A Very Glee Christmas Recap: Glee Christmas Special Very Christmassy, Special

Oh, Christmas. It’s a magical time of year. I wonder what’s going to happen this week on Glee, our favorite madcap caper musical show! See, every week someone tries to FOIL Glee, and then our ragtag team of unlikely heroes finds a way to save the day — usually through song! Also, some of them are gay, and some are cute, and some are in wheelchairs and some are “fat” and some are sort of stupid and some are “slutty” and some are Asian and at the end we all HOLD HANDS and sing in the wintery wintery blustery snowpantsy baby its cold outside WONDERLAND OF CHILDREN AND MUSIC AND SWEATERS!!!!!!

Christmas is early this year because of the Israeli Calendar. The Cheerios are celebrating by pretending to be in a Christmas special from the 70s. They’re singing weird songs, dressing like a Gap ad and saying weird things that I think those wooden toys said in that one Christmas movie.

I half love Christmas and the other half of me wants to stab it in the eyes. Actually, I totally love Christmas but tend to spend it alone or in airports. Except when I was a child. Sorry, I just became Will Shoeface for a second, waxing nostalgic about my woebegone youth in the hinterlands of Ohio that nobody cares about.

You know what else is in Ohio? This show. I was really glad someone said “Lima” out loud this week so I could prove that it’s pronounced like Lima bean, not like “rhymes with tina” as someone else has argued.

Want to know what happened Behind the Scenes?

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A few notes:

1) My viewing companion correctly ID’ed kd lang singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” which is pretty gay.

1a) Hey were you aware that kd lang performed in Pee-Wee’s Christmas Special when we were children? She wore a denim dress situation, it was astounding.
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2) But not as gay as Kurt and Blaine singing a Baby It’s Cold Outside to each other in like, Harry Potter outfits on the set of Clue: The Movie. Which was obviously super sweet – I felt love radiating in my own heart, culled from the hearts of every little gay boy in the whole world.

Chris Colfer sexes it up in a ratio similar to Dakota Fanning’s sexualitah in The Runaways. Approved.

It was so gay it’s gone all the way past gay and back to straight again. Rolling it forward.

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3) I’m a big fan of The Christmas Special, like, as a genre. I had to remind myself halfway through the episode, ‘Riese, think of this as a CHRISTMAS SPECIAL.’ Because it gets really special.

There are “moments” and “sentimental speeches.”
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4) When are the following couples going to MAKE OUT ALREADY:

a. Kurt & Blaine

b. Brittany & Santana

And no I am not being selective and only picking the homogays. Everyone else who really ought to kiss already HAS, I mean look at the trouble it’s gotten poor Finn into! Oh, Finn. Your dopey grin will keep Broadway’s Lea Michele warm all winter long, until February when the show returns.
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5) MOTHERFUCKERS WHY DIDN’T ANYONE PLAY ALL I WANT FOR CHIRSTMAS IS YOU. FINE DO I HAVE TO DO IT MYSELF:

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Remember this part:

Brittany: “last year i left my stocking up over christmas vacation and an entire family of mice started living in it. their christmas gift to each other was rabies.”

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6) This episode was probs a big enabler for Eddie Bauer addicts.


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7) Why were we robbed of a Mr.-Shoeface-and-Kurt-Go-to-the-Mall montage? They could have sung “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”


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8) I also want sweet potato fries.

MERCEDES: I’ve been a very good girl, Santa. I want a pony, and a doll that laughs and cries, and… one of us smells like McDonald’s.
LAUREN: I would like Puckerman to love me. He’s a fox. I would also like sweet potato fries.
SANTANA: I want bling. I can’t be any more specific than that. Okay wait, hold up, please tell me that is a roll of Certs in your pocket.
QUINN: Do you have anything for stretch marks?
SAM: Chapstick. Lots of chapstick.
MIKE: I want Channing Tatum to stop being in stuff.
TINA: When does Asian Santa arrive?

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9) I thought for sure Brittany & Artie were going to break up because Glee characters love getting self-righteous about the dissolution of their relationship based on some abstract moral platitude, and I thought Artie was gonna be all like, “she doesn’t love me for who I am, she loves me for who I am but not in a wheelchair,” but that didn’t happen.

Instead Tiny Tim got his legs back:


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10) Seriously, lambs worked overtime to make all the wool necessary to outfit this episode of Glee.


It made me want to go to the mall or something.dotted-divider2
11) Cindy Lou Who. EXCELLENT CHOICE.


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12) Okay I lied, I had to bury my head in my pillow for a lot of this episode because it was so corny and special I thought I was going to die in a cheesestorm. But in retrospect, it was excellent. Sue Sylvester was on point! I’d share some of her quotes with you, but to be honest, I have to go to sleep!

DISCUSS.

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3164 articles for us.

29 Comments

  1. I got so excited when I saw Jane Lynch putting on the green makeup and my head exploded at the prospect of her singing The Grinch and then I tweeted that she was about to sing it and then it wasn’t her and I was disappointed. Premature twitteration. I hate that.

  2. Oh, god. It’s only looking at brittana gifs on tumblr that is keeping me sane while watching this. I guess they aren’t even pretending to have a plot now? Just openly stealing it from Dr. Seuss? *sigh*

  3. My head exploded into rainbow tinsel and candycanes when Kurt & Blaine sang that song. It was magicalspecialomfgsocutepleasekissnow.

    Yeah, that was basically the best part of the episode.

    Oh! And Brittany’s dollhouse with Brittany-doll and Santana-doll sleeping together. DID ANYONE ELSE SEE THAT? THAT WAS REAL, RIGHT?

  4. To be fair, Brittana did make out already. The problem is really that Brittana aren’t together because the show doesn’t take Brittany’s sexuality as seriously as it takes Kurt or Rachel’s, cos I mean, queer women are just playing around, especially the bisexual ones, it’s easier to just make her the slut and not think about it so they can ask Chris Colfer questions like “What’s it like playing the openly gay teen on television?” and I can have an aneurysm every time he doesn’t answer with the words “I think because my storylines deal with common issues for young queers it really touches people, but Brittany is totally gay too, y’all.”

    I have some rage about this issue. I’ll admit it.

  5. No one caught the scene in brittany’s room when she was tucking in her mini brittany and santana dolls in their barbie dream house. It was right before she caught “santa” in her living room. That was a nice little nod to our brittana!

    • I think that was a Ken doll and an unnamed Bratz doll. If I remember correctly, Barbie was flying in from Malibu.

  6. I would like to be on the Brittana train as much as anyone, but I think that was Ken she was tucking into bed. She told him that he was going to need his rest because Barbie took the early flight from Tampa. Random as always!

    I was expecting to be bowled over with holiday joy with this episode because I am a NUT for Christmas specials, but I just wasn’t feeling it very much this week. Enjoyed the Kurt song more than the rest but it all felt a bit forced. I did actually laugh out loud during Finn’s speech to the teachers about how having to deal with them all must be “chipping away at all [their] hopes and dreams like a never-ending nightmare of pain”, though. Cory does deadpan so well!

    If Glee can’t make me feel anything, I am happy if it can make me belly-laugh instead. It’s not been doing much of either recently.

  7. Does anyone else find it repulsive the way Artie and Brittany interact? Artie sounds like one of those guys on To Catch a Predator, a pedophile talking to a preteen…instead of bringing pizza he brings Santa. Why exactly did Brittany need to be helped anyways. If she believes to this point, doubt that Artie has to schedule some charade.I guess mainstream America finds it comforting – the inferior woman worshiping the chauvinistic guy. Just as long as none of that crazy lesbian stuff happens everything will be A-OK.

    Is Santana now a mute?

  8. “This episode was probs a big enabler for Eddie Bauer addicts.”

    I just laughed so hard at that.

  9. It’s like trying to grasp tiny, invisible straws. I just don’t think Brittana is going to happen…besides in our collective dreams.

  10. Kurt and Blaine—-need I say more?

    My Homogay Holiday needle, totally pegged.

    It’s gonna be a good Christmas……siiiiigh.

  11. I’ve been waiting for them to do “Baby It’s Cold Outside” for like five weeks. It was totally worth it. But way to cockblock, Mr. Schue!

    Also, I want Lauren and Puck to make out, and Brittany/Artie is weird to me. Sweet, kind of — I see what they’re trying to do there, writing-wise –– but mostly weird.

  12. I’m super excited to have gay Christmas music now, thanks to Glee, but I feel like besides that, you could’ve just watched How The Grinch Stole Christmas and it would have been the same. Christmas song after Christmas song! I kind of hate Christmas music when it is not Christmas Eve or very, very close. Rachel sang a lot of Christmas songs but my favorite part was of hers was when she said she was going to spend Christmas eating Chinese food with her dads. It made me want to eat Chinese food and not celebrate Christmas.
    why is there so much cheesy christmas music in the world.

  13. Sue was just evil in this episode when she trashed the presents and Christmas tree. I know she can be mean but this was probably the worst she’d even done. I really enjoyed the episode though, wonder where they’re going with Finchel

  14. Pingback: Glee Psychotic Episode 309 Recap: What A Long Strange Christmas Special It’s Been | Glee News Network

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