The Cutprice Guignol

So I feel like I need to take this time to talk about Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester.

Not that I haven’t before. But, honestly, it would be impossible to do a decent review of this episode without acknowledging how fucking good she is this week. Bored by her cheerleading routines, she becomes obsessed with the idea of shooting Brittany out of a canon, and somehow, it’s my favourite plot of the season so far.

This is a goofy episode, no doubt about it, but the gift of Jane Lynch brings it all together. She’s ascending into absolute deranged levels of villainy here, a comic book supervillain masquerading as a high school cheerleading coach. I’ve written a bit before about how Sue basically exists in an alternate dimension to the rest of the Glee world, sometimes to it’s detriment, but at times like this, when her madness overlaps with Glee’s vague semblance of reality, it’s genuinely some of my favourite TV comedy ever. It’s perfectly encapsulated in the scene where she storms out of Figgins’ office and destroys an entire room – Jane Lynch is screaming, assaulting children, smashing lamps, and Matthew Morrison and Iqbal Theba sit there in utter, po-faced horror, playing it totally straight. The show doesn’t pull out these moments a lot, but when it does…God, it just works for me.

There are so many great Sue bits that I really just want to talk about them for a moment here. From her response of “I’m a tastemaker” to an accusation of trying to murder a child, to her chicken-cutlet-face-slapping torment with the cheerleaders, it’s a testament to the sheer titanic comedic talent of Jane Lynch how exquisitely funny this all is. She has a total grasp on the character by this point, and what a character she is. The delivery on that joke about the canon’s wife having fibromyalgia? Changed the course of my life. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but Jane Lynch’s performance here has always really reminded me tonally of Chris Fleming’s outrageously fun Gayle series – bizarrely high stakes for nothing-burger problems – and I’d recommend the show if you enjoy that kind of humour.

As for the rest of the episode, this is just a season two remake of the footballers/cheerleaders versus Glee club plot from season one, and what that means is that is has a bigger budget but feels a little more empty emotionally. The drama isn’t awful by any means, but we’ve certainly seen this conflict play out before; I like the way Cory Monteith plays it, especially in his scenes with Dot Marie-Jones (someone complained to me that I spent too much time talking about Dot Marie-Jones in these recaps, and now their number has vanished from my contacts. Weird how that happens!). I do enjoy the Karofsky stuff in this episode, but I think that’s more to do with Max Adler’s performance than it does with the well-meaning but slightly hackneyed plot they give him here.

The performances, though? Those are the headliners here, even despite Jane Lynch’s brilliant turn this episode. Heads Will Roll/Thriller is the big one here, and I think it stands up really well. It’s tightly-edited, the two songs fit together in a way I really enjoy, and it features a couple of my favourite performers in the form of Naya Riveira and Kevin McHale. I love the ridiculous production value, I love the dancing, I love the slightly rubbish make-up, I love everything about it.

(side note: I was once on a first date with a slightly snobby musician and he asked me if I’d ever listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I earnestly, truthfully told him that I’d heard their music in a mash-up in Glee, and the light fell from his eyes)

California Girls is also stupidly over-produced and kind of fun in an overblown way, which works for the comedic beats it’s trying to hit, and watching those fully grown men standing funny on bike handles while fake smoke billows in the background is entertaining enough. It’s kind of a cheeky lampshade to open the episode with this over-the-top version of performances we’ve seen before and have Sue instantly call it boring, given the content of the episode to come, but hey, the bras shoot sparks!

This is for sure one of the sillier episodes of the season so far, but Jane Lynch is so delightfully well-served it’s hard to care that much. An all-timer performance helps seal the deal, and Glee has skated by for another week.

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(header image via The Wall Street Journal)