sebastian do. On the one hand, having a villain who is actually willing to hurt someone to get his way raises the stakes and suddenly makes a friendly rivalry between two competing glee clubs intensely personal. On the other hand, Sebastian basically commits a crime. It was a malicious act, and New Directions’ normal methods of Rising Above Hate (copyright John Cena) seem out of place in this situation. Maybe that’s why I liked Artie yelling at Will so much. It was a refreshing change of pace, and Artie saying what everyone else was feeling is reinforcing this opinion I’m having of Artie that he’s slowly become the voice of the audience as the last few seasons have progressed.

Later on, we find out that Sebastian put rock salt in the slushie, which he admits to Santana after besting her in a duel. And, like the true villain that he is, not only does he remain cocky that nothing will happen to him, he also punctuates his supposed victory over Santana by hitting her with a slushie as well. Of course, Santana records the conversation, which gives the group the evidence they need to have actual repercussions done. Kurt’s response pissed me off, though, when he basically decides not to do the real-life proper thing, and do things the Glee way. I understand this is a tv show, but I’d like the characters to act like real people more often. That’s why Artie’s reaction was so refreshing while Kurt’s actions at the end pissed me off to no end. Sebastian keeps up the villain act at the end, but he’s effectively beaten by the end by song. I just…ugh.

Speaking of characters evolving, let’s talk about Quinn really fast, as she got into Yale. She gives a very heartfelt speech thanking New Directions for being her rock and always supporting her. My problem with Quinn, besides the fact that Dianna Agron is criminally underused on this show, is that her character has easily been the most poorly-written on the show. Say what you will about how bad Will is, but at least it’s consistent. Quinn’s character has had more turns than a NASCAR race. One week she’s plotting against the glee club or Shelby and the next she’s having heart to hearts with Kurt or something. I’m not sure if Jekyll/Hyde is an established character trope for tv shows, but if it was, Quinn would be a prime example.

Finally, remember how I complained about them cramming too much into each episode? Well, same thing happened this week with people getting acceptance letters. You could have made a very good episode with this being a main plot, and a bunch of the seniors getting letters from colleges. I don’t understand why the people in charge of Glee feel the need to cram 50 different things into each episode, but this show would be so much better with some better spacing. Maybe someone running quality control who can take a look at the script and tell Ryan Murphy to hold off on something for a week. Also, the suspense involving Rachel’s acceptance letter would have been better if the members of New Directions were allowed to fail once in awhile.

And if you’re wondering what Rachel’s answer was to Finn’s proposal, it was yes. Like it was going to be anything else.

Stray Observations
- Your song list for the first episode is (with the best song in bold): “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson, “Bad” by Michael Jackson, “Scream” by Michael and Janet Jackson, “Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Jackson 5, “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson, “Ben” by Michael Jackson, “Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson, “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” by Michael Jackson, and “Black or White” by Michael Jackson. Who’d guess that a Michael Jackson episode would feature a ton of Michael Jackson songs?
- Your best-dressed award for episode one (or as I like to call it, the “Which Girl Looked the Hottest” award) went to Santana in her dresssuit, although I’ll admit that she got hotter when she revealed that she had taped a recorder to her underboob.
- Your Real-Life Does Not Apply to the Gleeverse Moment of the Week: It got really High School Musical in that opening, didn’t it? Also, cmon guys, singing in the library is against the rules.
- If these kids are in high school, how many Michael Jackson memories would these kids have beyond “oh, it’s that dude who was black and is now white and is also into little boys.”
- WWMJD? I’ll leave that one to the people in the comments.
- I need to see someone get hit with a slushie on Raw now. It’s gotta be pretty deadly.
- Also I guess the town of Lima has a large overpass area. I’m personally hoping Lima expands the same way Springfield did on the Simpsons, to the point where every conceivable thing is located in this town.
- “Scream” probably wins the most ridiculous song number. Pretty reminiscent of the Brittany episode.
- In today’s dumb plan section, Rachel goes to Quinn to discuss Finn’s proposal, believing Quinn can keep a secret.
- Also when did Quinn and Rachel become besties?
- “My suggestion is that we drag him down and gagged to a tattoo parlor for a tramp stamp that reads ‘Tips appreciated’ or ‘Congratulations, you’re my 1000th customer’” Santana is wonderful.
- Sam breaks text protocol by sending a text in all caps. Also I guess everyone at McKinley has an iPhone?
- Aww, Mercedes and Sam kiss. Cute. Whatever. I really don’t care about them.
- “Screw my heart, you did it!” Burt is still the best person on this show.
- All that time in school and Rachel doesn’t understand how mail works.
- In a fun bit of casting, the cello players are the group 2Cellos, which became famous for their cello-only cover of “Smooth Criminal”. I’d give it a listen, as it’s very good.
- The Lima 7/11 must make a killing off of slushie sales. Also, how much does 7/11 pay in sponsorship money to get their product featured so much?
- “Wait, if Kurt would have taped this to his junk, I would have never heard the end of it. We would have had a whole week of songs about it.” Santana does her best Abed-is-meta impression.
- “This is called taking the high road, which I was shocked to find out has nothing to do with marijuana.” Never change, Puck.
- So I guess my question is, did they only sign Vanessa Lengies to a certain amount of episodes? Because she was absent from this one as well. This is totally killing what could be the best side-character story ever.
- Also, I may have to debut a slushie counter next week.
- NEXT WEEK: Ricky Martin shows up as the new Spanish teacher, which I guess means Will is fired or something? Thought he was originally a Spanish teacher, but who knows. Also Sue decides to have a kid, and Nene Lekes returns as the awesome swim coach.

The 411: This was a decent episode. Not great, but decent. The song choices made sense and flowed logically, which is a nice change of pace. However, this is the second episode in a row where I’ve had to complain about how much plot they’re trying to cram in each episode. I feel like if you had taken out the Sam/Mercedes scene and a lot of the college things, and expanded on the main plot some more, it would have made for a better episode.

Final Score:  6.5   [ Average ]