Glee - "I am Unicorn"

Season 3, Episode 2

Things start to make sense

“I don’t just want to be known

as Kurt Hummel, homo.”

-Kurt

Last night in my review of the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother, I mentioned that the only reason that I still stuck with the show was that it was still showing the occasional flashes of quality amongst an increasing sea of mediocrity. It’s weird that it took me that long to verbalize my feelings in that fashion, considering that’s how I feel about Glee, albeit to a greater extent. And so while I mostly just shook my head throughout “The Purple Piano Project”, I was actually pleasantly satisfied with how “I am Unicorn” turned out. (I don’t want to jinx anything, but based on last night’s How I Met Your Mother, and the relative quality of “I am Unicorn”, it almost appears as if premiere was an off-week for most shows, and that the second week is hopefully when most shows will take an uptick in quality. But you know, knock knock.)

Part of the reason that Glee is so frustrating to watch isn’t just that it drops plot lines at random (though that is a large part of it), but rather the fact that when the show produces a good episode, it not only reminds us that the show can be good, but there’s also a sense that the episode would be even more effective if the stories actually had some longevity and momentum to them. Though Glee can be a good show when it wants to be, that’s not often enough, and well constructed stories often don’t play well enough as they are trying to tap into an emotion that isn’t fully developed.

Take Quinn, for instance. After she gave her baby at the end of season one, the show didn’t really seems to know what to do with her in season two, and just stuck in not one but two romance plots, as well as sticking some weird side plot about how she wanted to become prom queen and regain her former glory. But even that didn’t work out, and the show tried to act as if New York was going to signal some big change in her personality – which of course it didn’t.

At least, not in the season two finale. Last week, Quinn showed up with new hair, acting like a skank (because apparently those two things are related), for reasons that weren’t really clear. “I am Unicorn” seems to be an answer to that, albeit one that deals with events farther back in the past – back to season one when Quinn gave up her baby. There’s a certain kind of logic at play here, one that makes sense in the real world (yes, Quinn would be upset about giving up here baby), but doesn’t make as much sense in Glee’s choppy, non-serialized version of reality. By making the focus on the season one finale, Glee simultaneously asks us to forgive it for not knowing what to do with Quinn last year while also trying to sweep her second season arcs under a rug. It’s a weird move, but if you can buy into what the show is doing, it works.

And really, buying into the story isn’t all that of a challenge because A) Glee has been asking us to forget about plots since day one, B) few plots are as forgettable as Quinn’s were last season and C) there’s enough at play that the story feels real, and not just another random plot point put out there because, why the hell not. No, Quinn’s plot works not only because it feels as if the various points in her life are actually connecting into a whole, but also because there were enough moving parts that the whole thing felt organic. Bringing in Will, Puck, and Sue didn’t just add enough legs to the story that it could go the whole episode without turning into a complete mess; it also helped it feel as if this was the culmination of a series of events that existed on a much better show. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Quinn’s quest to adopt Beth, or Shelby’s introduction as a teacher at McKinley, or who’s going to run against Sue, but for tonight at least, Glee was able to have a storyline be about one character, and it worked.

The other main plot – that’s right, there were thankfully only TWO tonight – evolved in a similar fashion, in that it was made up of a few different subplots, but it was more successful as a result of focusing on Kurt, who’s a much more established character than Quinn ever was.  Unfortunately, the three storylines that Kurt all seems to be a part of – his quest to be less fey, him and Blaine trying out for the same part in the musical, and his campaign for student president – don’t mesh together quite as well as all the part’s of Quinn’s story, but overall the message is much stronger.

Given how much Kurt functions as an identification figure for the show, it’s only natural to think of him as some sort of declaration on behalf of the show at to its ability to tone it down when necessary, even if it’d rather just be loud and bombastic all the time. But I was struck more by the story’s emotional side, even though – or perhaps because – I found it to be problematic. Giving Kurt a storyline where he’s asked to change his outward mannerisms so that he can pursue his dreams seems not only out of step with the show’s general message, but it also conflicts with the type of gay characters Ryan Murphy likes to depict. (And for those wondering, yes he did write this episode.) Kurt has never been one to shy away from who he is, so for him to even consider it does seem weird. Yet what I believe the show was trying to do – and what I felt it did perfectly – was to depict this as a big, deciding moment in a young gay man’s life, a decision that’s important no matter which option you choose. It gets at the heart of the social pressure the gay men must face growing up, and I think it posits Kurt as a positive role model once again.

Out from Kurt’s storyline also spun to others that will seek to carry on in the following weeks, with the cliffhanger-ish reveal that Blaine would try out for the role of Tony even we he told Kurt he wouldn’t, and the fact that Brittany will now be running for student president against Kurt. While I’m personally more interested in the latter (haven’t we had enough relationship drama on this show?) but I’m interested in these two storylines as a whole for narrative reasons. Last week, I posited that maybe, just maybe, the show was reaching to do more serialized storytelling this season, and part of the reason “The Purple Piano Project” didn’t work was that it was too busy because the show was trying a narrative shift change. And now that this episode definitely finished up some stories while moving new one into place, I’m becoming more sure of my theory. And if this happens to be the case going forward, then maybe, just maybe, Glee won’t be such a scatterbrained mess and we can start to expect more quality stories in the future.

Next Week: A diva-off. This time for realzies.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Okay, so there was C-plot about some glee club members learning how dance better so they could do better at competitions. But does anybody really care at this point?

So apparently I misread those news stories that reported that Glee was going to be cutting back on the songs. I guess they really meant was that they were decreasing the amount of pop song covers instead. That’s fine and all – it certainly feel more realistic for glee club students to sing show tunes than radio hits – but it kind of ruins my plans to starting talking about the songs and how they’re used in context, which I can’t really do since I’m not familiar enough with musicals.

So that weird commercial in which Sue had to stump for “Glee Give-a-Note” was weird, and not just for it’s universe-bending. I guess we now know why Sue’s running for office this season, and it’s weird that Glee would use the show to market a  non-profit in much the way it would pimp a single or a Chevy.

“Give us your lunch money.” “We’re hungry, we need something to throw up.”

“First, smoking kills. Second, it really does make you look cooler, doesn’t it?”

“After a long day of snorting Splenda and skipping class, she does the only thing she can to get by – smoking corn starch.”

“She’s like my own private Jim Henson.”

“I’m always here; the stalls are cleaner.”

“She’s Jewish, which helps with the whole ethnic thing.”

“And you’re not like Rock Hudson gay, you’re really gay.”