Glee Misses Mark With Britney Episode

by Cristen Kleindienst


The best part about last night’s episode of Glee was the focus on Heather Morris’s character, Brittany. The most disappointing part about last night’s episode of Glee was everything else.

I’m a big fan of Glee, and also grew up listening to Britney Spears, so when I heard that Glee would be doing a Britney-themed episode, I was pretty stoked. I was also stoked when I heard that Heather Morris, who plays the hilarious Brittany on the show, would be the focus; eventually, hearing every song sung by Lea Michele’s character, Rachel, just gets boring.

The episode has Will Schuster, the teacher in charge of the glee club, wanting to present an adult-contemporary song at this year’s homecoming pep rally. Do high schools really do pep rallies? In all my years, I have never attended, nor heard of, an actual pep rally. Anyways, all the kids want to sing a Britney Spears song; especially Kurt, who has such passion and conviction for the cause that he yells at Mr. Schuster. However, Brittany doesn’t want to sing Britney, because her name is Brittney S. Piers has forever lived in Britney Spears’s shadow, knowing that she will never be as famous nor will she ever be as good of a performer as Ms. Spears.

Enter: a dentist played by John Stamos. There’s a secondary plot line going on about how everyone thinks that Mr. Schuster should stop being so uptight, and how Emma Pillsbury is dating this dentist, despite the fact that Will still has feelings for her, but it all feels so forced that it doesn’t really belong. A few of the kids go to see this dentist, and while under anaesthesia have Britney Spears fantasies. First, Brittany dreams about singing “I’m a Slave 4U.” Heather Morris shows off her dance skills in this musical number, and damn is she a good dancer. The former back-up dancer for Beyonce knows how to move and even proved that she can dance while holding a python.

Next, Brittany goes to the dentist a second time (because she never brushes her teeth; she just gargles with soda after every meal because she thought Dr. Pepper was a real doctor). This time she goes with Santana, who just wants to get high off of the anaesthetic. The two have a fantasy about singing “Me Against the Music,” with Santana as Madonna. At the end of the dream, Britney Spears herself shows up and Brittany tells her how pretty she is.

The next person to go under the gas is Rachel, who signs “Hit Me Baby One More Time...” which didn’t sound very good at all. Lea Michele has a beautiful voice that was built for Broadway, not Britney Spears.

Artie, who wants to join the football team, fantasizes about singing “Stronger,” while being pushed in his wheelchair like a battering ram though the football field. He mostly wants to join the team because he wants to win back Tina, his former girlfriend who left him for the Other Asian.

In the end, Mr. Schuster lets the glee club perform “Toxic” at the pep rally, on the condition that he performs with them. The result is highly inappropriate. Sue Sylvester ends up pulling the fire alarm because she believes that the performance is turning the crowd into sex-crazed group of teenagers (which they are, considering they’re teenagers).

The fact that all of the musical numbers were fantasy sequences (save for “Toxic,” and Rachel’s rendition of Paramore’s “The Only Exception”) made the episode seem like it tried really, really hard to force Britney Spears songs into it. It also felt like there really was no plot, and I’m kind of sad that they didn’t continue the search that had them looking for a twelfth member of the glee club so that they qualify for competition. My friends and I all agreed: this week’s episode of Glee lacked something that all the other episodes had, and was a definite disappointment.


Glee Misses Mark With Britney Episode
--

Was the Glee Spears-tacular episode a disappointment? Share with other co-Gleeks your comments.