GLEE Recap: ‘Asian F’

The single most important and momentous occasion in this episode is this: Mike Chang sings! Not to make this about me, but I have been saying ever since they decided to pass him as a primary character that we need to hear Mike Chang sing. I’ve never been able to answer the question “Why should I care about Mike Chang?” He is nice to look at, yes. And when he dances it’s like magic. But he is part of a GLEE club and if I am supposed to believe he is an important part of the Glee club, he has to sing. He doesn’t have to sing well, but he just has to sing. Quinn doesn’t sing particularly well, but she’s had plenty of solos. Even Lauren Zises got a solo for crying out loud. So yes, my wish has finally been granted. And not only that, but his performance far exceeded my expectations.

This new revelation in Mike’s character worked seamlessly with the introduction of his parents and the story of their dreams for him vs. his own. Mr. Mike Chang, Sr. is portrayed very stereotypically – and accurately, in many cases – as an Asian parent who expects their child to be a straight-A student and sees the arts as a distraction and a hobby at most, not a career path. When Mike gets an A- (an Asian F) dad concludes that it’s that darn Glee club taking time and energy away from his studies. Torn between making his parents proud and following his heart, Mike dances it out in an empty rehearsal room. A hallucination of his dad appears to remind him there’s no future in dance. Imaginary Tina appears for a rebuttal. Fueled by his girlfriend’s love for his talent, Mike goes forward with his audition for the musical, instead of going to his chemistry tutor.

“Cool” was the perfect song choice for Mike. It allows him to do a lot of dancing and a bit of small-range singing. During that bit of singing he didn’t just sound okay, he sounded great. It wasn’t like the autotune-heavy Finn recordings of season 1, which frankly is what I was expecting. Later, he also gets a little solo during the DREAMGIRLS number. I’m so proud of our now-singing Chang.

Later, his mom catches him dancing in front of a mirror and asks him what in the heck he’s doing. Busted. He comes clean and tells her the reason he’s been ditching his chem tutoring sessions is that he’s been trying out for “West Side Story.” He says, “I only feel special when I do [jump spins] …that.” It’s all very BILLY ELLIOT. Then Mrs. Chang does the unexpected – encourages him to do what he loves. She tells her son how her parents discouraged her from following her dreams, and she didn’t want to do the same to him. Mike asks her what dream she gave up. She says she too loved to dance, but never got to take lessons. Mike offers to show her a few steps. How presh! I love seeing another supportive parent on the show, and not only does she accept her kid for who he is, she understands first hand his love for performing. Finally there is some substance to the Mike Chang character. It’s all kind of cliché stuff, but at least it’s relevant to real life and now Mike Chang seems more like a human being than a dancing piece of meat.
—
Will and Emma’s relationship continues to move at a snail’s pace. He finds her secret stash of bridal magazines. So, since he doesn’t like secrets, he shows her his secret stash of porn. Then they talk about how despite being far along in the relationship, he hasn’t met her parents yet. Officially the most awkward way to set up a plot.

Will expresses to Coach Beiste how inadequate he feels since Emma doesn’t deem him worthy enough to be introduced to the parentals. Beiste says “Punkin, what the hell are you talking about?” (If you follow Dot-Marie Jones on Twitter, you would have appreciated her calling him “Punkin.”) She tells him he should just introduce himself to them because he’s such a catch that he has nothing to worry about. Nice of Beiste to ease Will’s worry. But no one in their right mind would take that advice literally. Remember when Matthew McConaughey found out Kate Hudson had been talking to his mom before he had even introduced them? Yeah that movie was called “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.”

Mr. William Inappropriate invites Emma’s parents over for dinner behind her back, and she understandably flips out. Will asks her if she’s ashamed of him, but she says it’s the parents she’s ashamed of. They are “ginger supremacists.” I don’t know what it says about me that I was more uncomfortable with Will’s behavior at the dinner table than the characters labelled as something-supremacists, but I was. I don’t care how racist your girlfriend’s parents are. If YOU invited them over to meet them for the first time because you were so insecure about being good enough for your girlfriend, you don’t yell at them. Sure their beliefs are questionable – to say the least – but they didn’t attack him at all, and even commended his German-sounding last name. As for the way they spoke about Emma, parents make passive-aggressive snide comments about their children all the time. That’s what parents do. I didn’t find his calling them out heroic at all. More heroic would have been to gently tell them he doesn’t see anything wrong with her at all, and that he loves her just the way she is, without snapping at them. Or to just keep quiet the whole dinner and apologize to Emma afterwards for inviting them, and be sympathetic with her having to put up with them. His “Fix You” left me longing for the original. Not a huge fan of Matthew Morrisson’s upper register. And I already had a bad taste in my mouth about his story line that the number did nothing for me plot-wise. Except during the instrumental part where the cast list for the musical was being put on the bulletin board: that was the most moving part of the song for me. Needless to say, my heart was warmed the most by Mike’s reaction to having won the role of Riff. I also liked Santana’s “duh, I’m Anita” face.

—

Meanwhile, Mercedes is at it again diva-ing it off with Rachel Berry. All because of FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS’ Tinker, a.k.a. Mercedes’ new boy Shane. Yes, this was all his fault. At the start of the episode, Mercedes even hugged Rachel. Because they’re friends. But Shane has to remind her that this town ain’t big enough for two huge talents. He reminds her about how she wants to be Beyonce and not Effie White. I thought what she always said was she’s Beyonce, and she “ain’t no Kelly Rowland.” Hm. The former statement doesn’t make sense anyway because Beyonce is the actress and Effie is the character. And, if you’ve seen DREAMGIRLS, Effie is the most talented so she SHOULD want to be Effie White. Nobody wants to be Deena. Anyway, Mercedes starts acting straight-up hostile in the name of escaping Rachel’s shadow. When Will scolds her for being late and not learning the dances as quickly as the others, she throws a fit and accuses him of favoring Rachel, then knocks over a music stand and walks out of rehearsal. Will threatens that if she walks away, she is out of Glee club for good.

This leads to the strange fantasy-musical scene “It’s All Over.” It wasn’t all horrible. Parts of it were exciting. Vocally, Mercedes and Santana absolutely killed it. I liked Finn and Mike’s short parts in it. However, Kurt’s part was not the greatest display of his voice, nor was Puck’s. And lyrically it was just confusing. With some songs, it’s easy to forgive when lyrics don’t match up exactly to what’s going on in the story as long as the general theme or mood fits. But it’s difficult to forgive in this case because this song is very plot specific to Dreamgirls: they call all the characters by name, and talk about specific events in the story. For the show, they elected to change some lyrics, but leave others. Everyone calls Mercedes “Effie,” but in response she calls them by their actual name: “Mr. Schue,” “Puck,” “Finn,” etc. They added a lyric about Brittany running for president. But they leave in Puck singing “Cool it, Effie. Just take the money and run.” What money? And Mercedes sings to Kurt and Finn “I always knew you two were together.” WHAT? In theory, it seems to be the perfect song to express Mercedes feeling abandoned or ganged up on by the others, but unfortunately it just didn’t work. Also, to me this song has always been the lead-up to “And I Am Telling You,” so it felt strange without it following directly after. It’s too bad they already used the song earlier in the series, because it may have redeemed this scene. Eh, maybe not.

Mercedes also auditions for the role of Maria, first with “Spotlight” — a song that I’ve always felt fails to highlight the greatness of Jennifer Hudson’s voice, and what I feel fails Amber Riley in the same way. But the audition went very well, and creates quite a pickle for the musical directors who thought Rachel was a shoe-in for the role. Both are asked to audition again, this time with a head-to-head diva-off. They both sang “Out Here On My Own” beautifully. I think they sang it equally well. But Rachel, uncharacteristically, thinks Mercedes did better than her. She already accepts defeat in her mind for the role of Maria, and without missing a beat, clamors to find some other way to make her senior year special. She decides to run for class president, against her current BFF Kurt. This doesn’t sit too well with Kurt, for obvious reasons, and it seems it will cause a rift between them. Even after Rachel learns that she gets the part of Maria, since Mercedes refused to share the role with her, she continues to run for president anyway. And Finn seems turned off by the whole thing too. Dammit, Tinker, see all the relationships you’re screwing with?

What else happened?

• Brittany led all the girls in school to “Run The World.” Beyonce she is not. But I must say that was quite a pep rally.
• Klaine has a moment here and there. It seems that Kurt is happy for Blaine for winning the part of Tony. If he’s jealous, he’s not showing it.
• The absence of Quinn, Puck and Shelby was criminal to me. In last week’s episode, they finally revisited the “Beth” storyline and I couldn’t get enough of it. I was hoping to get more glt, but I suppose they are saving it for next week.

I give an A+ to the Changs, a D for Wemma, a C+ for Mercedes. So I guess Asian F gets a B- from me.

One final note: When the football team asked Beiste how the heck they were supposed to learn how to dance in a couple days, all I could think about was all the other times they’ve learned a dance on short notice. Hello! “Single Ladies?” “Thriller/Heads Will Roll?” This should’ve been cake for them.

What did you think of Asian F? Did you like Mike Chang’s singing? Did anyone notice that Sue Sylvester was not in this episode at all? (It took me a while.)