OMGLEE IT’S BRITNEY DAY. I was so excited earlier that I felt like I had to pee a little. But it wasn’t pee. It was GLEE. For weeks now I’ve been so excited for the Glee Britney episode (because I have no life like it’s my job and Britney nostalgia like it’s a chronic bone disease) that I actually got worried earlier that my brain would explode from happiness poisoning and all I would be able to write is “Durrrrrrrr” all the way down the page.
Even if this recap can’t fully capture the Spears-tacular Brit-nanza we just saw (SPOILER ALERT: it can’t), look on the bright side: At least these are real words. And, like Dr. Carl says, we should always be doing things that feel good for no reason, like making jokes about a show that has lots of the best jokes around already included. Now let’s get our anesthesia on and discuss that Britney Spears sex riot, my little butt sweat stains:
So tonight’s Glee plot was basically Glee plus Inception plus The Wizard of Oz plus Footloose plus She’s All That. Times drugs. Divided by commercials.
Listen to all of tonight’s Glee Britney Spears Covers
The Homecoming assembly is coming up, and Will wants the Glee club to perform some “restrained easy listening” (his words, barf words) like Christopher Cross, who in 1492 sailed across the ocean SUCK to torture the Native Americans with adult contemporary. Instead, brilliant Kurt wants the club to take heed of his 5-member Facebook campaign and perform a Britney Spears routine.
But Brittany the Perfect reveals that her name is actually Brittany S. Pearce (AKA when slurred: “Brittanyspearse”) and all her life she has been tormented by her singing and dancing inferiority to the real Britney Spears, so she refuses to perform a Britney number. Meanwhile, Will (who, let’s not forget, once tried to seduce Sue with his funky pelvic thrusts and raps about girls’ butts 24/7) suddenly becomes a fancy Victorian lady and, in between tightening his corset strings and drawing fake moles on his powdered face, says that Britney Spears is a bad influence on the Gleeks, and flat-out refuses to let them sing her music. CENSORSHIP!
Will’s outlook quasi-changes after he goes to see Emma and meets her new hot boyfriend, Uncle Jesse/John Stamos/Hot Dr. Carl (NEVER take out the “Dr.”), who wants to start a dental hygiene campaign at the high school. Emma calls Will uptight for being so anti-Spears, and since getting called uptight by Emma is like getting called crazy-racist by a two-headed Mel Gibson/Michael Richards monster, Will invites Hot Dr. Carl to talk to the Glee club about them teeths. Because of just how “down” and “chill” he is. SEE?
SO CHILL!
Through the power of blue plaque pills (“I just blue myself!” – Dr. Tobias Funke) Dr. Carl discovers that Rachel, Brittany and Artie have terrible teeth and need to come to his dentist’s office to get their grills drilled ASAP. (Oh, THERE’S MY DRUG-INDUCED DREAMSCAPE SET-UP.)
Kurt judges you for your lackadaisical dental hygiene regimen.
So instead of contacting their legal guardians or scheduling an appointment or consulting their ACTUAL dentists, they all file in to Dr. Carl’s because that is what needs to happen for us to get some Brit hits up in here, so we should all just lay back and listen to the Britney Pandora station and accept it.
Brittany the Perfect comes in first and, after noticing that Dr. Carl’s office looks like “the one on that spaceship where [she] got probed,” he puts her under the gas while “I’m A Slave 4 U” plays, and she confronts her Spears fears by singing like a BOSS and petting a snake and ordering around some little gangster kids and being the best dancer in the whole, wide world.
I love Brittany. BE MY WIFE!
Meanwhile, Finn and Rachel are fighting because everyone thinks Finn is ugly and gay now that he got kicked off the football team, and Rachel wants him to stay off the team so they can be two losers in love. Then Santana delivers the world’s most perfect insult for Rachel, whom I am still mad at for being so despicable last week: “Did anyone ever tell you that you dress like one of the bait-girls on To Catch a Predator?” Brittany punches in: “Also I’m more talented than you.”
Turns out Santana and Brittany only took a pit stop to insult Rachel on their way to Dr. Carl’s, where they demand to “get their anesthesia on” at the same time, while both listening to “Me Against the Music” on their headphones. They travel down and down through the layers of their unconscious until their dreams merge into a super sexy tandem Britney-Madonna tribute video that celebrates their love as a lesbian power couple.
“Good teamwork, ladies!”
And then the real Britney Spears shows up and tells Brittany that she’s sweet and her breath smells good and also, P.S., this is a fantasy:
But Brittany ain’t care none, because thanks to her nitrous-induced vision quests she is now CONFIDENT. She goes back to the Glee club and demands to get all the solos from now on. She’s empowered: “It’s Brittany … bitch.”
Kurt tells Will to stop being so uptight about Britney Spears and gets sent to the principal’s office. (HATE CRIME.) Dr. Carl tells Will to stop jamming on his lady and also to stop being so grindy on his teeth and have some fun. Dr. Carl gives the example that he once impulsively bought a convertible. So Will takes Dr. Carl’s directions specifically and literally (AKA super uptightly) and buys the exact same car. OH, WILL. Who decided to put you in charge of children? You are so dumb. You really are so dumb. For real.
When it’s Rachel’s turn to go to the dentist, she holds a contest with herself called “What’s More Played Out?” in which she performs”… Baby One More Time” note for uncomfortable note and frame for uncomfortable frame like the original, and then makes a “David After Dentist” reference. (Not unlike the time up in the last paragraph when I made a “Bed Intruder” reference.) It’s a tie! She wins the contest. And looks more To Catch a Predator than ever while gyrating in a sports bra.
The dream/vision/hallucination convinces Rachel that she should change her look and dress more provocatively, and she starts to get all the attention from all the boys in the hall thanks to her new “Catholic schoolgirl jailbait” look. No boy is more BOING!-ed about her transformation than blogger-Jew Jacob, who offers to murder his parents (?) if Finn will give him Rachel, and then Sue catches him nakeying down in the library while self-actualizing his lust for the object of his Jewfections.
Look! Down there!
YUCK.
Sue connects the dots from Jacob’s butt stain to Will’s butt brain, and warns Will that the Glee club better not be preparing a Britney Spears number, as it will set off the “powder keg of sexual deviance” that is McKinley High School. Will is still testing out what it’s like to be an impulsive, creepy hedonist instead of an uptight, guarded lady-in-waiting, so he decides to take Sue’s opposite-advice (and tapdance around so many state and federal statutes about what is appropriate for a grown man-teacher to do in public with a group of minors) and perform “Toxic” (probably the best Britney song for a teacher to choose!) WITH the Glee club at the Homecoming assembly.
But first, Artie has his vision in which cheerleader Britney Spears gives pizza advice and tells Tina she was dumb to dump him, and he sings “Stronger” while torso-dancing and one-arm bench-pressing.
Who needs legs when you’re got one SUPER ARM?
The vision reinvigorates his resolve to join the football team. Finn also wants to get back on the team, and for some reason (that we literally don’t hear or see, so don’t ask me) the Beiste allows them both to play this time. Maybe because she is a Beiste with a heart of gold?
Rachel goes back to her non-slutty ways to make Finn feel less insecure, and tries to make him give up football in exchange, which is too unrealistic even for this show. But then Rachel asks Quinn to proposition Finn now that he’s back on the team and she’s head cheerleader (social symmetry), but he turns her down, proving that he can still be cool and also want to be with his manipulative, controlling diva girlfriend. Yay?
Will and the kids perform “Toxic” at the assembly, and Will is really, REALLY, serial-killer-laughter excited about it.
“I AM THE CHILLEST!”
“YIKES!”
Even with Will’s embarrassing manhood insecurities and probable midlife crisis flailing all over the stage, the “Toxic” performance is still EPIC. Jacob and that one sad, big girl get so jacked up (and jacked something-else, clearly) about Schue’s sex-vest and all the bowler hats in front of boobs that angry Sue thinks they’ve caused a “Britney Spears sex riot” and pulls the fire alarm.
CAUSE …
… EFFECT.
The stampede of sex-rattled teens leaves Sue with a ruptured spinal column (sure), so now Sue plans to sue Schue’s pants off. That’s fun to say. Not so fun for Will, who finally learns that to relax does not mean to buy stupid yellow convertibles and thrust his man parts at impressionable teens.
Rachel apologizes to Finn for being such a slutty puppeteer by singing Paramore’s “Only Exception,” which reminds us all why we love Rachel even when she is just so, so terrible: That voice. You can’t say no to it! She’s like the sea witch in The Little Mermaid, always drawing us back in even when we know she will just steal our souls again and stick them to her sea cavern wall.
POOR, UNFORTUNATE SOOOOULS
It also reminds Will why he started acting like such a lunatic in the first place: Because he’s still in love with Emma. Too bad he just got STAMOS’ed.
And we all just got Heather MORRIS’ed. Thank God for Britney Spears, and long live Brittany the Perfect. Amen. Speaking of which: Next week is Glee‘s religious episode, “Grilled Cheesus,” in which Finn sees Jesus in his grilled cheese sandwich and Burt Hummel gets sick. (Oh no!)
What did you think of tonight’s Glee Britney episode? Did it live up to your expectations? Favorite songs, moments and quotes?
(Images courtesy of Fox)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
Meghan hails from Walla Walla, WA, the proud home of the world’s best sweet onions and Adam West, the original Batman. An avid grammarian and over-analyzer, you can usually find her thinking too hard about plot devices in favorites like The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and How I Met Your Mother. In her spare time, Meghan enjoys drawing, shopping, trying to be funny (and often failing), and not understanding the whole Twilight thing. She’s got a BA in English and Studio Art from Whitman College, which makes her a professional arguer, daydreamer, and doodler.
