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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Glee - The Spanish Teacher

Will gets a complaint from one of his students for the way he teaches Spanish - with sombreros, tacos, and renditions of “La Cucaracha.” He finds out later that it was Santana. She tells him, "This is my education and it's not a joke to me, although it seems like it is to you … Why don't you just dress up like the Taco Bell Chihuahua and bark the theme song to Dora the Explorer?” Word. The principal tells Will that a tenured teaching position has opened up, and if Will wants it, he should probably learn Spanish. Oh God. Will doesn’t speak Spanish and he’s a Spanish teacher? That is seriously messed up.

Will starts taking night classes from David Martinez, played by Ricky Martin. David is a former tooth model who likes to sing, so Will invites David to the Glee club. If his Glee kids are singing in Spanish by the week’s end, Will is sure to get tenure, right? Will announces that this week will be Latin-themed. David walks into the room. The girls and Artie swoon, and David launches into a half-Spanish rendition of LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It,” which is a funny song. This episode reached for the funny this week and hit the mark maybe twice.

Will has to defend his Spanish teacher honor by performing "A Little Less Conversation" dressed as “an authentic matador.” It makes us want to die. Ricky Martin knocks it out of the park with "La Isla Bonita", a duet with Santana. Unlike the other performances, this one wasn’t stereotypical and was by far the best of the week. A mash up of "Bamboleo" and "Hero" was performed by Sam and the Glee guys. It was ok. We didn’t get the shoes. Mercedes sang "Don’t Want to Lose You", because she is still torn between Sam and Shane. Girl, pick Sam already. He's adorable.

Will is mean to Emma about her pamphlets, but they end up becoming huge. Emma gets the tenure. Ha. In the end, Will realizes that the kids need a real Spanish teacher and that it was never his dream subject. He takes an opening in History and tells Figgins to hire David as the daytime Spanish teacher. David is so grateful. He starts talking about his immigrant parents’ history and the American dream. He actually gets to teach students during the day and not just racist jerks wanting to yell at their maids! Decades of civil rights movement stuff later, people in the entertainment world still write stories where minorities need whitey to lift them up. Usually, we don’t find this offensive, because it’s still about people helping other people, but in this episode it was so blatant.

The ridiculous subplot of the week was Sue deciding to have a baby with improperly frozen eggs she has saved up. She is looking for a sperm donor and goes right to the high school children. She also wants Will to contribute, because she wants a positive child with plentiful hair. Um. Ok. Upon hearing the news that Sue intended to have a baby, Santana and Nene Leakes asked, “With whose vagina?” Out of nowhere, Becky betrays Sue, but they make up and Sue takes it well. Not good.

Kurt had words with Finn about how Finn only asked Rachel to marry him because he was giving up. We liked everything Kurt had to say. Maybe Finn ISN’T talented enough to make it in show business (but, hey, Cory Monteith is, so who knows?), but he is still only 18 and shouldn’t give up. Who finds their niche in life before 18? Hopefully Finn and Rachel mutually decide to break off the engagement. We thought it was realistic and slightly funny that Mercedes, Rachel, and Kurt were watching Twilight together, and we liked Kurt’s line about getting their period.

This show forgot why its remaining fans are still watching. We are Broadway/music enthusiasts looking for big Rachel numbers, good dancing, hits made better, and singing. We are not looking for sweet moments between Will and Emma anymore. We are not looking for the adults on the show to succeed or better their lives. It’s too late for that, Glee. You have ruined every single character on this show, except for maybe Santana, so just give us our one-liners and songs and call it a day. Weeks that focus on this show’s adults are always going to be weird, because these people are not real adults. And yeah, we thought this episode was weird. 

Ricky Martin was the bright spot in this episode. He was charming and loveable. It was nice to hear some Spanish, but aren’t there BETTER Spanish songs? We assure you, there are. That was a missed opportunity to give some great Spanish showstoppers, rather than just throw around stereotypes and then condemn them. On that note, Glee always has its cake and eats it too with politically correct morality. The show mocks, bullies, and perpetuates stereotypes all day long, but it’s ok, because at the end of the show, a character says this is wrong. But the show invites us to laugh at the name-calling, costumes, and jabs. This has to be the most hypocritical show of all time. We guess because Ryan Murphy is gay, he can get away with this. We’re not PC, so we are not offended. It’s just an eye-roller of a contradiction.

This episode made us hate Will more than ever. Just as regular commenter, CurvyGirl hates Finn, we hate Will Schuster. Will Schuster is our Finn. We hate him much more than Artie. We just wish Artie would stop singing and rapping. It seems like this show has a pattern: Around two good episodes and then one really bad one. Maybe that means next week will be good? Nene was funny. But this show needs to give us what we want and stop being crazy.

Episode grade: C

12 comments:

  1. This episode was just so-so for me. I start to think about not watching the show anymore then I realize that's a ridiculous idea. I have invested way too much into these characters to just drop the show. Nene was funny. Ricky was cute. But I find myself fast forwarding thru a large portion of the musical numbers. This season (and last season) have just not hit it out of the park...Oh well...I'll keep watching...Once a gleek, always a gleek

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    1. Yeah, it will be a long time before we drop this show too. It's still more entertaining than a lot of shows and there's always the occasional good song download. They come out the day of the episode, making us want to see what the performances look like when 8:00 rolls around. Plus, people read these posts more than lots of other posts, haha.

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  2. I just don't like it. I had big expectations for the spanish thing.

    There are a LOT of better spanish songs.

    Little less conversation was AWFUL. The salsa(?) moves from Will was just unwatchable.

    La Isla Bonita was good, but I won't buy any song from this week.

    And this is the thing about their shoes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRYNWfJzfVE&ob=av2e#t=01m36s
    This is really the "moda" in Mexico, personally I don't like the boots.

    Y solo para hacer juego con el episodio de Glee les digo en español lo mucho que AMO a este blog, siempre se los he dicho pero nunca en mi idioma y aparte es mas comodo escribir asi, ya que no tengo miedo a equivocarme al tratar de escribir en ingles :D

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    1. Thanks for explaining the shoes and matching a Spanish comment to the Spanish episode, haha.

      AGREE about A Little Less Conversation. And if a Spanish viewer won't buy the only Spanish songs on Glee, that means they were really bad.

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    2. I'm not a purist of the language but the song were just not good, we know Glee can do so much better, I was expecting something spicy, like "Mi Tierra" from Gloria Estefan. Something really really latino.

      I was hoping for Selena, she has great songs about love in english and spanish.

      I want to hear Lea Michele in spanish even if it was just a word or a sentence, I understand that for some people is hard to speak in other languages and even harder to sing but Lea talking in spanish was my dream haha.

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    3. She totally could and should have. And yeah, Selena would have been great.

      Enjoy this Lea Michele live video. No Spanish, but it is always nice to hear her without all the autotune.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urJsv776SfM&feature=related

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    4. Thanks a lot for the video. Just amazing, emotionally and she's so beautiful and in that videos she doesn't look skinny like nowadays.

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    5. Yeah, she looks waaaay better there. Softer.

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  3. Hahaha keep on hatin Will, ladies. He bothers me (just not as much as Finn). :)

    I was... offended by this episode, truthfully. I was a history major and I teach in a school that is 70% Hispanic. What bothers me is that we still feel the need to dedicate an episode to Latin culture. If they were truly accepting, there would just be random songs here and there that were from Latino artists. When we have to stop, point it out, then ride our moral horse all over town, it is both divisive and frankly irritating.

    Their statistic--that by 2030 people will be speaking Spanish--is a little skewed on a lot of levels, and I talked about this very idea with my students. Every immigrant group that has come here (and that's nearly all of us) has faced xenophobia and general lack of trust. Eventually, they learn the language, learn the culture, and assimilate. They bring some of their culture into American culture. It just takes a few generations, which is hard for people to see right now.

    Regardless, I felt this episode was pandering. My college professor said once that during the feminism movement, historians wrote a book, threw in a paragraph or chapter about women, and called it a day. Said it was "Make recipe, add women, stir well." Well, that's what we're doing here. "Let's live our lives, throw in an episode to please our Latino audience, and go back to mostly ignoring them."

    Mostly, I disliked it because it was obvious. Come on Glee, give us some good music and laughs. That's all we're here for.

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    1. "we still feel the need to dedicate an episode to Latin culture. If they were truly accepting, there would just be random songs here and there that were from Latino artists." So, so, SO true. Damn. This is a good comment.

      Now Will is bringing his whack ways to your subject (history). Yuck.

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  4. So this is a little late but I wanted to say that CurvyGirl is SO true. As a Latin myself I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. Those songs were awful. Plus Santana is supposed to be a Latin but she can't pronounce "la cucaracha" properly. And she decides to complain about Will now and defend the latins against stereotyping but she never mentions her origins more than maybe twice with her abuela.
    Go Ricky Martin though, he is ALWAYS so cute. Btw, the show should try some of his songs if it wants to truly "accept" latinos. He's got some songs about love, peace and acceptance and they're from a man that can at least say that he knows about Latin America.

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    1. There is no such thing as "late" when it comes to comments. If we can post days after episodes have aired, people can comment weeks after. Feel freaking free.

      And yeah, CG is a genius.

      We doubt Glee will try to accept Latinos again any time soon. If we know this show, and we feel like we do, it's going to feel like it has "done its duty." Especially now that Will isn't teaching Spanish anymore, and Ricky Martin has a new gig on Broadway, we don't think we will be seeing much of that language or culture. Well, if this is how Glee treats it, that's fine with us.

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