Glee - "Asian F"

Season 3, Episode 3

I’m loathe to admit it, but I think the show might be turning around

“You always zig when I think you’re about to zag.”

-Blaine

One of the main complaints that was lobbed at Glee in its first season – back when those types of criticisms were more of knee-jerk superficiality than the more substantial “these stories and characters make no sense” kind that we’re familiar with now – was that the show would sometimes have musical numbers that didn’t make sense, that didn’t jive with the reality surrounding them. While it was obvious that the show was doing the standard musical move of using music to highlight a character’s emotions, the way each song was presented, with one foot in reality and the other out of it, didn’t make much sense. It was if as the show wasn’t quite sure what it could and couldn’t get away with, so it kept it in the messy middle. Sometime during the second season, however, you could feel Glee keep pushing the songs more and more into the realm of fantasy, but even when they were completely dream-like, they still didn’t make sense, as the connection to the plot was strained.

“Asian F” then, marks the point at which the show finally figures out how to blend fantasy into the reality in a way that doesn’t feel strained or stupid. One of the powers of music is that is can enhance a mood, it can help people properly express themselves, and while the show has of course used songs to underline emotions that we already understand, never have the songs really brought a new layer to the proceedings.

That is, until tonight. About halfway through the episode, the show decided that it was going to go full tilt into a “dream sequence” (for lack of a better term) wherein Mercedes imagines her break with the glee club filtered through the lens of the Dreamgirls song “It’s all Over”, complete with rewritten lyrics to better fit the situation. It was a moment that was clearly not of the show’s reality – thanks in part to some awkward transitions – but it ended up being a very strong and strangely moving performance, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I actually cared about what the characters were up to.

What makes all this work is that Glee is finally dabbling in something that had seemed to scare it up until this point: emotional darkness. Now, I remember back in season one, when the show finally ended the fake pregnancy plotline, that that was a really dark moment in which Will confronted Teri, and I’m sure there are others that I just can’t remember at this point, but they were still all just moments. What I think I’m beginning to see here, what with Quinn playing a long con to get her baby back, and Mercedes being a (legitimate this time) drama queen, and Will being a dick in his quest to win at Nationals, it seems as if the show is forming a new sense of dramatic momentum. I’m sure that most people won’t be happy seeing the characters they love becoming well, mean, and I’m not even sure that this will end up being all that good, but it will at least be interesting. And seeing as how the show hasn’t really been engaging in a long time, I look forward to that.

But it’s not just the dark direction that’s making this work; the show suddenly seems to remember how to do basic things like plot. Tonight saw not only the continuation of two plots, the musical and Kurt’s run for student president (both of which were around last week), but it also seemed to do call backs to earlier in the show’s run, such as Finnegan’s weird belief that Tina is a vampire and …okay, I don’t remember that second thing, but there was one, and that’s what important, okay? For so long the show hasn’t really felt like a world, so much as random crossing of unrelated time streams, and it makes it harder to believe in the glee club as a singular unit, as much as the show may want us to.

But speaking of related, last week I praised the show for having Kurt in three separate plotlines that somehow felt liked they belonged together AND allowed the show to incorporate other characters fairly naturally. For most of last season, Glee would generally start episodes off with a dozen random bits of information, and it was anybody’s guess which ones would become that episode’s two or three main plots. The show still has a problem with overburdening its episodes, but at least it seems to know what to do with them to make it all more palatable. Tonight, for instance, you could link most of the action to either the musical tryouts or Kurt’s run for class president, and the show even managed to make these two dovetail at the end so that Rachel’s apparent loss in the diva-off led to her decision to also run for class president and Mercedes’ refusal to share the role of Maria led her to defect to Shelby’s new glee club. Again, I’m not saying that all of this was good – and in the case of Mercedes’ defection, it was both predictable and it felt artificial - but it followed a basic narrative structure, and if Glee needs to take baby steps to achieve a more consistent level of quality, I’m willing to ride it out for a while.  

But perhaps what makes this episode feels so fresh isn’t that the show is using basic narrative techniques that it heretofore seemed incapable of understanding, but that it’s finally begun to rotate its cast, and use it like the ensemble that it supposedly is. Now, we obviously already seen Quinn return to the spotlight and Mercedes finally get a legitimate storyline (perhaps to match her legitimate boyfriend) but what most people are excited about, at least according to my Twitter feed, is the emergence of Mike Chang from the background. Now, much like Quinn and Mercedes’ stories before it, Mike’s suffers from the fact that because of the show’s formerly schizophrenic storytelling, it’s hard to feel like there’s any background or motivation to his actions. (That, and the fact that this is just another “everyone hates the arts” story, but that’s a rant for another day.) But despite some of the cheese, it was exciting to watch a character that we’ve seen grow (at least in the size of his role) finally burst out into the spotlight; even though it’s meta-textual in many ways, this moment felt earned. And if the show can gives us “new” character with storylines, then maybe we can escape having to go through another round of rehashed love triangles, and that’s certainly an improvement.

But this doesn’t mean that everything in “Asian F” works, and in fact, the show was somewhat of a mixed bag much like the premiere was. But it was a stronger mixed bag, mostly because the mixing here involved good storylines mixed with bad ones. And as soon as I mentioned “bad ones”, you know that I’m referring to the “Racist Gingers and the Pushily Helpful Will” plotline, which goes in about eight different directions, and it overly broad and….you know what? It’s making me angry all over again just thinking about it, and I don’t want to ruin this good review, so let’s move on, shall we?

The other problems tonight were fairly minimal, but I think they are worth a mention. First, Santana came back to the glee club way too easily, especially considering how Will had a legitimate reason to be angry and throw her out. And the fact that the preview makes it appear as if she’s just going to defect to Shelby’s glee club makes it even more non-sensical. Secondly, Brittany’s run for class president, no matter how good I think it could be for the character, got off to a sour start as we are supposed to believe that musical number somehow rallied up enough girl power pride to give her a good boost. Not only is it overly-simplistic and a bit of logical leap, but it makes me fear that we will have to sit through some uncomfortable weeks as the show confuses “girl power” with “feminism”.

I bring these up not to be a downer, but to remind us and the show (right, like the producers read this blog) that though the show made several positive strives forward, it still is in danger of sliding back to season two lows. This episode may have not been as good as “I am Unicorn”, but it certainly makes me feel better about the show going forward. Let’s just remember we’re not out of the woods yet.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:  

Tonight’s episode was written by Brennan, which means the three creators have now each gotten in a new episode for the new season. I suspect when the show returns in November, we’ll begin to see what the new writers have to contribute. Though I like the direction the season seems to be headed in – heck, I like the fact that the season actually has some sort of direction – and that can probably be attributed in part to the new writers, I’m still skeptical. You can’t hand a sinking ship over to a new captain and suddenly expect the leaks to go away; just look at how Dexter has fared over the many show runner changes.

So I know that I normally don’t comment on songs, but I rather like the jazzy cover of “Cool”, which is perhaps my favorite song from West Side Story. (Yeah, I’ve seen a few musicals.) But I must note the irony of the fact that (SPOILERS FOR A 50-YEAR OLD FILM) Mike would sing the song that played after the death of the character that he was trying out for.

Another cool thing from Mike’s storyline: I actually liked the fact that Mike used the people in his life as representations of his doubts and dream. Sure, it was a bit corny, but much like the Dreamgirls number, it shows that the show has a better grasp on the line between reality and fantasy.

So Kurt managed to move past the fact that Blaine tried out for the role of Tony. YAY! Then at the end it seemed like he was jealous about it all over again. NAY!

So this was a pretty good episode AND Sue wasn’t around. Just sayin’.

At one point I thought about starting this review with a screed about how offensive I found the idea of an “Asian F”, but really, what’s the point?

“First, I kicked a fire hydrant when I found out Ace of Cakes was cancelled.”

“Oh, so you’re okay with flushing McKinley High’s future down the magical poop-stealing chair?”

“The kid’s never late. He runs like an expensive Swiss watch manufactured cheaply in China.”

“Singing is just musical talking.”