Ryan Sheely returns with Matthew Wrather to overthink Glee and Gossip Girl, including Glee’s Parent Trap plot, Santorum, lack of thematic unity, the difference between explanation and rationalization, and what can and can’t break up a happy couple. Bonus coinage of jargon: “Doin’ it on the deuce!”
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See, I really liked this episode of Glee, but I think it might be important to experience A House is Not a Home and One Less Bell to Answer not as Dion Warwick or Streisand songs, but primarily as Burt Bacharach songs. (And to have a secret totally unabashed love of Burt Bacharach.)
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the first time we’ve actually had a reprise, right? I thought that was an interesting moment, because it sort of ties the Schue plot into the Kurt/Finn plot, and suggests that the reason he lets Kristen Chenoweth crawl into bed with him is that he wants to go back to the way things were before his marriage fell apart. And that suggests an interesting sort of fluidity of identity between Terri and April – that on a macro narrative level, both of them are basically just The Woman Who Is Not Emma.
Fold that back into the parent trap plot, and you get a really neat example of what the show says not lining up with what the show really means. (What’s that word again? Ultraman?) There’s a big speech at the end where Kurt’s dad tells Finn, “Look, I’m not trying to be your father! I could never replace your father!” And yet the episode ends with him totally replacing Finn’s father, suggesting that the structural role of “Father” (or if you like, “strong male role model”) within the family unit is more significant than the person who gets placed there. Also interesting is what happens to Kurt at the end. We could easily imagine a happy-happy ending, where Finn is cheerfully watching the game with Kurt’s dad, and Kurt is cheerfully getting a manicure with Finn’s mom. But that’s not how it works: in Gleeland, if people subsume their identities into the traditional family unit, the gay guy gets left standing on the outside, because he’s still going to have these “inappropriate” desires that aren’t going to go away. (I’m not saying the writers think this is how it should be… it’s definitely played this as a tragedy/an indictment of the traditional family unit. But compare it to Modern Family, where the gay couple just fall into the traditional roles and are fine with it.)
Granted that the body image stuff was a little heavy-handed. Or big-boned-handed, I suppose. But it is possible read it slightly differently than you guys did: rather than suggest that Mercedes’ home is her body, and she needs to make her home whole by eating a damn sandwich, let’s say that her home is the Cheerios. (Yeah, she’s never really been a part of that… but Finn has never had a father, and he still wants one.) If she wants to fit in, she needs to erase her difference (as Kurt would need to somehow erase his sexuality), and at the end of the day she refuses – largely due to the advice of an unwed mother who’s estranged from her parents, which is interesting, right? And this reading also makes Kurt’s reaction a lot more resonant, since it sets the Aguilera song up as a refutation of the Bacharach numbers.
My take on the two songs with “A House is Not a Home” is it worked in the WAYS it was used by each main singer. Kurt is clearly singing about how he has feelings for Finn and wants him closer- for him, the house is a metaphor FOR Finn, in a lot of ways, but also consider the lyrics he sings when he’s looking at Finn. He reaches out to Finn during the “apart/…broken heart” lyrics, for example, but looks at the general crowd during the stuff more specifically about houses (and the shots tend to be of his audience there). Basically, when the lyrics are more obviously about the object of the singer’s affection and talk about LOVE, Kurt’s looking/ sobbing in Finn’s direction. It’s obvious Finn is thinking about his father because of his little bit in his house, once he gets past his discomfort with realizing Kurt’s singing to him. But Will’s face when Kurt is singing suggests he’s thinking of something with a feeling of regret or guilt, and when he’s singing his mashup thing, he’s singing about the actual apartment and how empty HE feels when he’s not sharing that space with someone, but more specifically his wife- and I think wondering if he made the right decision in kicking her out. “Why did she go?” is his first “big” line, after all, and right after he hides her picture. “Since she went away,” over and over after that, too.
And here’s what I think makes the show so brilliant, and I commented on this last week. The show uses its songs the way we use pop songs and SO DO ITS CHARACTERS. Kurt is singing about Finn, Finn is singing about his dad, Christen Chennowith (I can’t remember her character’s name) is singing about herself, Will is singing about his wife, and all with the same song (or at least in two different mashups sharing one song). Each character took what they were feeling and applied the song(s) to their own life in the same way real people do so with pop music. So I didn’t see any trouble or problem with it at all- this one took great pains to show the universality of music and how everyone connects to it through their own experiences. Every song on the show does this, but these two mashups from this episode took it to extremes because the experiences being highlighted are so different: unrequited love, death, instability, and divorce. Yet they could all come together because that’s what people do, they relate love songs to deaths, songs about death to loneliness, etc.
I don’t know if my enjoyment of this episode was completely fueled by my adoration of Kristin Chenoweth, but I enjoyed the songs. I love both her high energy numbers (Glitter and Be Gay, Popular) and her slower ballads. I guess I just liked how beautiful her voice sounded, especially in comparison to her first appearance when aside from Alone I think she got a lot of songs that didn’t suit her voice.
Burt Baccharach songs = hint to go see Promises, Promises?
And yay! Happy to be mentioned. :)
Wow, I really spelled her name wrong, didn’t I?
Kristin Chenoweth. Sorry.
Kurt looks somewhat campy? His entire character is nothing but camp in a lot of episodes (not all. When he tries out for the solo, we do get a lot of refreshing development between himself and his dad [he works on cars at the shop?!]), but complaining about that is like complaining that Quinn is a Mean Girl stereotype or Shu is a Nice Guy stereotype; these characters don’t resemble real people much, so when they do something outside of their particular box it’s shocking.
Also, and I hesitate to point this out, but gay sex isn’t all about the anal. Maybe Kurt just wants a friendly, brotherly hand job? Or blow job. Or kiss; this is a teenager, after all, let’s start small.