_Echoo_

I wondered where new episode thread was this week...

Frankly I'm sad to hear you're not into the show so much right now, but I guess I can understand why.

The first season was always going to be ridiculously hard to follow, and that hasn't been helped by the writing team getting distracted by extra special Brittney and Rocky Horror eps instead of character development - but when they're not stunt-writing, the show shows it still has bags of charm.

Honestly I don't know how they imagine they'll get five seasons out of this thing; the characters have to graduate at some point! But I'm watching until the end of Season 2, at least. For now, I think they can still steer it right.

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Anyway, my quick review for this week's ep.

The good:

• Puck was sorely missed. And he is a genius.
• Confetti cannons, accompanied by evil laughter.
• Yay for Brittany/Artie!

The bad:

• I didn't believe the Shannon/Will kiss was the least bit genuine on Will's part and I was expecting Coach to call him on that, especially after she just talked about what it is a kiss symbolises. Kinda disappointed in Will, yet again.
• That boys's school where everyone is happy, people can be whatever they like and even glee is cool? That place is such an incredulously convenient solution to Kurt's issues, it's his freaking Hogwarts...

This is one of the things I most admire about The Moff's writing, the pace and density of it. He is very adept at fitting a lot of exposition into a very small number of lines while maintaining the feel of natural banter.

When I saw these episodes on the BBC I was most impressed with the first one. The two that follow, while still very good indeed, don't quite compare to The Moff's flow.

I wasn't interested until this part. That is one heck of an intriguing team up.

Indeed. Seems he likes to play the victim.

As for going along with Brittany's suggestion, I think the typical teenage male desperation to lose one's virginity was a big factor. It may have been sufficient to convince him the moment was 'special' enough, or forget he'd been holding out altogether. I know I've had moments like that.

As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to screengrab it!

Santana's obsession with the place was just hilarious.

The Santana/Mercedes duet was probably my favourite all the great numbers in this episode.

That was brilliant.

Tsoo and Goldbrickers and Carnies and Freaks, for the love of... please!!

I do understand where you're coming from, in that there is an essential difference between the writers' voice and that of the characters and we should not expect teenagers to be the voice of truth or moderation (it would make a very dull drama for one). The show is not a political platform. The writers did demonstrate they had a good grasp of the subject in Sue's dialogue especially.

However, the episode was otherwise quite muddled. If the writers consciously chose to highlight the errors of religious folk then they kinda failed on that front, since who in that episode learned that lesson? There were no notable repercussions in the pro-faith camp, meanwhile Kurt learned he should be more tolerant.

I hasten to add there were parts of the episode I did like. The Grilled Cheesus was quite inspired, Finn's whole plotline was well resolved, and there were some nice subtle moments - Kurt turning to acupuncture for help could be interpreted as a sign of his desperation - but, and maybe I'm just prickly about it, but the atheism stuff stopped me connecting with the weepy stuff at all, so the impact was a bit lost on me.

It was better than last week's ep, for sure.

This isn't the sort of thing I want to start a debate on, but I do want to say something on the matter.

For much of the episode, characters were just pitying Kurt instead of trying to understand him. As if being non-religious is a barrier to either grieving or enjoying life. In a show where most religions are treated respectfully, to put such a huge spotlight on atheism only to pity it, is not respectful and automatically makes it appear to be the least worthy viewpoint.

I felt they pretty much portrayed atheism as a character fault, which is rather patronising and wrong and I found very grating. I mean, Kurt's not supposed to be a perfect ambassador for atheism but everyone else in the room is just shouting him down for voicing a different view.

I am glad Sue at least took Emma to task for that kind of attitude. In fact, that scene pretty much saved the episode for me. Sue's speech was excellent and the part about pushing your faith on a non-believer in a time of crisis, that was spot on.

As BBM said, many people become atheists for different, non-traumatic reasons. As this is a drama show though, I can forgive them taking a small sample size and only finding trauma victims in their atheism pile. Purely logical decisions rarely tug at the heart strings like that...
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Lest we forget:

"I did a book report on heart attacks, if you want to give it to the doctor. It got knocked down an entire letter grade because it was written in crayon."

Mostly, I hope Kurt's dad recovers fully. Burt is great when he's kicking *** for his son, I don't think he'll be nearly as awesome with brain damage.

EDIT: Several edits later, my hastily written response is finally readable... (sorry)