Glee: Extraordinary Merry Christmas

What Happened, Yo!:

-It's Christmas time and the New Directions are decorating and singing and stuff.
-Rory is homesick because his family can't come out to see him for Christmas. He sings a sad song about it, but the group finds it too depressing.
-They decide they want to have a much happier Christmas than last year (Which wasn't as depressing as they want you to think.)
-Sue has decided to give something back, after a rather hard year by helping out at the local homeless shelter and wants the Glee Club to come spread Glee to them. They decide to do it.
-Sam bonds with Rory over homesickness and decides to be his Holiday Sponsor, showing him the spirit of Christmas in the west.
-A local network has lost the rights to the yuletide log and needs an hour to fill, so the Station Manager (who saw Sectionals) wants the Glee Club to put on a holiday special.
-Artie is chosen to direct and he wants to pay homage to the greatest holiday special of all time (The Star Wars Holiday Special) and shoot it in black and white like The Judy Garland Christmas Special.
-Artie wants to keep the tone light and make it all about fun.
-The club learns that Sue's homeless thing is the same night as the special. They're a bit regretful about it, but they want to be on TV. Sam and Quinn decide to help Sue though.
-The Special comes on and it's two acts worth of songs, bad jokes, and black and white goodness.
-Towards the end, Rory shows up as Itchy the Christmas Elf, and reads from the Christmas story, reminding them the true spirit of what the holiday is about.
-With the special being cut short by a last second agreement with the Yuletide Log people anyways, the newly enspirited Glee Club goes to the homeless shelter (which they were still hoping to do anyway) and helps out with a song.
-Meanwhile, Rachel gives Finn an approved list of things she wants him to get her for Christmas.
-When he sponsors a South African Pig for her, she rejects the gift, so he agrees to get her something else.
-After their experience with the special, Rachel accepts the gift of the pig, but Finn has gotten her two additional gifts: a star named Finn Hudson (because there's already a star named Rachel Berry.) and beautiful earrings.
-Rachel is overwhelmed and decides she has too much good in her life, so she and Finn go volunteer with Sam, Rory, and Salvation Army.
-Happy Holidays!

I Liked This...: Extraordinary Merry Christmas packed a whole lot of holiday cheer into it. I'm a sucker for Christmas songs and lots were packed into this episode (Arguably a little too much, but we'll talk about that shortly.), which I mostly enjoyed. There was also the typical amount of entertaining lines and such. What mainly worked for the episode though was the special itself. A perfect parody of cheesy Christmas Specials, I was delighted by every minute of it. Really, if the special took up the whole episode, I would be giving this Glee an extremely high grade. I'm also glad that the show is following up on Artie's directing dreams, which were kind of brushed to the side for most of the West Side Story Arc.

But...: With 9 songs in this episode, Extraordinary Merry Christmas felt a little overstuffed. They definitely could've cut one or two songs out and fit in a little more plot. And while I could appreciate the main message of the episode (Help others less fortunate than you. Especially at Christmas), it kind of felt generic and tacked on, like the writers couldn't think of a good plot outside of the special, so they dug into a metaphorical book of old Television Stand-By's. Not saying that promoting helping the less fortunate this time of year is a bad thing. Just wishing it could've been handled in a more creative way.

Warning: Some viewers of Glee may have never heard of The Star Wars Holiday Special. So when Artie talks about it being the greatest holiday special of all time, they may have taken that to heart and attempt to search it out. Do not by any means watch The Star Wars Holiday Special. It is awful. Sometimes so bad it's good, and there is one cool sequence with Boba Fett, but that is no reason to watch it. Trust me. Once you watch The Star Wars Holiday Special, you can never go back to that blissful period of unawareness. So Do. Not. Watch.

The Bottom Line: Despite relying on some old Stand-Bys to do it's storytelling, and despite promoting the Star Wars Holiday Special, Glee delivers a very gleeful Christmas episode this year to end the year on a nice note. Hopefully the show can get even better in 2012.

Grade: Awesome! (Good)

Memorable Moments

-Random Plot Point Reference/Re-Emergence Alert: Last year's Christmas episode is referenced in the beginning and we finally find out what happened to Artie's magic legs: they broke the next day.
-Best Musical Number: Hard to pick. I like most of these songs. Probably All I Want For Christmas Is You. Or maybe Let It Snow.
-Worst Musical Number: My Favorite Things, simply because I'm not sure how that's a Christmas Song in any sense of the word.
-This Week In Semi-Offensive Jokes I Found Hysterical: Station Manager: "I am absolutely delighted that our network's Christmas Special is being directed by a teenage disabled boy. You're like a modern day Tiny Tim. (Artie wheels around and looks at him.) Oh. I am sorry. Tiny Tim could walk."
-Also, where was Sugar? I took her presense with Mercedes and company at the end of last episode as a sign that she was joining New Directions, but she was a no-show this week. I noticed her in the promo for January's Yes/No, so where was she this week?
-Best part of the special. Blaine (To Finn and Puck): "Say, are you dressed as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo?" Finn: "No. That's copyright infringement. Any resemblence to Star Wars Characters is completely coincidental".