The Sue Sylvester Shuffle
Glee replayed their post-Superbowl episode last night. And now that I'm looking at that title, is it really all that appropriate? I suppose she did "shuffle" the regional competition for the cheerleader around, thus prompting the main plot point of the football players having to perform the half-time show.
Anyways.
I want to hone in on a couple of points that this episode really brings up. The first has to do with what I've thought of as McKinley High's "under-developed ecosystem." TV in general tends to narrow its focus (extras cost money, after all) so we rarely venture beyond the football team vs glee club rivalry displayed here. I think that's a huge missed opportunity for Glee.
For example, we see the football team get slushied by the hockey team during their little victory walk. The "Mullet Heads" have been seen before, but their appearance raises the issue for me: where are all the other clubs at McKinley?
Why was the glee club should have been in competition with all the theater folks for West Side Story. But what about that wrestling team that Lauren Zizes is supposedly on? The A/V club? The chess club? Can you imagine how much more effective it would have been for Karofsky to get slushied by a member of the chess club? If that had happened, I might have had a tiniest bit of sympathy for the guy instead of wondering why he folded so easily. (Survey says? Script-dictated meltdown. But of course.)
It also would have come at the bullying angle from a far more complicated and subtle direction. I assume that Karofsky has been bullying more students than just the glee club. Though he might have singled Kurt out specifically for a variety of reasons, there's no evidence that he's actually nice to - well - anyone.
So having the other clubs take their opportunity to have a little back would have been a demonstration of how that kind of behavior spreads and creates these cycles of nastiness. A cycle of slushy violence, if you will.
It also would have given Glee the opportunity to pull out some of that ironic editing and dramatic smash cuts that they like so much some times then completely forget about at others. Which is the second point that came up: the uneven tone of the show.
In one corner, Sue is off setting her cheerleaders on fire and shooting Brittany out of a cannon. Obviously high satire of her drive to win.
And in the other corner, we have a painfully earnest demonstration of how teachers believing that students can change their behavior and bring them together and are you zoning out yet because I am. It's written, acted, directed and edited completely as if we are to invest in Karofsky's emotional conflict and care whether he becomes a good person or not. I complained in the full episode review of "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle" that Karofsky has committed the cardinal sin of being dull, but I think what's really going on is that it seems like his story is the one story that I'm supposed to take seriously but I can't really trust that in the middle of all the crazy.
This is why Sue's character has become so odd-man-out. Because she really is just off on her own doing her own ridiculous thing while the rest of the show is Real Drama. The contrast between Absurd Sue and everyone else winds up pulling everything down. I can't get past Sue as a charicature because hello human cannonball, but at the same time, I can't really commit to Karofsky because I never know when I'm suddenly going to be pulled over into...
Well. Into the "Sylvester Shuffle."