Glee, S3 Ep18

Please stop with the PSAs. This is one of the most painful things Glee has taken up this year: a constant need to be teaching us a lesson . . . because apparently this isn’t a comedy anymore, it’s an after school special. Look, writers. The bullying storyline worked (at least up until the unearned and unbelievable redemption) because you took time with it. It was a story you built up over a season, not something you rushed to fit into one of the 3-4 plotlines in a 44-minute episode. You earned that storyline. But these one-off, shoehorned-in stories that you’ve been throwing at us this year (teen suicide, the dangers of texting while driving)? It’s just disgusting, because it feels like you’re just throwing darts to see what Extra Special Topic you should discuss this week. So please just stop it.

But we liked Cooter...

This week’s item off the dart board was Domestic Violence in the Beiste/Cooter home. Because as if it wasn’t random enough that they got married seemingly out of nowhere, now it’s time to destroy the marriage out of nowhere! After Santana makes some really awful jokes about Cooter beating Beiste when she comes in with a shiner, Roz and Sue take it upon themselves to educate the girls about domestic violence and how it’s not a laughing matter. Which it isn’t, but I still don’t think Glee is the show that should be teaching us this lesson.

In a wonderful misunderstanding of the directions, the girls do a truly awesome, but horribly tasteless, cover of “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago. I’m just happy Santana got to be the one to deliver the line “And then he ran into my knife, he ran into my knife ten times.”

After she runs out of the room in the middle of the performance, it’s time for this shit to get real, because Cooter apparently hit Beiste. This is not cool. I’m with Sue, she needs to get the heck out of there. If he does it once, he will do it again. And as much as I hate this whole storyline, it’s hard not to feel it because Dot-Marie Jones is amazing . . . though I can’t help but feel like this was the “Please Give Her An Emmy” storyline, which is annoying. Still, she is awesome and I’d love to see her win one.

Beiste tells the ND girls what happened, and says she’s getting out. Later, while Santana, Tina and Mercedes sing her a gorgeous version of Florence and the Machine’s “Shake It Out” with Sugar and Brittany sitting there for stage dressing, we get flashes of Beiste and Cooter together for dinner, and he thanks her for giving him another chance. This of course means we’re not done with this storyline. Fan-freaking-tastic.