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it would be april
SO MUCH SNOW.
All I ever post about anymore is Glee and the weather.
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
Honestly, I already hit my two least favorite performances yesterday, in my write-up for "Funk." "Tell Me Something Good" horrifies me (seriously, I spent its broadcast shrieking "OH MY GOD" into the couch cushions and wanting to die), and "It's a Man's Man's Man's Man's World" is bizarre, not in the good way, and a terrible choice for Dianna Agron's voice, and, just -- bad, man. They are so, so bad.
In the interest of not beating a dead horse, though, I am going to discuss other songs! Pretty much any Finn/Rachel duet done in the course of the show belongs on my list of "did not enjoy"; Lea Michele has a stunning voice and Cory Monteith has improved in leaps and bounds, but I just don't find their performances particularly interesting or compelling. I tend to wander away for snacks and bathroom breaks while they're roaming the halls of the school singing at each other. Examples of this phenomenon include: "No Air," "Borderline"/"Open Your Heart," "Last Christmas," and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." It's not that I particularly dislike most of those performances, though; my main beef is that I find them dull.
So while considering my least favorite performances on the show, I came up with a whole lot of "this did nothing for me" candidates, but none really stood out from the crowd. Which was kind of the point. The performances didn't stand out for me. (Though I did hate the absurd mash-up of "Crazy in Love" and "Hair" that turned up in Hairography. Seriously, that was a nonsensical shitty mash-up.) With nothing really standing out -- "Crazy in Love"/"Hair" was ridiculous, but not bad enough for me to vote it my least favorite performance -- I decided to add another criteria: "performances that made me mad."
That brought me down to three options: "What It Feels Like for a Girl" from The Power of Madonna, "I Look to You" from Grilled Cheesus, and "Imagine" from Hairography.
I have to be honest; it's been a good nine or ten months since I've seen the Madonna episode, and my memory's a little fuzzy. I think I was mostly frustrated by "What It Feels Like for a Girl" because (A) the fact that Will Schuester of all people was the one to be all like, "you guys are SEXIST. we're going to fix that! because I know best, and I'm certainly not sexist!" made me keyboard-smash; (B) it's actually kind of creepy and weird when you have a bunch of dudes sing it; and (C) it was totally pointless. It was like the writers just wanted to shout "GIRL POWER!" into the abyss and then never touch it ever again. From what I remember, the boys were like, "Oh yeah, we get it now!" and were ~*properly ashamed*~ and everything by the end of the episode, but there was no actual, like ... change in behavior. It was just an excuse to have the guys sing "What It Feels Like for a Girl."
"I Look to You" gets to me for in-character reasons rather than writing decisions. Mostly. I wanted to reach through the TV screen and throttle Mercedes, Quinn, and Tina when they started singing a Whitney Houston song about turning to God in your dark hour, to Kurt. Mercedes didn't know what to say to Kurt after his dad has a heart attack and goes into the ICU -- so she doesn't actually talk to him or ask what she can do; she just gets up and sings the cheesiest of cheesy ballads about God, to the atheist kid, in front of the entire glee club. I know that the characters are generally all about singing it out, but that was such an egregious song choice that I couldn't take it. There was nothing wrong with the performance itself (though I did find it dull and unmemorable, as amazing as Amber Riley's voice is) and I can moooostly buy the kids' actions as in-character, if disappointing, but that doesn't mean I had to like it. And I didn't.
If I was picking based on ease-of-ficlet-writing, for the record, "I Look to You" would be the champ here. But in terms of my actual least favorite performance that is not "Tell Me Something Good" or "It's a Man's Man's Man's Man's World" -- there's a clear winner.
Least favorite performance: "Imagine," from Hairography
My main issue with the performance -- and with the "school for the deaf as show choir competition" plot line -- was that the writers tried to have it both ways. They wanted to play it for laughs as black comedy, making the audience uncomfortably laugh at hearing 20 or 30 deaf students talk-sing, but then they also tried to play it off as ~*inspirational*~ and honestly, (A) I think they went more wrong with the latter than the former, and (B) they should have picked one approach and stuck with it.
I found the entire joint performance between the two clubs incredibly condescending. The New Directions kids never would have been written as popping up onstage in the middle of a performance put on by their other competitors. No one invited them; the kids from the school were singing and doing their thing, and Mercedes just walked up and started singing along. ?? And then all of the other kids went up, too, and it was the cheesiest, weirdest thing ever, and it was suddenly so ~*magical*~ and ~*inspiring*~ that Will cried. ????? Also I seem to remember the New Directions kids suddenly randomly knowing the sign language for the song, which made me laugh in a not-meant-to-laugh-here way.
Oh, God, do I really have to write something about this scene? Now I wish I hadn't used my get out of jail free card on "Funk." I am going to exercise my right to drabble here. (Note to self: should have picked "Look to You.")
'Good ... job,' Tina signs laboriously, the hand motions slowly coming back to her. It's not really what she wants to say, but she's kind of reliant on what she can remember.
The girl blinks at her, then smiles and signs something back, her fingers a blur of movement. How she can do that and step off the risers at the same time without falling on her face, Tina doesn't know. It's seriously impressive.
"Whoa," says Tina, but before she can try to figure out how to sign oh my God, I haven't tried this since before middle school, the other girl beams -- apparently, Tina's panic made its way to her expression -- and then, slowly, she presses the fingers of her open hand to her chin, then lowers it. She leaves off the rest of whatever it was that she signed the first time, but Tina knows that one. She smiles.
"You're welcome," she says, unthinking, and the girl looks like she's trying not to laugh as she nods and then gives a quick, friendly wave, scrambling after the rest of her classmates.
"What was that?" says an unimpressed voice from behind her, and Tina turns around to find Puck standing there with his arms crossed.
"I, um," Tina says. "I was in sign language club in fourth grade."
Puck lifts his eyebrows at her. "What, did you pretend you were deaf before you faked the stutter?" He sounds more admiring than horrified or judging or anything; Tina flinches and tries not to look over in Artie's general direction.
"No," she says firmly (subtext: what is wrong with you??). "All my friends were in it. We mostly just ... turned off the lights and wore gloves that glowed in the dark, and signed the lyrics to Styx songs."
"Gay," Puck pronounces, and then he elbows his way through the crowd toward the door.
* * *
Tina's recounting of it is based on my actualfax experience with fourth grade sign language club. Puck was chosen purely because I don't remember ever seeing these two interact, and Tina is now literally the only New Direction girl who Puck hasn't gotten with in some capacity. (And that amuses me.)
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I need to talk to someone about how that show BROKE me last night. :((((
SOUTHLAND SPOILERS
I'm mostly irritated, to be honest.
I mean, yes, it's sad and it's tragic and it's apparently kind of realistic, which is depressing, but I'm mostly stuck on -- WHY NATE. WHY THE ONE MEMBER OF THE GANG TASK FORCE THAT I ACTUALLY LIKED. Why couldn't it have been Sammy or Sal. I strongly dislike both Sammy and Sal and have never been interested in their stories; I only watched their scenes because Nate was in them. DDDDDD:
I guess it means I get to fast forward a lot now.
Re: SOUTHLAND SPOILERS
Honestly, I've come to terms with a lot of things on that show - cast cutbacks with a lesser budget (which, it's rumored that was the reason for the write-off last night) being one of them, and maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with KA's stint on True Blood or needing to free him up for other projects, but right now I am just FULL OF SADNESS.
My HEART. D:
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Hair: Ah, awkward in-between stages. Sometimes I look at my forehead and am like, "Should I get bangs?" and then I remember that, as a child, every time my mom persuaded me to cut bangs, I regretted it. And then had to go through an awkward stage of growing them out, which, at the length my hair is currently at, would take FOREVER. There are all these childhood pictures of me with a random little ribbon-bow on one side tying off inappropriate-lengthed former bangs.
(Perhaps I am too unadventurous with my hair as the result of childhood trauma. XDDDDD One time my mom thought it would be convenient or something if she put my hair up in a ponytail, then cut it. It came down looking RIDICULOUS, of course; then she had to even it out and it was wayyyy shorter than intended. I may have hair that is as long as it is because when I was younger my mom was like, "YOUR HAIR CAN BE LONG WHEN YOU CAN DEAL WITH IT YOURSELF." I am so silly.)
Tiny whirling dervish of home improvement fury lols: My mom recently redid our whole house. It was kind of a good thing in some ways - for instance, the furniture from our much larger New Jersey house came over here this summer, or last summer, or something, and it was like a total disaster because then it looked like my house shrank, or giants inhabited it, or something, and the kitchen table was too big for the kitchen, but then she knocked out a wall, so now the kitchen table sits nicely between the kitchen and the living room and there's room to open the fridge again! - and totally messy in other ways, like all the furniture being everywhere yeah, and not being able to find anything now that was storaged in that time. And my room has gone pink and looks like a guest-room, and she put in fluorescent lighting which yes saves power but blehhh depresses me, and the house is colder than ever without carpet upstairs. Sigh.
But yeah, the rooms were full of stuff and dust and not walkable. Thank God I wasn't commuting. The thing now is, I keep forgetting to tell my friends, and they come over and are like, "................WHAT HAPPENED?"
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haha, I always regretted childhood bangs, too. I actually like my bangs now; what I don't like is the length of the rest of my hair!
(Ew florescent lighting DDD: )
Matthew Morrison regularly looks ridiculous. I don't find him attractive at all, and I speak as a lady who is not into dudes but is at least able to recognize when they are aesthetically appealing.
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I remember him as being good-looking when I was like thirteen or so! Then again, I was ten or twenty feet further away from him and he was singing and dancing (COOLER THINGS, well, sort of) on a stage, so maybe I wasn't looking that closely.
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The "Imagine" scene is all the worse knowing that a lot of cast members got tattoos after performing with the deaf choir, it meant so much to them. Of course, the cast planned on performing together, rather than New Directions hijacking the performance. Thanks, directors/writers!
Tina and Puck! Hee!
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