While most high school kids with any outsider status typically dread prom season for the mean girl night of the year it can be, McKinley High’s glee club has been uncharacteristically hopefully anticipating this early rite of socialization into awkward, hetero-normative dress-up events.
My hopes that the school’s hottest resident closet case Santana would come out dancing a slow groove with her true love Brittany to Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You” were dashed in this week’s episode, which didn’t focus too much on Santana as a whole, but here’s my weekly Glee gay re-cap just the same.
Ep. 2:20, Prom Queen, SPOILERS
It’s prom, prom, prom from the start of the episode to the finish, so the first time we see Santana (Naya Rivera) she’s lecturing Lauren (Ashley Fink) – who can’t find the right dress that fits her lovely plus-sized frame – about making her own dress.
“You’re up for queen. You can’t make your own prom dress,” Santana says. “Prom is like our Oscars. It’s seriously like the most important night of our lives…” Santana says without irony. Ten years from now, after Santana’s attended UMASS Amherst and spent her weekends hunkered down in the single bed of some adorable Smith student down the road, Santana will look back at prom and wish she’d spent it popping corn in her Paul Frank pjs and watching season one of The L Word… But that’s another story.
Next up, the glee club gals including Santana, Lauren, Brittany (Heather Morris) and Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) have enlisted their friend and fashionista Kurt (Chris Colfer) to help them pick the perfect prom dress.
Once Kurt’s finished doling out sound advice to Lauren on going with a navy-colored dress Santana pops out in a red-hot number.
“Devil in a red dress… And it’s totally perfect for your personality,” Kurt says. “I have no criticisms. Go with God Satan… Santana,” he says, correcting himself. But Santana is nonplussed by his slip.
Kurt excuses himself so he can pull together his own prom kit. “Wait, so you’re going? Stag? That’s just tragic,” says Santana, the girl who’s going with the school’s closeted reformed bully / jock. But Kurt explains that he is indeed attending prom with the man of his dreams Blaine (Darren Criss). While the girls generally hoot and holler with – ahem—glee for Kurt, Santana does her best judgmental arm fold and pulls him aside under the pretense of having a private fashion question for him.
“So, Kurt… I think you need a full security detail, which the Bully Whips (Santana and Karofsky’s school bully watch group) would be more than happy to provide you with,” she says.
When Kurt asks why she would provide security Santana says, “Because I’ll get sympathy votes for prom queen. I’ll be like the law and order Eva Peron candidate.” And, well, that’s just a very gay sentence coming out of someone who's afraid to come out.
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Later, Santana is clad in her Bully Whips uni – a shiny red jacket and beret – and escorting Kurt safely to class.
“Teen Gay, you may now proceed to the next checkpoint without fear of violence,” Santana says loudly like an Epcot Center walking tour guide.
When Kurt asks why she’s speaking so loudly Santana says, “I’m the law and order prom queen candidate, here to protect every student at this school from harassment…” This law and order bent Santana is on is making me picture Naya Rivera guesting as a rookie cop who learns the tricks of the trade from Det. Olivia Benson onSVU.
Finally, it’s prom night and the New Directions are the prom’s official performers, popping up on stage to perform a trendy pop song or YouTube sensation between love-live drama and the occasional dance.
Brittany, who’s still eschewing Artie (Kevin McHale) after he called her ‘stupid’ for allowing Santana to manipulate her, has gone stag but she’s at the center of the dance floor.
Meanwhile Santana and Karofsky awkwardly attempt to dance off to the side near the punch bowl table.
While Santana and Karofsky continue to dance in the wings hoping no one notices their black hole of sexual chemistry together, loads of insider drama has been occurring during prom.
Rachel (Lea Michelle) belts a ballad ostensibly to Finn (Cory Monteith), who appears to have little interest in the lovely, if not hateful prom queen candidate, Quinn (Diana Agron).
Finn loses his shit when Vocal Adrenaline’s secret weapon, and the man who went undercover to deceive Rachel on behalf of her birth mom, Jesse (Jonathan Groff), gets a little too frisky with Rachel on the dance floor. Coach Sylvester (Jane Lynch) throws the brawlers out on their asses and Quinn melts down that her prom date is out of the running for king.
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After all that’s occurred Principal Figgins taps on the microphone to announce the winners, and Santana is among the hopefuls. She thinks she’s a shoo-in when her date Karofsky is announced as prom king.
“You suck so bad Quinn Fabray. I won,” Santana, the not-so-good sport says. But then comes the kicker that may also be the biggest spoiler of the episode if you’ve been living off the grid with no internet since the story leaked last month.
Santana, and the rest of the New Directions are gob smacked when Figgins announces that the new prom queen is none other than Kurt. While it would seem that Kurt could have just stepped up to be crowned with whoops, hollers and cheers, the deafening lack of applause indicates his election was a intended as a hateful prank.
Kurt runs out into the hall, only to be comforted by Blaine. Quinn slaps the crap out of Rachel in the bathroom accusing Rachel of ruining her prom dreams.
And Santana bemoans her prom queen loss to Brittany.
“How can my running mate win and I didn’t? I mean, just because I hate everybody they don’t have to hate me too,” she says through sniffles.
“I’m going to be an outsider my whole life. Can’t I have just one night where I’m the queen?” she opines.
The Glee creators take this opportunity to do a split screen of Santana and Kurt. As she finishes her sentence Kurt says, “I’m not going back in there,” which overlaps with Santana adding, “where I’m accepted…”
“As soon as we get to New York I’m bailing to live in a lesbian colony, or Tribeca,” Santana tells Brittany, clearing exhibiting some prowess around her knowledge NY neighborhoods.
“They must have sensed I’m a lesbian,” Santana says, pacing. “Do I smell like a golf course?” She asks Brittany. Now, this is at least the third lesbian golfer reference Ryan Murphy and company have made. They are really going to have to work on varying the lesbian stereotypes.
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Leave it to Brittany the flakey oracle to put things into perspective. “They don’t know what you’re hiding. They know that you’re not being yourself,” Brittany says. “If you were to embrace all the awesomeness that you are you would have won.”
“How do you know?” Santana asks.
“Because I voted for you,” Brit says, moving in close like she might kiss her, but alas, Brit and Artie are on the verge of making up. “And because I believe in you Santana.”
“This prom sucks, now what am I supposed to do?” Santana says. Poor Santana. She doesn’t understand that the pressure leading up to prom makes it pretty much certain to suck universally. That’s why punch bowls get spiked. But Brit has advice.
“Go back out there and be there for Kurt, because it’s going to be a lot harder for him than it is for you,” she advises.
Meanwhile, out in the hallway, Kurt wipes away his tears and heads back in to collect his crown. “Eat your heart out Kate Middleton,” he says to cheers!
Figgins announces the prom king and queen’s first dance together… And Kurt suggests it’s Karofsky’s chance to come out and “make a difference,” but no sooner does the gayest song on the planet, “Dancing Queen,” with Santana and Mercedes (Amber Riley) on vocals, starts and Karofsky heads for the hills.
And that’s about it for our little New Directions lesbo for this week. But Nationals is coming up in New York over the course of the final two episodes of the season. Perhaps Santana will break away from the pack and find herself lost and wandering in front of Henrietta Hudson’s during a Jell-O shot happy hour.
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