Glee - 304 - Pot O' Gold

 Original air date: November 1, 2011

So, Glee is still trying here and yet...I really don't like this episode. There is a lot to unpack here so I'm just going to jump right into why I hate this episode and it's this guy:

With peace and love, dude, your character sucks

I don't know this guy, he's probably lovely but my god, he's not got any presence. He just kind of smiles and stands there and speaks with an Irish accent. Irish accents are awesome but this guy just isn't it. He doesn't have any charm or charisma. Do you want to know how they introduce us to this character? Via Brittany thinking he's a leprechaun because he's Irish. Folks, this is super fucking insulting to Irish people. Do RIB have a disease where they can't possibly conceive of people outside outdated and offensive stereotypes? Is this how they view the world? I don't want to live in their world, it's horrifying. But even offensiveness aside this is a dumb plot. And not only is it dumb, it's a bit creepy. You see, Brittany thinks he's a leprechaun and can grant her wishes and she tells him that if he grants her three wishes, she'll let him have her pot of gold. So, he's pretending to be a leprechaun while living in her house so that he can get in her pants. We're expected to sympathize with him though because he gets bullied? Also the bullies tell him to go back to Mexico which is a joke I cannot parse for the life of me. I think it's supposed to be them being too dumb to know the difference between and Irish accent and a Mexican one? 

Moving on, we have Puck and Quinn cornering Shelby to give her concealer for her eyes since she looks tired. This is supposed to convince her to take a break and let them babysit Beth. Shelby is skeptical but Quinn mentions that time in the first season where they babysat Terri's sister's three demon spawn and got them to sleep by the end of the night. Shelby still seems on the fence and Quinn points out that it was Shelby's idea for Beth to get to know them. 

Sue holds a Sue's Corner where she is ranting about government waste. She is rallying against regulation on food safety and then brings up West Side Story and its budget of $2004. She claims this is a math teacher's annual salary which is exaggerated for sure, but teachers in the states make shit money. No wonder their education system sucks. I don't even think our teachers here are paid enough money and they make way more a year than a US teacher. People really don't understand all the work that goes into being a teacher, they just see 6 hour days and summers off. However, most teachers are working well beyond those 6 hours because that's when they can plan for the next day or work on grading papers/tests. They are putting so much more emotional weight into meeting children's needs as well. It's a lot of work and it angers me when people complain about teacher's salaries and not, the waste that comes from too many stuffy superintendents and upper staff that aren't even in the schools sucking up that money but I digress. Sue calls for people to harass the school to get them to stop the musical much like parents who are harassing schools because of mask mandates. 

Figgins is getting tons of calls from angry loser parents now and he says he was even assaulted in the school parking lot. I used to think this was unrealistic but seeing the way some parents have behaved at school board meetings over masks, suddenly this looks frighteningly accurate. Will is furious and claiming that Sue can't do this but Figgins's hands are tied. Will wants to get the money himself so that the school doesn't have a say. It's possible but Sue already launches into a tirade that the effort will be futile and that the arts are going down.

Mercedes confronts Santana and asks how many solos she got last year. Santana thinks but Mercedes already knows the answer is Valerie and that was it. Santana says that she was also the Lips in Rocky Horror but we all choose to forget that episode happened. Mercedes tells her that if she joins, they'll get all the solos and they're voices sound amazing together. Santana is intrigued, especially by the fact that it's an all-girl group but she doesn't want to leave Brittany behind. I mean, she already kind of did when she was kicked out but then rejoined in pretty much the next episode? It would have made so much more sense for Santana to be an early adopter of Shelby's group since she was already kicked out of Glee and had plenty of reason to hate Will. Mercedes being lazy and dropping out herself didn't win me over at all. Anyway, Mercedes tells Santana to get Brittany to come with her. Finn is watching this whole exchange and looking not pleased.

Finn looks like a horror villain stalker

At glee practice, Tina is upset that Mercedes has left them since she was an og member. Will thinks they've faced worse and got through it but the kids are not convinced. They blame him for being too hard on her in dance class even though they were complaining then that he was going too easy on her and some blame Artie for not giving her Maria. Rachel breezes in saying she was putting up her campaign posters but her happiness is thrown off when she catches Kurt's eyes. He ribs her about airbrushing out her jowls but Finn puts a stop to the bickering, saying they need to work together. Blaine agrees because he and the Warblers were a team and just replaced someone when they dropped out. Finn cuts him down in the most petty way possible and I'm kind of here for it only because I dislike Blaine so much. Will tells them that they can still get the musical going by selling ad space in the programs and the gang excitedly get to work planning where to canvas. 

Finn pulls Santana aside and asks if she's ready to help the team. She tells him yes and walks off, weirded out by him which is super fair. Finn then confronts The Irish kid who seems to already know him. He saw the YouTube video of him losing Nationals by quote "tongue kissing his girlfriend for 10 minutes" and I'm going to lose my mind if this show keeps trying to tell me that a kiss tanked them. Also, really not helping to sell me on this character because he's coming across really creepy to me. He finally introduces himself as Rory Flannagan which is the most stereotypical Irish name they could think of, I guess. He is sorting through a box of Lucky Charms as he explains that he's a foreign exchange student from Ireland who is staying with Brittany and she thinks he's a leprechaun. Rory is exposition dump central. It's like Finn asked who he was, and most people would just say their name. Not Rory. He wants to tell you his life's story, all his goals, intimate details about himself. Like, he directly says that he's pretending to be a leprechaun to get into Brittany's pants because he really wants to "snog" her since he's a virgin. He even tells Finn what her first wish was for. I'm honestly as bewildered as Finn is by this info dump. Finn says that he'll be Rory's friend but that he needs his help keeping an eye out for more people leaving Glee. Rory heartily agrees. 

At Shelby's house, Quinn and Puck are ushering her out the door while she panics about remembering to give them everything they need and leave her number with them if they need her. She's literally just going for a run so she's only going to be gone half hour to an hour tops. Beth won't stop crying as Shelby leaves and continues to cry in Quinn's arms. Puck takes her and she settles which can't be good for Quinn's rather fragile ego. Quinn immediately starts placing things around the house to get Shelby in trouble with Child Protective Services. Puck looks uncomfortable and tries to talk her out of it but Quinn is determined to get her baby back.

Kurt takes his West Side Story program to Burt to show off his design skills. Burt likes it but doesn't understand why Kurt is showing him the program at this moment. Kurt explains that he was hoping Burt would purchase ad space to save the show. Burt is confused and then angered when Kurt tells him that the school pulled the funding. 

We next see Burt confronting Figgins about funding the Cheerios which are far more pricey than a musical. Then he announces that he brought his Rotary Club friends and the four of them are funding the musical themselves by buying up full page ads in the program. So, each of them are pitching $500 which is very generous. Burt's got some pull. The musical is funded and everyone is happy but Sue who Burt decides to take head on. He threatens to raise a bunch of cash to make sure she doesn't win and I just gotta say, Burt is kind of rolling in it? Like his house is super nice, he's got a successful shop, he is part of a Rotary Club which I think is for successful business men? My point is, he's carved out a really good life for himself as a small town mechanic so why is that seen as like a failure in Glee's eyes for Finn to end up there? I know this isn't brought up here, I'm just reminded of last episode when Rachel is trying to tell Finn he's better than this. But mechanics are needed and valuable and clearly can be making decent money if that's your marker. Please stop looking down on people who do regular jobs please, is my point. 

We next cut to Rory who is talking on the phone to his "mummy" which is just a choice to have him call his mother. Let's recap this character, shoved in from nowhere, pretending to be a leprechaun to get into Brittany's pants, idolizes Finn for making out with his girlfriend at Nationals, calls his mother "mummy" at 16 years old. Dude, this is not how you write a likable character. Anyway, he's telling his mom that he's making all kinds of friends, then he gets shoved into a locker again. He looks very pouty but brightens when he sees Brittany and presents her with her box of Lucky Charms with only marshmallows in it. No one tell him that they sell boxes of just marshmallows Lucky Charms. Someone do tell Brittany though, so she doesn't get mislead by creepy guys. Brittany asks for her second wish which is utterly revolting. She wants her cat to poop candy bars and apparently fed it nougat and glitter to achieve this. Someone take Lord Tubbington away from Brittany or she'll kill him. Rory seems to move past the fact that this girl wants to eat cat shit and asks her to dinner. Brittany turns him down because she has plans with a friend and says he's not supposed to eat anything but four-leaf clovers anyway. Rory is dejected and launches into, It's Not Easy Being Green which is Kermit's song from The Muppets. I don't know how to feel about this. I don't think it's offensive but it's very...odd and cheesy. Like green because he's Irish? I think they thought they were doing something here but I don't know that I'm enjoying it but that could be because I don't like this character and he's just always awkwardly smiling. I'm sure this guy's a sweety who is always smiling but on camera it comes across as really awkward. 

Santana and Brittany are at Breadstix because Brittany's plans are with her. Santana learns that Brittany thinks that Rory is a leprechaun who grants wishes and confesses that her wish is to be part of Shelby's group and that Brittany would go with her. Brittany doesn't want to be labelled a quitter though because it might damage her campaign. Brittany asks if she can think about it so Santana agrees and they continue their date. Santana wishes that she would hold her hand and they do but while she's happy, she puts a napkin over their hands because she's still nervous about being public. That's actually a nice little touch for her character. They are at least trying to stay consistent now with Santana being nervous about being out.

We next get a monologue from Puck about his pool cleaning business and how he bangs all the housewives which is supposed to be funny but I find incredibly gross. This is a gross plotline and all women who fuck underage kids are disgusting to me. Yeah, Mark is not a kid and doesn't look it but in this show, he is a teenager and the idea is gross and I hate it. Worse, Puck starts talking about Beth to one of the cougars who wants to do him and she gets annoyed and tells him to send in his assistant instead. 

Someone throw that woman in jail now, or at least keep her away from schools

Of course Quinn comes in to be depicted as the harpy who shits on the poor boy's dreams by saying he needs to get a better job. She wants them to get Beth back so he needs more stable income than pool cleaning. She called CPS already and Puck is shocked because I guess he didn't think she'd actually do it. Quinn freaks out about Beth being her perfect thing. The only thing she has going for herself and I get what they're trying to do here but it weirds me out that she's talking about her own baby as a thing. Quinn walks off only for Shelby to approach Puck with a lead on a year round pool cleaning job. Her apartment super has an indoor pool and she could give him Puck's name. Puck is super happy about this and looks like he's feeling bad about Quinn's plan.

Everyone in the glee club celebrates how Kurt's dad basically funded the entire musical, along with his friends from the Rotary Club which means the musical is back on and they don't have to worry about canvassing and selling stuff anymore. This is good because I always hated fundraising for my school. Unless it was chocolate, then I'd just give the box to my mom, she'd take it to work and her coworkers would buy that shit up like it was cocaine. Where was I? Oh yeah, Blaine then gets up to make everything about him and sings Katy Perry's Last Friday Night. Everyone eats it up except for me and Santana who immediately flips out after Rachel suggests the song be used at Sectionals. She complains that this will be the Rachel and Blaine show which is kind of funny because that is exactly a complaint that a lot of people brought up when they learned that Blaine would transfer to McKinley. It seems like the writers spent just as much time on fan forums as we did. Santana's complaints are noted but it's clear she's still on the war path.

Santana confronts Rory about his crush on Brittany and how he's pretending to be a leprechaun. Instead of being horrified that this dope is trying to take advantage of her mentally slow, childlike girlfriend...I hate that I had to write that but it's how Brittany is characterized, she seems to be more jealous? Like don't move in on my girl rather than stop creeping on her, you're being weird? Anyway, she threatens him to grant her a wish.

We next cut to Rory showing Brittany to Lord Tubbington's litter box where he's carefully placed candy bars in there. Brittany is thrilled and proceeds to eat it and I'm sorry but that is fucking disgusting and not funny in the slightest. I might vomit. I don't care that he placed them carefully on top of the litter, the litter itself, has hair in it, urine, fecal matter that might have been left behind by cleaned up poops. Even if we pretend this is fresh litter, that candy is covered in sandy gross dust. I hate it. Rory tells her that Santana knows that he's a leprechaun and she had only one wish, that she leave New Directions for Shelby's group. Brittany is sad because she doesn't want to leave New Directions but she has to because it's a wish that has to come true. This is pretty gross by both Rory and Santana. Honestly, Brittany deserves better than everyone on this show. 

Will goes to Burt's garage to thank him for getting the musical funded. Burt is flattered but is also like, this could have been a phone call. We are all Burt except, it could have been a text. Will gets to the chase and says that someone needs to run against Sue and he thinks Burt should run. Burt is already there and had Carole look into the rules. He's too late to get on the ballot but he can run as a write in candidate and is fully prepared to do so. Will is amazed and wants to be his campaign manager but Kurt's already got that job. Still, Will also agrees to help and they shake on it.

A frazzled Shelby is whirling around her apartment, trying to soothe Beth as she cries when Puck rings her doorbell. He wants to thank her for the pool job but she's clearly distracted by Beth crying. Puck asks if he can use the bathroom and she lets him in. As she tries to calm Beth down, Puck sneaks around the apartment to undo everything that Quinn planted. He then tries to help Shelby with Beth but she's in no mood and asks him to leave. Puck is persistent and decides to sing Beth a song. He sings her Waiting For a Girl Like You by Foreigner. Shelby seems to like it and confesses how hard she's finding single motherhood. Much as she wanted to be a mother, much as she loves it, it's hard doing it alone. Not just because raising kids is hard but in those moments when good things happen and there's no one to share it with too. Puck tells her that he's here for her always and we are fast approaching my most hated trope in teen shows and I hate that it's so prolific that it's a trope, adult/teen relationship.

Rory blabs to Finn about Brittany leaving and Finn immediately confronts Brittany. Santana gets in his face about it and calls him out for his Blaine jealousy. Finn begs them to stay because their club can't handle any more defections but Santana is determined. Brittany feels guilty but she can't go back on a leprechaun wish. Finn yells at her for being so infantile as to believe in Santa and Leprechauns and tells her to stop being an idiot. Brittany does not take kindly to this word, as you'll recall it's the exact word that made her break up with Artie. She says all the boys call her that and he's the leader so he's the worst of them all. Then she calls him out for using a word that's mean and bullying and she will not tolerate it. The fun thing about this is that it's actually a really solid bit of characterization and I get to applaud this show so little for this that I just really want to bask in this. Her determination has weight behind it because we already know she didn't take this crap from Artie, even after he apologized and tried to ask her to prom, she still held firm. Calling Brittany an idiot is a dealbreaker for her. I like this and applaud her for standing up for herself. She runs to Mercedes to catch up and Santana joins them. They ask her who else in their group and Mercedes cheers excitedly that she now has more friends in her group. Good job, Finn. You failed. 

Sue is getting ready for one of her Sue's Corners when she's approached by Rod to tell her that because she's a candidate now, they have to give her new opponent equal screen time. Sue is confused and we cut to Burt who starts to deliver his own speech for the arts and basically tearing all Sue's arguments against the arts in school down one by one. He makes a call to action to write his name in as candidate against Sue. 

Sugar Motta is practicing vocal warm ups by saying things that sound like her name. Mercedes rolls in with Santana and Brittany to which Sugar says are more back up for her. Santana then lays down the law that she didn't leave one diva-driven group to join another. She tells Sugar that she sucks and that she is capable of standing in the back, swaying and singing very quietly. Sugar says she just wants to be on a winning team and Santana says that if she does what she says, she will be. Problem I brought up last week, solved I guess. Nice that Sugar caves so easily when she went out of her way to get daddy to buy her a new group. Does this make sense? Not really but I can buy it since Santana is fierce enough to pull it off. They try to come up with a group name and thus the Troubletones are born. They then launch in to their inaugural song, Candyman by Christina Aguilera. Will and Finn are watching from the audience seats and are suitably nervous because they rocked it.

The girls are well aware of how good they sound, and that they've already won Sectionals. Finn stops their celebration to confirm their greatness and that he understands why they needed to leave even if he's not happy about it. He then apologizes directly to Brittany for calling her an idiot. She accepts his apology as she did for Artie (but didn't take him back because she's a queen). Finn walks away but Rory leaps up to excitedly say that her final wish, not hurting anyone for leaving glee, came true. Brittany says that it didn't come true because Finn looked heartbroken and she knows leprechauns aren't real now and leaves him without his Pot O' Gold. Santana tells him that her final wish is that he disappears and thus we're left to feel sorry for him? I don't. I'm sorry but the correct response to this is "you were taking advantage of someone who believed you were something you weren't to get into her pants." Santana is right to tell him to get bent but it's framed as her being "evil" rather than how it should be that they're both disgusted with him and telling him to go the fuck away. 

Burt and Carole are actually talking with both Finn and Kurt about his decision to run against Sue. If he wins, he's going to do a half in Washington, half in Ohio thing which he thinks should be fine since both he and Kurt are about to graduate high school anyway. He even offers Finn the opportunity to run his shop for him if he wants. This does seem to excite Finn and that's good. I wish the show wouldn't make it seem like all of these kids have to have careers in the arts to be fulfilled or considered successful. Can't any of them just love singing but have different aspirations? That's valid. Anyway, Sue comes up to try to psych Burt out about the race, illustrating Kurt's worries about Burt's heart health. She gives him a meal called a "gutbuster" which implies she's trying to give him a heart attack which is pretty fucking severe and deranged while laying out her new plans. She started running because of her sister and that's what she's shifting to run on now. Proper funding for special needs education at their school since it would be a better use of school funds than, and I quote "...flying the glee club to New York without a setlist, only to lose at Nationals with a song they made up the night before." Fucking THANK YOU! How is Sue the voice of reason on this show when she is so, so psychotic and the VILLAIN of the show. It will never cease to amaze me how awful Sue is yet how right she is when she calls out Will and the glee club. 

Two mullet-haired hockey/football players are bullying Rory and telling him to say U2 is overrated which made me laugh a bit. They are but I'll admit I like some of their stuff. Bono just sucks. Finn interrupts them and scares them off by threatening to tell Coach Bieste. Rory thanks him for being nice in spite of him ruining the glee club and Finn says it's ok because he was just "trying to make friends" Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, is that what we're calling it? Really? Because it was pretty explicit that he did all the leprechaun stuff to get with Brittany. But we can't expect Finn to see toxic behaviour when he's the epitome of toxic, can we? Finn says that he's going to grant Rory a wish.

The remaining glee club members lament their much emptier room and wonder what they'll do for Sectionals. Blaine pipes up to be Mr. Brown-nose McWeiner and says that there's always new talent to be found, right Mr. Schue? I'm sorry, he just bugs me so much. Finn comes in and announces that Rory is going to join Glee which honestly comes as a shock to me because how does he know Rory can and wants to sing? I guess he could have asked between scenes but like there wasn't even a moment where he caught Rory singing to make him think of this idea so it just feels sudden. Let's remember that his It's Not Easy Being Green number was basically a fantasy sequence that didn't happen in the real world and was only meant to inform us of his feelings. Anyway, Rory tells us that he sings every Sunday at mass and that he loves American music. He then launches into an audition song dedicated to his family back home who he misses. It's Take Care of Yourself by Teddy Thompson who, I fully admit I am not familiar with at all. Nor do I recognize the song. It's nice, everyone is blown away by Rory who is solid, I'll give him that much. Kurt is shown being annoyed that Rory can do falsetto which is his territory and I'll say that Rory's falsetto is stronger and much less pitchy than Kurt's but I'm not a super fan of long stretches of falsetto at the best of times. We also get a scene of Puck and Shelby kissing and it is the least appealing thing of all time not only for the context of the show but the fact that Idina is being asked to kiss Mark at all. The fact that they have Idina on and this is the story they give her. Be shitty to your real daughter while trying to form a relationship with the kids you adopted your daughter from and then kissing one of them. Truly, they gave her the worst material.

If I had to see this, so do you

And that was Pot O' Gold. It gets maybe some minor points for very small moments of character consistency which is a low bar for this show to cross but on the whole, another fairly weak episode. The biggest failure is the introduction of Rory because this story did not endear me to him at all. On top of that, I didn't watch the Glee Project so I was not invested in any of the contestants from that show and in terms of winning me over as a viewer solely on the merits of this show and their characters, I would have guessed that Harmony won. Her introduction was amazing, her character popped and her number was a fucking show stopper. That had star quality all over it. This kid got TWO songs and a whole story line dedicated to him and he gave me nothing. One scene and one song from Harmony and I was in love. It's a travesty she didn't win. It's a travesty we didn't get more from her in this show but at least she's got an incredibly strong Broadway career out of this, so I'd say she's the winner regardless. No Glee curse for her and that does make me happy, at least. I mean no shade to Damian, who I'm sure is lovely, but he did not have camera presence and the writing sure didn't do any favours for him. Glee putting edgy humour over good writing and character development was honestly always its biggest detriment. Let's see if they can salvage the mess they're making in the next episode, The First Time.