Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Glee "The Substitute"

Chris Martin's wife, aka Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, is the big guest star on tonight's Glee, starring as the substitute teacher with Will Schuester succumbs to a cold going around the school that has also felled Principal Figgins, into whose shoes Sue Sylvester has stepped. Will hallucinates all the glee club members into little children, which is cute. Then Will's awful ex-wife shows up to take care of him.

When Gwyneth shows up, she's Holly Holiday, subbing for Will's Spanish class, teaching the kids how to discuss Lindsay Lohan's rehab visits en EspaƱol. Kurt breaks in and asks her sub for glee club too and she agrees. Turns out she's a real nut, who quickly becomes buddy-buddy with Sue, passes Puck the answers to a quiz she's giving later, and tells Rachel she's a killjoy.

After Sue takes away the cafeteria's tater tots, Mercedes stages a Norma Rae style protest. She's also a bit miffed that Kurt's been spending so much time with Blaine instead of her. Kurt tries to set her up, but she doesn't go for it, but instead accompanies them on a non-date evening and is completely the third wheel (Darren Criss as Blaine is just as charming this week as he was last week).

Forget You - Cee Lo Green (Holly Holiday and New Directions). Those of you who saw Duets remember that Gwyneth can sing and she really knocks this one out. Great fun with clever choreography too. Of course it's the radio version, giving everyone the opportunity to sing "ain't that some shhhhhh."

Make 'em Laugh - From "Singin' in the Rain" (Will Schuester). In an even more than usually randon excuse for a musical number, Will dreams that he's singing this, while he and Mike do some amazing dancing, although only Will is singing.

Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag - From "Chicago" (Rachel and Holly). The ladies don sequined dresses with HUGE furry red boas for this Chicago homage that plays out pretty like it does in the movie. Great fun.

Singin' in the Rain (From "Singin' in the Rain)/Umbrella - Rihanna (Holly Holiday and New Directions). Have they done this yet? Mashed up a musical song with a pop song? It works great musically, thematically and with the rain and umbrellas for choreography.

Another great episode. Gwyneth was fun guest star.

Best lines (right before "Forget You"):
Santana: What would you know about Cee Lo? You're like 40.
Holly: Top 40 sweet cheeks. Hit it!

4 comments:

J.Mensah said...

I'm sorry for being off-topic, but I read that Duffy's new album is only going to be 20 minutes long (with 10 tracks) I thought albums had to be at least 30 minutes long to actually qualify as an album?

Cook In / Dine Out said...

Interesting question, and since I don't know offhand, I looked it up. According to the Endlessly album's Wikipedia entry, the album will have 10 tracks that totals just over 26 minutes in running time. According to the UK Official Charts rules for the albums chart, an album has to be at least 25 minutes long OR consist of more than four songs where the format does not qualify as a “Maxi” single or remix single as defined by singles eligibility rules. So even if her running time was less than 25 minutes, Endlessly would still qualify as an "album" under the second criterion.

rcLoy said...

Does Gwyneth make Forget You a tad more interesting after this episode? Hell Yeah! And the Singin' in the Rain/Umbrella mash up is pretty darn good! GLEE RULEZ!

Cook In / Dine Out said...

The Glee version of "Forget You" may well chart higher than Cee Lo's version, as it's #1 at iTunes now ("Singin' in the Rain/Umbrella" is #2).