Glee: “Britney/Brittany” [Recap]

I am not a fan of Britney Spears. She (and other pop groups) ruined the music scene for me during my senior year of high school. I am, however, a big fan of Glee, so this episode had me torn. Could I sit through forty-five minutes of one of the most entertaining shows while they belted out Brit’s Best Of?

Well, I kinda have to, seeing as how I committed myself to doing recaps this season. Anywho!

*cue acapella group* This week’s pre-show recap focused on Will Schuester’s failed marriage, his short-lived romance with Emma Pillsbury (the school’s guidance counselor), Emma’s new dentist beau, and Artie refusing to lose Tina to Mike. So right off the bat, you know there’s gonna be a focus on romance with some heartache in this episode. And that’s what you missed on “Glee.” *end acapella*

The show opens up in the music room with Mr. Schue trying to get the group excited about adult contemporary. He suggests Christopher Cross’ hit “Sailing” and you can imagine the look on the kids’ faces. Kurt suggests that they focus Britney Spears for the Homecoming assembly, but our favorite ditzy blonde, Brittany, refuses. It turns out that her full name is Brittany Susan Pierce, aka Brittany [S]Pierce; she feels she’s been overshadowed by Miss Spears because they [practically] share the same name. Mr. Schue jumps on this opportunity to veto the Britney idea, and most of the team is annoyed. Brittany offers up a meak, “Thank you for understanding. It’s been a hard road.”

We find Will in Emma’s office, discussing his reluctance to use Britney Spears songs in Glee. Emma tells him how she admires the way Britney was able to make a career comeback, even with her personal difficulties. Will starts to disagree, and Emma says he’s too uptight (ironic coming from the woman with severe OCD). He points this out, but Emma has been working on her OCD with her new dentist boyfriend, Carl: they mixed green and red grapes together in a bowl and ate them (a very big achievement, as she’s the type who would sort M&Ms by color). Like magic, Carl (played by John Stamos) appears in her doorway, asking Emma out on an impromptu lunch date. She introduces the two men to each other. Carl’s phone suddenly buzzes; he needs to perform an emergency root canal on a teenager. He complains that high schoolers don’t take care of their teeth properly, which prompts Will to ask him to give the Glee club a hygiene presentation. A couple of corny jokes are exchanged and it’s obvious the two guys are making a strained attempt to be polite in front of Emma.

We switch over to Finn at his locker. He’s tucking away his letterman jacket when two football jocks yank it out. They tell him he has no right to own it as he’s no longer on the team. Finn grabs for it, but one of the jocks tears the jacket in two. Angry, Finn takes a swing at the jocks, misses, and hits the locker next to him. The jocks taunt him, but they get interrupted by Artie. The fight ends; Finn and Artie walk to Glee, the jocks walk away with promises to get them later. Coach Beiste pops out from around the corner – turns out she was witness to the whole thing.

As promised, Carl shows up to Glee and hands each kid a small tablet of dye: it’s used to show plaque on teeth. Rachel and Artie each have a mouth filled with blue teeth and can’t understand why. Brittany has a mouth of dye; she announces that she rinses her mouth with Dr. Pepper, as she thought he was a real dentist. Carl has her come in for an appointment.

Brittany’s X-rays show that she’s got cavities in every single one of her teeth (68 of them to be exact). Carl is amazed at the number, but Brittany calmly remarks that the room bares a resemblance to the room on the spaceship where she was probed (I love this girl so much!) As he preps her for the anesthetic, Carl starts up Pandora, which just happens to be playing Britney Spears. Brittany mutters, “Oh no, not Britney,” before being whisked off in her own version of “Slave for You.” Carl shakes her awake and tells her that he couldn’t get to all of her cavities and that she’ll have to come back tomorrow. She asks if she can have a blue toothbrush and follows up with, “Are you a cat?”

Back at McKinley, we see Finn and Rachel walking down the hallway. Rachel expresses a relief at the fact that she doesn’t have to worry about Finn getting injured or eying the cheerleaders. Finn’s noticeably upset but she doesn’t understand why – true to diva form, she wants to be his everything. Santana and Brittany pass by them and make snide remarks about Rachel’s appearance, and she gets upset that Finn didn’t defend her.

Santana comes with Brittany to her dentist appointment, determined to make an impression on Carl. Her hopes fall when Carl tells her that she’s got perfect teeth – there’s nothing he can do for her. She shoots back that her father is a doctor, which means she’s got excellent dental insurance. He agrees to bleach her teeth, and both girls are put under. Cue the segment “Me Against the Music” with Santana and Brittany. Brittany sees Britney and the interaction goes a little something like this:
Brittany: You’re really hot.
Britney: You’re sweet.
Brittany: And your breath smells really fresh.
Britney: So does yours, and you know why? Because this is a fantasy.
Brittany: Wow.

The next day in Glee, Brittany declares she wants all solos; she feels she’s got as much talent (if not more) as Britney Spears and therefore is the most talented person in Glee. “It’s Brittany…bitch.” She tells the group about her Britney vision, and Santana confirms this, even though she’s confused as to how they both had the same fantasy. Kurt takes this opportunity to pitch his Britney Spears campaign one more time to Mr. Schue, but gets flat out denied. Kurt gets angry and calls Mr. Schue uptight.

Will has an appointment with Carl, and naturally the subject of Emma comes up. Will admits that he still has feelings for her; Carl tells him that knowing another guy is pursuing his girlfriend makes him uncomfortable and asks him to stop. He feels that Will and Emma weren’t meant to be due to the fact that neither one was impulsive enough to do something beyond their comfort zone and shares the story of how he randomly bought his Corvette. He gives Will a jar of candy on the way out, as if he were saying, “live a little.” Will passes Rachel in the waiting room and offers her a piece of candy.

The next day at school, Rachel is impatiently waiting for the final bell to ring. She’s dressed differently from her usual “girl next door” garb – in fact, she’s got a little bit of the naughty Catholic school girl look going on. She bursts into a rendition of “…Baby One More Time.” In the background we can hear someone calling her name – it turns out she was in the dentist’s chair, coming out of anesthesia. Carl comments that all of the Glee kids have been hard to work on, as they move a lot while they’re under.

Rachel carries out her plan to dress the same way she did in her fantasy and catches the attention of the football jocks. Finn is slightly embarrassed, but Rachel seems to be bursting with her usual confidence. She gives him her blessing to try out for football again; she realizes that she can’t keep him to herself forever. As she walks off, Jacob Ben-Israel sees her and starts muttering that he’d kill his parents to give Rachel the house.

We find Emma and Will sitting in the parking lot in his brand new Corvette. It’s a lame attempt to try and show Emma that he’s impulsive, and she’s not at all impressed. Suddenly, Will’s ex-wife, Terri, shows up and yells for both of them to get out of the car. She still blames Emma for the failure of her marriage, much to the annoyance of Will. Emma runs away and Terri becomes calm. She reaches out to Will and tells him that she’ll be waiting for him once he gets back to his senses.

In the Glee room, Santana notices Rachel’s new look and begrudgingly gives her a compliment. The rest of the group also pipes up on how much they like her appearance, which is the segway Kurt uses to continue his campaign for Britney Spears. Rachel admits that her Britney fantasy made her feel free and appreciate the fact that it’s okay to feel good about how you look; Brittany smugly takes credit. Mr. Schue wonders if maybe Britney really could be good to focus on but gets interrupted by Sue Sylvester.

In Sue’s office, she tells Will how she caught Jacob masturbating buck nekkid in the library over pictures of Rachel dressed as Britney Spears. She also points out Will’s recent actions to try and win Emma back and hopes he’s not using a Britney Spears song as an attempt to put on a show for her. Sue feels that Britney Spears is the spark that will ignite the hormones flowing amongst the high school, and even though she appreciates her artistic abilities, she does not want another repeat of the ass-shaped sweat stain left on her office chair.

Back to the hallway. Britney Spears is dressed in a cheerleading uniform, discussing ranch dressing on pizza with Brittany and Tina. Artie happens to pass by and greets Britney, who turns on Tina and asks how she could ever break up with such a sweet guy. Tina turns to apologize, but Artie walks away. We see that he’s made it on the football team, singing “Stronger” with Puck and Finn, complete with the entire football team dancing behind them. At the end of the song we see Tina standing by herself in the bleachers, the section clearly marked off for losers. Artie wakes up in the dentist’s chair. He rushes over to the boys’ locker room and petitions one more time to Finn to help him get on the team. Coach Beiste appears, tells Finn to stop standing there like a “donkey with a wooden leg,” and asks him to help Artie into uniform.

We’re in the Glee club room to discover that both Artie and Finn made the team. Artie claims he got the idea when he had his own Britney fantasy at Carl’s office, which makes Will realize that perhaps using Britney’s songs could be a positive thing. Kurt tries again to push a Britney song, but Will cuts him off and gives his blessing…with himself singing as the male lead.

Rachel sneaks her way into the boys’ locker room to try and have a talk with Finn. She’s worried he’ll dump her to date one of the Cheerios, but Finn promises to dedicate his first touchdown to her to show the school who is girlfriend is. Rachel is touched, but still upset that he can’t find happiness with just her presence. She gives him an ultimatum: football or her.

At the Homecoming assembly, Sue finds out that Britney Spears will be sung and puts Becky (the cheerleader with Down Syndrome) on alert. “Fresh off their last place finish at Regionals,” is the intro that Principal Figgins gives Glee (which came right after the warning that any student who ate the ravioli should have a current tetanus shot). The kids and Mr. Schue perform a raunchy version of “Toxic,” which starts a frenzy similar to the days when the Beatles invaded America. Sue’s clearly displeased and pulls the fire alarm, causing massive panic. The following day in the faculty lounge, Sue shows up in a neck brace and threatens to sue Will for causing a riot; she claims to have hired Gloria Allred and will take him for everything, including his vests. “I mean, seriously, you wear more vests than the cast of ‘Blossom’, ” she tells him as she walks out the door.

Will apologizes to Emma for showing off and for allowing Glee to put on such a provocative performance. He felt that she would notice that he wasn’t being as uptight as he used to be. She points out that he didn’t need to change when the real him was a good person and understands that he’s been under a lot of stress with his divorce, keeping Glee active, and with her new relationship. He decides to return the Corvette.

Cut to the hallways. Quinn stops by Finn’s locker and congratulates him on his return to the football team. Seeing as how they’re back in their original social statuses before she became pregnant, she petitions Finn to be a couple again. Finn uncomfortably admits that he will always have feelings for her, but he’s with someone else. We see Rachel lurking in the distance, holding her breath. Quinn walks away, but stops when she sees Rachel: it turns out it was a setup, a test to see if Finn would prove his loyalty. Rachel looks happy, but Quinn’s got a little of of sad recognition on her face.

The episode ends in the music room. Rachel dedicates “The Only Exception” to Finn in class and acknowledges that she needs to loosen up to make their relationship work. Brittany announces that next week she’ll be focusing on Ke$sha.

Everything that came out of Brittany’s mouth during this show was pure GOLD. I would love to spend an hour in a room with her, just to hear her non-sequitur comments. These more than made up for the Britney Spears songs, all of which still make me cringe a little bit inside. We’re only in the second episode, but the rest of the season will have a hard time matching the comedy factor.

Next week on Glee: Finn makes grilled “Cheesus” in what appears to be a knock-off George Forman grill. The entire school seems to go through a spiritual phase and it looks like Joan Osborne’s 1995 hit, “One of Us,” will be the highlighted song. Kurt’s father ends up in the hospital.

Editorial: Can I just say I found it incredibly annoying to have a Britney Spears and Fergie perfume commercial air during this episode? True, if you’re gonna cram pop stars down our throats, what better time to do it than the “Britney/Brittany” episode? But damn. That was overkill. To quote a popular Valley Girl saying from the 80′s: “Gag me with a spoon.”