Glee Review: Gleeks Gone Bad

In a high school setting where reputation is everything, the Glee kids are upset that their win at sectionals has done nothing for their social standing at the school.  Those slushies are still coming down like rain over their heads!

Desperate to revamp their image, the kids publish a hilarious video of Sue Sylvester dancing to Olivia Newton-John’s Let’s Get Physical on YouTube. It just so happens that Kurt found it in her office, and now he wants to give her a taste of her own medicine – some humility is just what the doctor ordered!

The plans works because Sue is traumatized by the lack of fear people are now displaying around her. Instead, all she’s seeing is slow motion laughter. In order to get some guidance, Sue goes to visit her sister, Jean, who has Down syndrome.  It’s about time we saw her again! The scenes between Sue and Jean are some of my favorites because it’s a complete 180 to the persona Sue puts on in public.

But humiliating Sue isn’t the only bad thing the Gleeks are up to. Someone in the club has put up a “glist” – a list that ranks the club’s members on a scale of how hot they are. Quinn is naturally number one, and Rachel is all the way at the bottom. This gives Mr. Schuester inspiration for his next assignment for the Glee club. He tells the kids they must take some old “bad” songs and make them good again – rehabilitate the song’s bad reputation just like they need to revamp Glee’s bad rep. Schue uses Ice Ice Baby as an example.  Errrr….okay.

Rachel decides to go the way of “musically promiscuous” for her project. She picks the song Run Joey Run, a 1970s top 10 hit, and makes a video enlisting the help of boyfriend Jesse St. James, Finn, and Puck. The guys think they’re the only ones helping Rachel with the video, so it’s a nasty shock when they see they all show up in the video.

Another great performance this week (nonmusically, that is) came from Emma when she (finally!) confronts Will in the teachers’ lounge about his womanizing ways. I mean really confronts him and lays it all out in the open. GO EMMA!

Kurt, Artie, Tina, Brittany and Mercedes also invade the McKinley High library with a performance of MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This. Hammer pants and all! They’re hoping it will put them higher on the glist, but instead the librarian thinks it’s “cute” and books them for her Sunday service. Poor kids just can’t get bad!

Glee has been bringing in some major guest stars in this second-half of the season and the streak continues with this episode. Molly Shannon plays a minor role as a new teacher, Brenda Castle, who very clearly has a drug and booze problem and has no fear in bullying Sue. Olivia Newton-John also reaches out to Sue when she sees her video online and invites Sue to be in her updated video of Let’s Get Physical. It’s by no means on the same level as Vogue, but the new version is funny all the same.

I’m actually starting to become a bit disappointed with all these guest stars. Take last week’s episode with Kristin Chenoweth: her presence added nothing in terms of developing the plot. The same thing goes this week with Molly Shannon (apparently she’ll be back next week, though, so maybe I’m wrong). Yes, both these ladies are immensely talented and I love watching them, but not on Glee. I watch Glee for the fun performances, interesting and relevant storylines and the fantastic dialogue. This show doesn’t need guest stars to make it more popular.

Then when they do have guest stars that are relevant to the plot, they all but seem to disappear into the background. What has happened to Idina Menzel’s Shelby? And why has Jonathan Groff hardly had anything to do since transferring to McKinley High? Is he really spying for Shelby? Or is he genuinely devoted to Rachel (not likely)? I’m sure these questions will be answered soon enough, but I wish they would use Groff to his full potential.

For another take on this week’s episode, check out A Walk on the Wild Side by Allison Toner.

Season 1, Episode 17: Bad Reputation (originally aired May 4, 2010)

For more on Glee, click here.

Tuesdays at 9pm on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro