This week Glee borrowed from the catalog of pop superstar Britney Spears for the second time. Unlike season two’s drug-induced hallucinatory fantasy, this episode is grounded in reality and network tie-ins (watch the real Britney Spears on X-Factor, y’all) but it didn’t work any better than last time. I’m not sure how, but the show made this episode – like its Spears predecessor – boring.
After last weeks overall enjoyable season opener, this week lost its momentum. There was nothing particularly wrong with the episode, but the onslaught of back-to-back-to-back-to-back music numbers somehow sucked all of the interesting out of Glee and the never boring Spears.
The episode begins with a fake Brittany S. Pierce voice-over, but quickly cuts to a Cheerios performance of “Hold It Against Me,” which is actually rather lackluster. Season two’s “Britney/Brittany” somehow managed to be boring and completely off the walls crazy at the same time, but at least the musical numbers were fun. Heather Morris is a stellar dancer, but all of the rapid-fire cuts made it nearly impossible to see her skills in this performance. I always assumed the numerous cuts and close-ups in dance scenes were put in effect to hide some of the more interesting choreography interpretations from cast members with less dance experience. Morris, however, doesn’t need the editing help. Maybe they should have dipped back into fantasy gas land for this one and let her show off her skills again.
Sue agrees that the performance is lacking something and kicks Brittany off the squad for it, and for making the other Cheerios fail their classes by osmosis. She tells her to get her act together and bring her grades up. Kitty’s taking over as head cheerio of the squad. This scene would have been better had Kitty actually been there. It could have established a rivalry between the two and given us a reason to root against the new mean girl at McKinley.
Brittany tries to work out her troubles with Santana (!) via Skype, but she’s too busy with college-level cheerleading business to spend much time on Britt’s high school problems. The scene is way too short, but does include an Oscar-worthy performance from new gang member Lord Tubbington.
