SNeaker

That the newbies were carbon copies (aka inferior versions) of the originals and she, like most of us, couldn't see them as anything else.

I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, what?!? You don't think there's anything to connect about the fact that Jake cheated on his girlfriend (whom he couldn't deal with not putting out) and almost got the girl he cheated with pregnant and Puck cheating with his best friend's girlfriend and actually getting her pregnant? Nothing? No parallel? So they made slight tweaks to the characters so they weren't exactly the same. Marley wanted to be a recording artist while Rachel wanted Broadway and Puck was a bully while Jake was a dancer. So I guess they were nothing alike and in no way fulfilled the same archetype despite the dozens of other things they had in common and blatant parallels on the show. Brittany also thinks Kitty is Quinn. Do you think she's racist against hot blonde cheerleaders? Oy va voy, a self-hating hot blonde cheerleader...

Marley and Rachel were both doe eyed brunettes who were bullied in part because of their "embarassing" parents. They had no friends but big dreams and were treated as the show's romantic leads. Granted, Marley had all of the personality of a wet dishrag and could not be compared to Rachel, but the archetype was the same. She was introduced and shown off in an episodes literally called "The New Rachel." Jake and Puck -- let's see, both guitar playing, womanizing bad boys with chips on their shoulders and abandonment/daddy issues who had to be convinced to join Glee Club and were all about sex. One got his best friend's girlfriend pregnant while the other one cheated on his girlfriend for not putting out (and I believe had a brief pregnancy scare as well?) And they literally have the same last name. Unique/Mercedes -- sassy black divas. Brittany couldn't tell them apart. Ryder -- all American jock boy who's bad at school. Taken under Finn's wing. Ryan Murphy admitted it, so I'm not really sure what there is to deny here.

. Who the heck says that? Finn had many (frustratingly unacknowledged) flaws, but not being a good friend to Puck wasn't one of them.

Mark was definitely live on the first tour. I was there, and you could tell. Pretty sure he lipsynced the second tour -- it was exactly the same every time, and it would have been very hard for him to sing live with the whole walking from one stage to the other bit.

So, just to be clear, your view is that no white students should have been allowed to play any of the Puerto Rican characters in the High School production of West Side Story? I guess it's a good thing McKinley never put on a production of Fiddler On the Roof. (And yet I do recall people taking offense when it was suggested that Santana didn't quite fit the role of an awkward nebbishy Jewish girl.)

Seriously. Santana and Mercedes fighting over that would have made tons more sense. It's a great part they're equally suited for. Though it would have messed with the Troubletones storyline.

So, wait, which is it, are we all for colorblind casting, or should white kids in a predominantly white midwestern school be banned from playing Puerto Ricans in a High School production of West Side Story? I went to an all-girls school, and I played men all the time because we kind of had to have girls playing boys, ya know? It's High School. Listen, in the real world I think it's important to be sensitive when it comes to casting, and I am all for it being colorblind (or genderblind), but I don't think Mercedes vs. Rachel for Maria had anything to do with white vs black, especially since the character was neither. The size thing...potentially. But I don't think Mercedes did anything to prove she could play a character like Maria, which is perhaps a failing of the writers who may have given her a more appropriate audition song. That said, if someone told me I had to cast Maria and could have either Lea or Amber, I'd choose Lea simply because her wide-eyed persona fits the part (and because she's a much better actress -- it ain't just about the singing.) I also think it's not a very good part. But I would happily cast Amber in a number of roles that are generally given to skinny white girls. I think she'd make a great Maureen in Rent, for instance. Also, Puck, who is Jewish in a predominantly Christian town, does kind of know what it's like to be a minority.

But that was how Mercedes tried out. And in fact, that's what they noted about her, that she had this newfound confidence and power about her. If Mercedes had sung something like "Getting Married Today" and tried out with a song closer to a Maria style and done well, I would have said "Wow, she showed a different side of her, she deserves the part." Rachel sang an actual song from the show. Also, I wasn't referring to personal naivete in their own lives as they would obviously be playing roles, but Rachel to me could pull off that wide eyed naivete and hope and dreaminess that Mercedes has thus far never displayed.

Or maybe they saw Maria as more than just a "Puerto Rican immigrant" and were focused on her being a young, naive, curious, sweet, romantic girl who gets swept away by love. It's not like racially Mercedes is any closer. It was a stage production in a public high school in the midwest.

I don't really care about this one since I have no plans to watch, but as for Queen songs on Glee, I thought "Another One Bites the Dust," "We Are The Champions," "Fat Bottomed Girls," and "Bohemian Rhapsody" were all excellent. That last one especially was one of the best sequences on the show ever, with the intercut VA performance and Beth's birth, and "Champions" will forever be the last group number with all the originals, so I have a soft spot for it.

Current regulars or past regulars, though?

Certainly not, but I also don't think he was completely dehumanized, which is where I think some of this dissension is coming from. Those of us who enjoyed the rant just thought it was an epic, funny Santana rant and moved on. We weren't like "Yeah, take that, Kurt you suck, I hate you, I wish you would die." Which is why, as Ceeg said, some take issue with the implication that anyone who enjoyed it is a "bully or homophobic or whatever." Or that it's about who you do or don't ship or stan for, since I personally like Santana and Kurt about the same and don't care for Brittana. I mean, the stuff she said wasn't that kind of pinpointed "twist the knife, get him right where it hurts" stuff that she used on Finn or Rachel in the past. It was too over the top to be that. I mean, "your strange obsession with old people that causes you to skulk around nursing homes like one of those cats that can smell cancer?" "Maybe he got tired of watching you drape yourself on every piano you happen past to entertain exactly no one with. Say some song that Judy Garland choked on her tongue in the middle of, or some sassy old Broadway standard made famous by dead alcoholic crump?" The dance move "where you pretend to twirl to invisible rainbow-colored ribbons attached to your hips" Lol, whut? I mean, that shit is funny because it's so ridiculous. These are Kurt's deepest darkest insecurities? I think not. I think Kurt is a big boy, and he can and has faced a lot worse than that. It can't even feed into insecurity about Blaine because her entire premise is flawed seeing as Kurt is the one who broke off the engagement.

I can remember a number of pointed Santana insults referencing Rachel's Jewishness ("Israeli Pippi Longstocking" or some such, among others), and speaking as a Jewish woman, I never found them offensive so much as hilarious and don't consider Santana anti-semitic for them. Sometimes you just gotta have a sense of humor about yourself, which I think both Kurt and Chris do. Those insults were pretty classic Santana and came off more like "Dude, don't mess with Santana, you know what you're gonna get" than her bullying him or being homophobic. Glee has used this kind of humor from the start; it has never changed and never will. I didn't enjoy it so much because I thought Kurt deserved a smackdown but because it was just a massively epic rant (and the longer it went on the more I laughed, just because the fact that she kept going and going made it even funnier) that for once was directed at someone who had actually provoked her. And her delivery wasn't even that nasty, nor did Kurt look hurt so much as annoyed.

I notice they haven't shared a word of dialogue since becoming a couple, which is probably because the writers are well aware they'd have absolutely nothing to say to each other that isn't basically terrible, and the characters have no rapport, imo. The only way to sell them as a couple is to just show them looking pretty in the background. That said, there was really no reason for Puck to be in the episode at all, apparently, and it's especially glaring in an episode with a major Beiste plot. It would have been very easy to, ya know, not have him be there since of all the characters it makes the most sense that he'd have to take off. I mean, get dat money, Mark, but really, what the hell?

I don't hate Kurt at all, and I thought it was funny. I don't always approve when Santana crosses the line from funny mean into mean mean (especially when it's unprovoked), but this to me wasn't one of those times. And it certainly doesn't make me want to pile on Kurt -- if anything, I like Kurt a lot more when the show is willing to poke fun at him rater than taking him so Seriously.

Well, to me it's more like the dark, un-PC comedy of Season 1 that I miss so much, but we all have our perspectives.

I didn't watch the episode, but someone linked me to the rant, and this might actually be my favorite Santana line ever. Well...definitely in the top 5.

She's 4 or 5 and living with her mother, Shelby

Really. I never understood that either, it also would have given them a reason to head to NY. Pretty much the answer to any and all questions about Glee, but particularly their blindness when it comes to potential storylines in New York is "because the writers are dumb."

And Puck is in the episode for apparently no reason at all. Normally I'd complain, but I wouldn't want him anywhere near that trainwreck, so, take it away, Sam.

It occurs to me that Mr Bad Attitude Gay Jock would have made a better and more believable younger brother for Puck. Sweet, babyfaced Jacob never really worked as a womanizing bad boy the way they did it, but if they'd made him a gay jock and therefore ambivalent about Glee for that reason, it might have worked better and created a more interesting dynamic as well as a more interesting character.

Or maybe they chose that edit because they thought it was funny. Personally, I enjoyed the unscripted moments like that, Dianna cackling when Chord bumped into her, and Naya and Mark laughing at each other far more than most of the scripted stuff, which was inoffensive but nothing special.

It's not like they talked about it in this episode and Puck had no reaction. (I didn't watch the first one at all and assume the exposition about the old newbies was in that one.) Presumably Puck would already know about what had happened to Jake when it happened. Jake and the Jake/Puck relationship were extremely disappointing, but in this case it doesn't really mean anything. I'd rather see Puck in pink than in that dress uniform again. It would have been lovely and special to see him in it once or twice for special occasions, but making him walk around in it all the time is ridiculous. Why can't they let him wear jeans and a goddamn bomber jacket?

Honestly, that lasted for such a short time, happened so long ago, had no reaction from Rachel, and just seems like a non-issue to me. No worse than Rachel getting with Sam who's literally been involved with every woman she knows.