Glee (12): Rocking a Hitler moustache

At long last, several weeks after the expiry of its ‘best before’ date, the fake pregnancy storyline thudded to a close. Considering how awful it had been till now, it was surprisingly engaging. Will was on fine, believable form as the betrayed husband, though a bit scary when ordering Terri to lift up her shirt. It says something for how unsympathetic Terri is that I was still on his rapist-acting side. Even her cry of despair was evil: ‘This marriage works because you don’t feel good about yourself!’

Discovering a handy pile of mattresses in the school gym, Will ripped the cellophane off one, in a poignant and wordless scene, and thus exposed Glee Club to charges of commercialism. The Gleeks had been paid in cheap mattresses for their cheap advert, in which they performed Jump while, uh, jumping. I said it was cheap.

In addition to Will’s worm turning, there were some other personality changes. Emma stopped flirting and stood up for Ken in her own crazy fashion (‘Ken has 74 flaws, as of yesterday’); Quinn grew a pair and blackmailed Sue; and Terri became vaguely human.

In other news, Rachel extracted all the fun out of a Lily Allen song; Kurt had an absurdly long speech right at the start, then was given nothing else to do; and, wonderfully, Sue returned to baiting Will about his crowning glory: ‘You’re too busy loading your hair with enormous amounts of product. Today, it just looks like you put lard in it.’

Running through the episode was the bizarre American tradition of yearbook photos, and their potential for humiliation. I did enjoy the montage of Rachel popping up in every club’s photo, Muslim Club being my favourite. While this episode delivered too many sappy messages about being true to yourself, being proud of who you are, yadda yadda yadda, Glee remembered its heart of darkness at the final minute. I’d been anxious lest the jocks backed off from defacing the Glee Club photo for spurious and sickly reasons – ‘that girl’s too hot to give a Hitler moustache’ or ‘I quite like Andrew Lloyd-Webber’, or even, ‘I’ve learned something about myself today.’ But thank the black lord they didn’t. The football players were allowed to run gleefully amok with a marker pen, in one of the most honest scenes of the entire series.

Posted by Qwerty                    (See all Glee posts here)

Pineapple Dance Studios: Electro-pop royalty. And Andrew Stone

What did we learn in this week’s Lycra-clad episode of Pineapple Dance Studios?

For one thing, we discovered that, when Louie Spence was 20, he was bloody gorgeous. What a face! Louie came face-to-face with his former face when he visited his old dance school to give the students a bit of a masterclass. As well as confronting the fact that, in your 40s, Mother Nature needs the help of Father Science (in the form of Brother Botox), Louie also found he wasn’t quite as fit as he used to be. Participating in a warm-up routine with the students, he found himself slumped in a sweaty heap while the perky teenagers were still bending themselves into inhuman postures. But, whatever Louie had lost in bendability and stamina, he’d gained in life experience and sheer pizzazz, and he still had plenty of breath left to impart this to the students.

Louie of course has an opinion on everything, including Starman. Andrew Stone’s band were doing a showcase show to try and impress industry bigwigs. One of them was Martyn Ware. Martyn Ware, from The Human League/Heaven 17! Electro pop royalty! Well, I was impressed. And he was a bit impressed by Starman, too, so maybe things are looking up for Andrew.

Louie took Andrew aside after the gig to have a word about backing singer Rosalee. Andrew’s been worried that she hogs too much of the limelight, and Louie confirmed this. Make her stand a bit further back, was his advice.

Elsewhere the Pineapple Dance Group were shooting a promotional video, which at one point involved them stripping down to almost naked, oiling up and writhing together in a very small trench. I wasn’t quite sure where the “dancing” element came into this, but it certainly looked like fun.

Posted by PLA          (more Pineapple postings here)