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got a whole lot of rhythm going down
I am certainly getting my wish this year, when it comes to all the time I've spent bemoaning the loss of the winters from my childhood. It is snowing again today. Again! I'm not sick of it yet, either. I probably will be once we get a for-serious storm, with a foot-plus of snow, which is really what I remember from when I was young, but for now, it's so pretty! (You would think this would be old, after living in New England for 23 winters. NOPE.)
Day 01 - Your favorite male character
Day 02 - Your favorite female character
Day 03 - Your favorite group performance
Day 04 - Your favorite solo
Day 05 - Your favorite duet
Day 06 - Your favorite Rachel/Finn moment
Day 07 - Your favorite Finn-Kurt moment
Day 08 - Your favorite Quinn/Puck moment
Day 09 - Your favorite Kurt-Mercedes moment
Day 10 - Your favorite Santana/Brittany moment
Day 11 - Your favorite Sue Sylvester moment
Day 12 - The couple you ship the MOST
Day 13 - A scene/moment that pissed you off
Day 14 - A scene/moment that made you cry
Day 15 - A scene/moment that made you happy
Day 16 - Your favorite episode
Day 17 - Your least favorite episode
Day 18 - Your least favorite character
Day 19 - Your least favorite performance
Day 20 - Your favorite quote
Day 21 - Your favorite guest-star
Day 22 - Your least favorite guest-star
Day 23 - The character you most relate to
Day 24 - The character you would like to hear/see more of
Day 25 - Something that happened you wish hadn’t
Day 26 - Something that hadn’t happened but you wish had
Day 27 - Your idea for a future Glee episode
Day 28 - Your idea for a future Glee character
Day 29 - Your idea for a future Glee performance
Day 30 - Whatever tickles your fancy
While I have a number of episodes that I want to kill in the face (parts of "Never Been Kissed," most of "Britney/Brittany," almost the entirety of "Rocky Horror Glee Show" -- possibly my feelings on season 2 are becoming clear now -- as well as big chunks of "Home" and "Bad Reputation"), there is one that is my far and away winner for this question.
Least favorite episode: "Funk"
With all of the other options, there was some kind of redeeming value. As shot-for-shot uncreative and nonsensical as they were, I loved Brittany's dance numbers in "Brittany/Britney"; as offensive as I found "Rocky Horror Glee Show," I loved "Dammit, Janet" and I actually liked Rachel and Finn's relationship, I thought it was sweet; I liked April and loved Finn singing to a jar of ashes (SING TO MORE INANIMATE OBJECTS, FINN HUDSON) in "Home," and the kids' attempts to be bad-ass (and Sue psyching Emma up to realize that Will is kind of a douchebag) in "Bad Reputation."
With "Funk," there is no silver lining. None. It is an hour of horrors. I'm still slowly working my way through a rewatch of season 1, and it is the one episode that I will flat out not watch again. There was no redeeming value. First of all, I found Will's seduction of Sue to be a tremendously tasteless, horrible writing decision. It's gross in and of itself; what was grosser was the fact that Sue was written as falling for it, as if this proud, strong female character we've watched at the top of the heap all along -- all she wanted/needed was a man; a little bit of attention from a dude. And the second it got pulled away from her, she took to her bed until the same man came along and condescended her out of it again? Fucking excuse me?
Terri -- who I can't stand and whose plot-line was, I think, one of the worst of the season; there will be more on this in a later meme response -- returns, which is always enough to make me want to crawl under the couch cushions, and there are weird undertones in her interactions with Finn, which made it even worse. Quinn does the bizarre and extremely underwhelming “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” with a bunch of pregnant Lamaze dancing teenage girls (seriously, seriously, seriously, that is a song that should never have been pushed on Dianna Agron; she has an absolutely lovely sweet voice, but that song was so wrong for her voice, and watching the song get appropriated and turned into an anthem for blonde pregnant white girls just continued my awkward feelings about why the show felt like it had to compare the prejudices that Mercedes and Quinn face), and Vocal Adrenaline shows up with another over-the-top performance that I find completely boring. The Rachel/Jesse continuity made zero sense, thanks to the decision to air episodes out of order, and the egging was completely ridiculous.
There were a couple aspects of the episode that entertained me (most notably the quick clip from the Cheerios winning Nationals, the skin-crawling embarrassment of watching Puck and Finn go at Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and also my genuine enjoyment of both "Loser" and the clever way that it was shot, and the dance moves/costumes in "Give Up The Funk [Tear The Roof Off The Sucker]").
But an episode where Will seduces Sue Sylvester by waggling his ass and singing "Tell Me Something Good" cannot be redeemed. I would just like to make it clear, also, that if any other episode ever contains the dialogue: "You know what day it is, right? ..... Hump day" I AM GOING TO LIGHT HOLLYWOOD ON FIRE. Ficlet to follow.
Okay, no ficlet to follow.
NO.
I am not writing anything to do with my actual meme response today; I CAN'T, TOO ANGRY. There is seriously nothing I would want to write about, except maybe the Cheerios winning Nationals, and I feel like that kind of defeats the purpose of writing something that relates to the meme response.
I will write something for every remaining day of this meme, I swear; my fiery hatred for "Funk" is my get-out-of-jail-free card.
I am going to do two days today! Mostly because then that puts me on track to finish this meme on Super Bowl day, which seems appropriate.
I'm assuming that this means "least favorite regular character," since there is a separate category for least favorite guest. That makes this question very easy, then, and highly predictable.
Least favorite character: Will Schuester
I think Will is gross.
That's, like, the least scientific analysis ever, but seriously.
It's just frustrating because my rewatch has been proving to me that there was a point where I genuinely liked Will Schuester, you know? In early season 1, I was totally on the Will train. Sure, he was wishy-washy, full of platitudes, all too trusting, and showed blatant favoritism among his students, but he hadn't quite veered from nice guy to Nice GuyTM yet. He was likeable. I rooted for him to ditch his wife (poor Jessalyn Gilsig has the most thankless gig on television right now) and get together with Emma, because they were sweet together; Schuester seemed to genuinely care about his students back then. I am thinking in particular of him taking Finn and Quinn to the doctor; of that hug when Finn came at him sobbing about finding out that Quinn was pregnant, and the way that Will took Finn aside and talked to him afterward. Most of Will's stand-out moments involve only a small handful of his students, it's true, but I thought they were stand out moments.
He began to irritate me more and more with his sanctimoniousness as season 1 wore on, but where I think the character really jumped the rails and went batshit was after the Terri confrontation and break-up. Suddenly, viewers were no longer comparing Will's behavior to Terri's every week. It was very easy to look like the kind, stand-up character when he was put up against Terri; not so much, after she left. He's ineffectual as a teacher, he ignores most of his students, he's selfish and self-centered, he's wildly inappropriate ("Toxic" with his students? being Rocky Horror against a teenage Janet?), he's inflexible, he's oblivious, and he is a douchebag. He is repeatedly awkwardly misogynistic (oh my God, all the episodes where he grabs Emma to kiss her, or he tries to fight with another man over her [like she is an armchair to claim ownership of], or he tells her to see a therapist to fix her issues; the one where he tells Quinn that he knows what she's going through because he spent one day of his life having a woman call him a slut, which does not mean the same thing when it's applied to a fully-grown man as it does when it's applied to a pregnant teenage girl) and the thing that drives me the most crazy about all of this is that he still thinks he's the good guy, and the show still tries to treat him like he's the good guy.
And for the love of God: no more rapping.
I've actually enjoyed Schuester more in the last few episodes than I have in a long time. Probably because he had relatively low-profile storylines and in several of them, he at least tried to stand up for his students and lead them, even if he sucked at it. I'm okay with him fucking up sometimes; I'm okay with him being ineffectual and occasionally a devious a-hole. I mean, I kind of loved that he planted pot in Finn's locker in the pilot and used that to blackmail him into joining glee. But please don't treat him as a saintly saint of sainthood after he does despicable things; that is what I can't handle.
There is silence.
"Are we in trouble?" Tina finally bursts out, sitting in front of Will's desk with her hands fisted in her skirts. She's dressed like something out of a Victorian novel today, if Victorian novel characters were Asian teenagers with blue-streaked hair, blue eyeliner, and blue fingernails.
"What?" Will laughs, startled, and then he smiles and hastily assures her: "No, no, not at all!"
The set of Tina's shoulders relaxes; Mike's worried frown eases into a quick, confused smile, and the two of them share a glance.
"I just wanted to talk to everybody; make sure you're all doing okay, you know? I clearly haven't been checking in enough to see what's going on with you and what I can do to help." Will doesn't actually say the name 'Kurt,' but he can see that they get it when Tina's face falls and Mike glances at his knees, expression downcast.
"I'm good, Mr. Schue," Mike volunteers quietly, and Tina nods in agreement -- then her eyebrows furrow.
"Wait ... why did you bring us in together?" Tina asks, and Will looks from one quizzical face to the other.
He has no good answer for that.
* * *
"As I'm sure you're well aware, Finn and I are no longer an item," Rachel says, "and I just want you to know, Mr. Schuester, that this is not going to interfere with my professionalism or the display of my prodigious talent. I will still be performing to the peak of my abilities every day, despite Finn's utter disregard for my feelings when he stares at Santana Lopez's artificial assets for an entire rehearsal."
"Rachel," Will says wearily.
"--Thank you for asking," says Rachel primly. "Everything is going well at home; Daddy was so proud of my A+ on the midterm in honors chemistry that he took me and Dad to a traveling production of Hello, Dolly! that was being performed in Columbus, and I am happy to report that I have come out of the experience with a number of inspirational choices for potential Regionals numbers." She unzips her pink bag and starts producing ream after ream of sheet music.
Will rests his head in his hands.
* * *
"Everything is actually pretty awesome, Mr. Schue," says Artie. "I'm on the football team, Puck's my boy so he's got my back in the halls, and I hooked the hottest girl in the school." He makes a hand gesture that Will is completely unfamiliar with, then: "What uuup!"
* * *
"Awesome," Santana sneers, sitting low in the chair. "Everything is just peachy," and then she glares daggers at him like she's daring him to suggest otherwise.
* * *
Puck stares at him stonily, arms folded over his chest.
* * *
Quinn sighs after a long period of uncomfortable silence. "I guess things with my mom could be less awkward."
"You're living with her again, right?" Will asks, leaning forward in his chair and trying not to look too eager at the fact that one of his kids is actually talking to him.
"Right," says Quinn. "Just the two of us." She sounds bitter; she doesn't look up from her hands in her lap.
"Have you talked to your dad since...?" Will asks, gently, and Quinn shakes her head, ponytail bobbing.
"It's fine," Quinn says, her voice thick. "He's an asshole." The swear sounds strange and incongruous coming out of Quinn Fabray's mouth; Will pushes the box of tissues across the desk at her and she gives a watery half-smile and plucks one out of the box. She neatly dabs at her eyes.
* * *
"I don't do therapy," Lauren announces, and she takes a handful of peppermints out of the bowl on Will's desk and walks out.
* * *
"Well," Sam says slowly, and he seems to give the question a lot of thought. "I'm going out for basketball next week."
* * *
Finn squirms. "Can we talk about something else?"
* * *
"I like your hat," Brittany says, smiling vacantly.
Will isn't wearing a hat.
* * *
"What do you care?" asks Mercedes, staring at him, unimpressed. "You've never asked before."
* * *
"You're doing what?" Emma asks, her hands frozen over her desk and her eyes wide.
"I'm giving them an opportunity to talk," Will says, his smile game but drooping after that last conversation with Mercedes. "A space to vent, you know? They've all had such a rough year; it isn't fair."
"That's -- that's really admirable, Will, but you're not ... really trained for that kind of a thing, are you?"
He half-laughs; looks at her, friendly but incredulous. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asks.
"You're a wonderful teacher, Will," Emma says slowly, like she is being very careful in selecting her words. "You do incredible things for these kids, and they're very lucky to have you looking out for their emotional well-being."
His mouth purses. "But?"
Gently: "But ... this is more of my job." She smiles encouragingly at him, hands folded on top of her desk. She looks beautiful today, her hair in soft waves, and the light glints off the ring on her right hand.
A sudden burst of ugliness hits Will, stubborn and frustrated, and he says, "With all due respect, Emma," (he doesn't say it very respectfully, and even he recognizes that), "what do you know about my kids?"
Emma blinks several times, and then something in her expression sets. "Well," she says, "I know that Tina's parents are considering a divorce and Mercedes misses her best friend and thinks that she should have done more to help him; Santana is jealous that her best friend is dating a boy, but she won't admit it because that would be, and I quote, "totally gay"; Puck thinks that no one in this entire town cares about what happens to him or thinks he's any better than a Lima loser; Quinn hasn't fully recovered from the trauma of having a baby at sixteen years old, then giving it up for adoption and coming back to school and pretending that none of it ever happened." Will opens his mouth but Emma is on a roll now; her matter-of-fact quiet recitation goes on. "Sam lost 60 pounds before he transferred to McKinley and is very concerned that he's going to gain it back; Rachel thinks that she and Finn are soulmates and that they're going to get back together, get married after high school, and have 2.5 children that Finn is going to take care of while she lands starring role after starring role on Broadway; Finn is settling into a new home and is primarily worried about whether Santana Lopez's breasts have magical powers that mean he can't stop staring at them; and Lauren--" She stops. "Well, Lauren avoids my office like it's got cooties -- which, it doesn't -- so I don't know, but Mike got slushied for the first time just before break and somebody called him a gook at lunch today."
"--Seriously?" Will asks, his voice sounding as hollow as he feels on the inside, and Emma nods sharply, color high in her face.
"I did as much investigating as I could and I took it to Figgins, but it came out of a huge group of boys in the cafeteria, Will," she says; "there were no faculty witnesses and there's no way of telling who said it." Emma started talking because he was frustrating her (he thinks), but now she just looks angry and tired, and he's pretty sure that neither is directed at him. "Honestly, the more that I learn about what's going on in this school right under our noses, the more I think that we are completely useless."
Emma's words are still ringing in Will's ears after he leaves her office. He can't believe all of this stuff was going on with his kids and he didn't even know. Well, Rachel and Finn tend to wear their troubles pretty close to the surface, and Quinn was willing to open up about how tough it is at home when her mom was always a housewife and suddenly has to work to keep them in their apartment, but racial slurs? Tina's parents are getting divorced? Santana is closeted? Sam thinks he's fat? And Will had no clue. He didn't know about any of it.
Will thinks of all of the times that he has watched his students go at each other in the chorus room; split it up with a casual "Hey, come on, you guys; cool it" or a song. All of the times that he has thought "high school" with a fond, dismissive shake of the head.
The bell rings, signaling that anybody who's still out is about to be late for class; kids push past him, laughing and chattering. They all look normal, he thinks, not like there's all this stuff going on just under the surface. Then two big guys in letterman jackets come around the corner laughing and high-fiving, and Will sees the empty slushie cup dangling from one kid's hand.
"Hey," he says, and the two of them don't even glance at him; he hears the words, "Nice one."
"Hey!" Will shouts, and he points right at the football player who's holding the cup. The kid (kid; he looks more like a man than a kid) stares at him. "You stay right there," Will barks, and he turns the corner to find a tableau of his students. Puck is glaring down the hall, making like he wants to go forward; Lauren has a hand in the middle of his chest and seems to be shoving him back while Mercedes grabs his arm and talks him down. Tina drips purple from head to toe, Rachel (who also has some splashback on her white shirt) reaching out to help wipe her eyes.
"Guys," Will calls, and he catches Mercedes's eye and beckons; it's a gesture that will brook absolutely no argument. "Figgins's office; right now."
When Will goes back around the corner, he finds that the kid who was with him has scrammed, but the linebacker with the empty slushie cup is waiting as ordered, looking at Will with a mixture of irritation and amusement, like this is a waste of his time and he's wondering what Will thinks he can do to him. He's never seen so much hubris in a kid. Do they all look like this all the time? Will wonders. Is this what he's been dismissing as innocent high school pranks?
Will grabs the football player by the jacket lapel. "This," he says, "ends now," and he grimly marches him down the hallway.
He hears five sets of squeaky footsteps behind him.
Day 01 - Your favorite male character
Day 02 - Your favorite female character
Day 03 - Your favorite group performance
Day 04 - Your favorite solo
Day 05 - Your favorite duet
Day 06 - Your favorite Rachel/Finn moment
Day 07 - Your favorite Finn-Kurt moment
Day 08 - Your favorite Quinn/Puck moment
Day 09 - Your favorite Kurt-Mercedes moment
Day 10 - Your favorite Santana/Brittany moment
Day 11 - Your favorite Sue Sylvester moment
Day 12 - The couple you ship the MOST
Day 13 - A scene/moment that pissed you off
Day 14 - A scene/moment that made you cry
Day 15 - A scene/moment that made you happy
Day 16 - Your favorite episode
Day 17 - Your least favorite episode
Day 18 - Your least favorite character
Day 19 - Your least favorite performance
Day 20 - Your favorite quote
Day 21 - Your favorite guest-star
Day 22 - Your least favorite guest-star
Day 23 - The character you most relate to
Day 24 - The character you would like to hear/see more of
Day 25 - Something that happened you wish hadn’t
Day 26 - Something that hadn’t happened but you wish had
Day 27 - Your idea for a future Glee episode
Day 28 - Your idea for a future Glee character
Day 29 - Your idea for a future Glee performance
Day 30 - Whatever tickles your fancy
While I have a number of episodes that I want to kill in the face (parts of "Never Been Kissed," most of "Britney/Brittany," almost the entirety of "Rocky Horror Glee Show" -- possibly my feelings on season 2 are becoming clear now -- as well as big chunks of "Home" and "Bad Reputation"), there is one that is my far and away winner for this question.
Least favorite episode: "Funk"
With all of the other options, there was some kind of redeeming value. As shot-for-shot uncreative and nonsensical as they were, I loved Brittany's dance numbers in "Brittany/Britney"; as offensive as I found "Rocky Horror Glee Show," I loved "Dammit, Janet" and I actually liked Rachel and Finn's relationship, I thought it was sweet; I liked April and loved Finn singing to a jar of ashes (SING TO MORE INANIMATE OBJECTS, FINN HUDSON) in "Home," and the kids' attempts to be bad-ass (and Sue psyching Emma up to realize that Will is kind of a douchebag) in "Bad Reputation."
With "Funk," there is no silver lining. None. It is an hour of horrors. I'm still slowly working my way through a rewatch of season 1, and it is the one episode that I will flat out not watch again. There was no redeeming value. First of all, I found Will's seduction of Sue to be a tremendously tasteless, horrible writing decision. It's gross in and of itself; what was grosser was the fact that Sue was written as falling for it, as if this proud, strong female character we've watched at the top of the heap all along -- all she wanted/needed was a man; a little bit of attention from a dude. And the second it got pulled away from her, she took to her bed until the same man came along and condescended her out of it again? Fucking excuse me?
Terri -- who I can't stand and whose plot-line was, I think, one of the worst of the season; there will be more on this in a later meme response -- returns, which is always enough to make me want to crawl under the couch cushions, and there are weird undertones in her interactions with Finn, which made it even worse. Quinn does the bizarre and extremely underwhelming “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” with a bunch of pregnant Lamaze dancing teenage girls (seriously, seriously, seriously, that is a song that should never have been pushed on Dianna Agron; she has an absolutely lovely sweet voice, but that song was so wrong for her voice, and watching the song get appropriated and turned into an anthem for blonde pregnant white girls just continued my awkward feelings about why the show felt like it had to compare the prejudices that Mercedes and Quinn face), and Vocal Adrenaline shows up with another over-the-top performance that I find completely boring. The Rachel/Jesse continuity made zero sense, thanks to the decision to air episodes out of order, and the egging was completely ridiculous.
There were a couple aspects of the episode that entertained me (most notably the quick clip from the Cheerios winning Nationals, the skin-crawling embarrassment of watching Puck and Finn go at Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and also my genuine enjoyment of both "Loser" and the clever way that it was shot, and the dance moves/costumes in "Give Up The Funk [Tear The Roof Off The Sucker]").
But an episode where Will seduces Sue Sylvester by waggling his ass and singing "Tell Me Something Good" cannot be redeemed. I would just like to make it clear, also, that if any other episode ever contains the dialogue: "You know what day it is, right? ..... Hump day" I AM GOING TO LIGHT HOLLYWOOD ON FIRE. Ficlet to follow.
Okay, no ficlet to follow.
NO.
I am not writing anything to do with my actual meme response today; I CAN'T, TOO ANGRY. There is seriously nothing I would want to write about, except maybe the Cheerios winning Nationals, and I feel like that kind of defeats the purpose of writing something that relates to the meme response.
I will write something for every remaining day of this meme, I swear; my fiery hatred for "Funk" is my get-out-of-jail-free card.
I am going to do two days today! Mostly because then that puts me on track to finish this meme on Super Bowl day, which seems appropriate.
I'm assuming that this means "least favorite regular character," since there is a separate category for least favorite guest. That makes this question very easy, then, and highly predictable.
Least favorite character: Will Schuester
I think Will is gross.
That's, like, the least scientific analysis ever, but seriously.
It's just frustrating because my rewatch has been proving to me that there was a point where I genuinely liked Will Schuester, you know? In early season 1, I was totally on the Will train. Sure, he was wishy-washy, full of platitudes, all too trusting, and showed blatant favoritism among his students, but he hadn't quite veered from nice guy to Nice GuyTM yet. He was likeable. I rooted for him to ditch his wife (poor Jessalyn Gilsig has the most thankless gig on television right now) and get together with Emma, because they were sweet together; Schuester seemed to genuinely care about his students back then. I am thinking in particular of him taking Finn and Quinn to the doctor; of that hug when Finn came at him sobbing about finding out that Quinn was pregnant, and the way that Will took Finn aside and talked to him afterward. Most of Will's stand-out moments involve only a small handful of his students, it's true, but I thought they were stand out moments.
He began to irritate me more and more with his sanctimoniousness as season 1 wore on, but where I think the character really jumped the rails and went batshit was after the Terri confrontation and break-up. Suddenly, viewers were no longer comparing Will's behavior to Terri's every week. It was very easy to look like the kind, stand-up character when he was put up against Terri; not so much, after she left. He's ineffectual as a teacher, he ignores most of his students, he's selfish and self-centered, he's wildly inappropriate ("Toxic" with his students? being Rocky Horror against a teenage Janet?), he's inflexible, he's oblivious, and he is a douchebag. He is repeatedly awkwardly misogynistic (oh my God, all the episodes where he grabs Emma to kiss her, or he tries to fight with another man over her [like she is an armchair to claim ownership of], or he tells her to see a therapist to fix her issues; the one where he tells Quinn that he knows what she's going through because he spent one day of his life having a woman call him a slut, which does not mean the same thing when it's applied to a fully-grown man as it does when it's applied to a pregnant teenage girl) and the thing that drives me the most crazy about all of this is that he still thinks he's the good guy, and the show still tries to treat him like he's the good guy.
And for the love of God: no more rapping.
I've actually enjoyed Schuester more in the last few episodes than I have in a long time. Probably because he had relatively low-profile storylines and in several of them, he at least tried to stand up for his students and lead them, even if he sucked at it. I'm okay with him fucking up sometimes; I'm okay with him being ineffectual and occasionally a devious a-hole. I mean, I kind of loved that he planted pot in Finn's locker in the pilot and used that to blackmail him into joining glee. But please don't treat him as a saintly saint of sainthood after he does despicable things; that is what I can't handle.
There is silence.
"Are we in trouble?" Tina finally bursts out, sitting in front of Will's desk with her hands fisted in her skirts. She's dressed like something out of a Victorian novel today, if Victorian novel characters were Asian teenagers with blue-streaked hair, blue eyeliner, and blue fingernails.
"What?" Will laughs, startled, and then he smiles and hastily assures her: "No, no, not at all!"
The set of Tina's shoulders relaxes; Mike's worried frown eases into a quick, confused smile, and the two of them share a glance.
"I just wanted to talk to everybody; make sure you're all doing okay, you know? I clearly haven't been checking in enough to see what's going on with you and what I can do to help." Will doesn't actually say the name 'Kurt,' but he can see that they get it when Tina's face falls and Mike glances at his knees, expression downcast.
"I'm good, Mr. Schue," Mike volunteers quietly, and Tina nods in agreement -- then her eyebrows furrow.
"Wait ... why did you bring us in together?" Tina asks, and Will looks from one quizzical face to the other.
He has no good answer for that.
"As I'm sure you're well aware, Finn and I are no longer an item," Rachel says, "and I just want you to know, Mr. Schuester, that this is not going to interfere with my professionalism or the display of my prodigious talent. I will still be performing to the peak of my abilities every day, despite Finn's utter disregard for my feelings when he stares at Santana Lopez's artificial assets for an entire rehearsal."
"Rachel," Will says wearily.
"--Thank you for asking," says Rachel primly. "Everything is going well at home; Daddy was so proud of my A+ on the midterm in honors chemistry that he took me and Dad to a traveling production of Hello, Dolly! that was being performed in Columbus, and I am happy to report that I have come out of the experience with a number of inspirational choices for potential Regionals numbers." She unzips her pink bag and starts producing ream after ream of sheet music.
Will rests his head in his hands.
"Everything is actually pretty awesome, Mr. Schue," says Artie. "I'm on the football team, Puck's my boy so he's got my back in the halls, and I hooked the hottest girl in the school." He makes a hand gesture that Will is completely unfamiliar with, then: "What uuup!"
"Awesome," Santana sneers, sitting low in the chair. "Everything is just peachy," and then she glares daggers at him like she's daring him to suggest otherwise.
Puck stares at him stonily, arms folded over his chest.
Quinn sighs after a long period of uncomfortable silence. "I guess things with my mom could be less awkward."
"You're living with her again, right?" Will asks, leaning forward in his chair and trying not to look too eager at the fact that one of his kids is actually talking to him.
"Right," says Quinn. "Just the two of us." She sounds bitter; she doesn't look up from her hands in her lap.
"Have you talked to your dad since...?" Will asks, gently, and Quinn shakes her head, ponytail bobbing.
"It's fine," Quinn says, her voice thick. "He's an asshole." The swear sounds strange and incongruous coming out of Quinn Fabray's mouth; Will pushes the box of tissues across the desk at her and she gives a watery half-smile and plucks one out of the box. She neatly dabs at her eyes.
"I don't do therapy," Lauren announces, and she takes a handful of peppermints out of the bowl on Will's desk and walks out.
"Well," Sam says slowly, and he seems to give the question a lot of thought. "I'm going out for basketball next week."
Finn squirms. "Can we talk about something else?"
"I like your hat," Brittany says, smiling vacantly.
Will isn't wearing a hat.
"What do you care?" asks Mercedes, staring at him, unimpressed. "You've never asked before."
"You're doing what?" Emma asks, her hands frozen over her desk and her eyes wide.
"I'm giving them an opportunity to talk," Will says, his smile game but drooping after that last conversation with Mercedes. "A space to vent, you know? They've all had such a rough year; it isn't fair."
"That's -- that's really admirable, Will, but you're not ... really trained for that kind of a thing, are you?"
He half-laughs; looks at her, friendly but incredulous. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asks.
"You're a wonderful teacher, Will," Emma says slowly, like she is being very careful in selecting her words. "You do incredible things for these kids, and they're very lucky to have you looking out for their emotional well-being."
His mouth purses. "But?"
Gently: "But ... this is more of my job." She smiles encouragingly at him, hands folded on top of her desk. She looks beautiful today, her hair in soft waves, and the light glints off the ring on her right hand.
A sudden burst of ugliness hits Will, stubborn and frustrated, and he says, "With all due respect, Emma," (he doesn't say it very respectfully, and even he recognizes that), "what do you know about my kids?"
Emma blinks several times, and then something in her expression sets. "Well," she says, "I know that Tina's parents are considering a divorce and Mercedes misses her best friend and thinks that she should have done more to help him; Santana is jealous that her best friend is dating a boy, but she won't admit it because that would be, and I quote, "totally gay"; Puck thinks that no one in this entire town cares about what happens to him or thinks he's any better than a Lima loser; Quinn hasn't fully recovered from the trauma of having a baby at sixteen years old, then giving it up for adoption and coming back to school and pretending that none of it ever happened." Will opens his mouth but Emma is on a roll now; her matter-of-fact quiet recitation goes on. "Sam lost 60 pounds before he transferred to McKinley and is very concerned that he's going to gain it back; Rachel thinks that she and Finn are soulmates and that they're going to get back together, get married after high school, and have 2.5 children that Finn is going to take care of while she lands starring role after starring role on Broadway; Finn is settling into a new home and is primarily worried about whether Santana Lopez's breasts have magical powers that mean he can't stop staring at them; and Lauren--" She stops. "Well, Lauren avoids my office like it's got cooties -- which, it doesn't -- so I don't know, but Mike got slushied for the first time just before break and somebody called him a gook at lunch today."
"--Seriously?" Will asks, his voice sounding as hollow as he feels on the inside, and Emma nods sharply, color high in her face.
"I did as much investigating as I could and I took it to Figgins, but it came out of a huge group of boys in the cafeteria, Will," she says; "there were no faculty witnesses and there's no way of telling who said it." Emma started talking because he was frustrating her (he thinks), but now she just looks angry and tired, and he's pretty sure that neither is directed at him. "Honestly, the more that I learn about what's going on in this school right under our noses, the more I think that we are completely useless."
Emma's words are still ringing in Will's ears after he leaves her office. He can't believe all of this stuff was going on with his kids and he didn't even know. Well, Rachel and Finn tend to wear their troubles pretty close to the surface, and Quinn was willing to open up about how tough it is at home when her mom was always a housewife and suddenly has to work to keep them in their apartment, but racial slurs? Tina's parents are getting divorced? Santana is closeted? Sam thinks he's fat? And Will had no clue. He didn't know about any of it.
Will thinks of all of the times that he has watched his students go at each other in the chorus room; split it up with a casual "Hey, come on, you guys; cool it" or a song. All of the times that he has thought "high school" with a fond, dismissive shake of the head.
The bell rings, signaling that anybody who's still out is about to be late for class; kids push past him, laughing and chattering. They all look normal, he thinks, not like there's all this stuff going on just under the surface. Then two big guys in letterman jackets come around the corner laughing and high-fiving, and Will sees the empty slushie cup dangling from one kid's hand.
"Hey," he says, and the two of them don't even glance at him; he hears the words, "Nice one."
"Hey!" Will shouts, and he points right at the football player who's holding the cup. The kid (kid; he looks more like a man than a kid) stares at him. "You stay right there," Will barks, and he turns the corner to find a tableau of his students. Puck is glaring down the hall, making like he wants to go forward; Lauren has a hand in the middle of his chest and seems to be shoving him back while Mercedes grabs his arm and talks him down. Tina drips purple from head to toe, Rachel (who also has some splashback on her white shirt) reaching out to help wipe her eyes.
"Guys," Will calls, and he catches Mercedes's eye and beckons; it's a gesture that will brook absolutely no argument. "Figgins's office; right now."
When Will goes back around the corner, he finds that the kid who was with him has scrammed, but the linebacker with the empty slushie cup is waiting as ordered, looking at Will with a mixture of irritation and amusement, like this is a waste of his time and he's wondering what Will thinks he can do to him. He's never seen so much hubris in a kid. Do they all look like this all the time? Will wonders. Is this what he's been dismissing as innocent high school pranks?
Will grabs the football player by the jacket lapel. "This," he says, "ends now," and he grimly marches him down the hallway.
He hears five sets of squeaky footsteps behind him.
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(PS I LOVE EMMA)
Seriously, if you wrote this show I might do more than ff to the musical numbers and pause if I see Brittany or Santana speaking.
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I agree whole-heartedly with your other response, as well. "Funk" is one of the worst hours of television I think I've ever seen. And my family decided to start with THAT episode, out of all of them, when I told them they should watch Glee. ~headdesk~ (I ended up getting them the S1 DVD and they're addicted anyway, so at least there's that...)
I can't stop staring at the Christmas GIF; Will looks so creepy!
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"Funk" makes me so angry. It is amazing. I fear for my blood pressure if I try watching it again.
ISN'T IT AMAZING?? I love it. /am terrified by it.
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I would totally watch a whole series of Emma providing mostly awesome and sometimes misguided advice to the club. Oh, Will, you suck so much even when you're in a ficlet that understands you. *G*
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I ♥ Emma.
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Although it is hard to hate Will in that first .gif, because his terrifying face when he lights up the tree makes me flailgiggle.
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I adore Emma's response and Will's characterization (can you just write take over and write Will for the show?) it's pitch-perfect. I missed early S1!Will and my heart is aching for all the Glee kids and their underlying issues (dear Mike, been there - kids are complete assholes sometime!). I second the love for BAMF!Will.
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