Glee: Learning to Fly
Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands?
Closed your eyes and trust it, just trust it?
Have you ever thrown a fistful of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, “I just don’t care”?
Many of the characters in “The Untitled Rachel Berry Project” do just that: make a choice to trust themselves. Rachel pursues the pilot on her terms even if it means questioning a well-known writer, Blaine risks June turning him to driftwood so he can make the showcase what he wants, Mercedes risks her relationship with Sam.
Of course everyone has another person causing them to doubt what their instincts are telling them to do. Mary’s telling Rachel what will make a strong pilot, while June tells Blaine what will make a strong showcase. Charlie’s pressuring Sam to give in to her. In all cases the characters are caught in a bind between wanting to move forward and achieve their dreams, and wanting to be true to themselves or their relationships. “You’re the star of the show,” says Kurt to Rachel, about Mary’s plans for the television script, “but you have to trust your instincts, not hers.”
Everyone’s trying to act on their instinct to fly (and there are plenty of birds in this episode, from Blaine’s pigeons to the birds flying across Sam’s shirt as he plays video games).
“What do you think it’s like to fly for the first time?” Kurt asks Blaine. “I mean, here you are up in this nest, the only home you’ve ever known, and even though your DNA and millions of years of evolution are telling you that if you jump you won’t hit the ground like a stone, you never really know.” During the showcase, June echoes this sentiment as she sings, “There’s nothing to be sure of!”
There’s plenty of uncertainty to go around. Mercedes and Sam seem aware that this could be it for them—they don’t know what’s in store for their relationship. Rachel seems aware, even though she wants to come back to Broadway, that this pilot means a world of unknowns. And even though Kurt and Blaine worked through another fight and are living together again, even that stability isn’t set in stone. As Kurt says, all you can do is get up each morning and make a choice to trust that the people around you will have your back.
This is a light response, but it’s one I’d had in draft form and never got back to. I’m planning to write about season six, and it bugged me too much to not have an actual post about 5×20. One thing I didn’t work into this was the ridiculous amount of baked goods in the episode, from Mercedes’ platter of cupcakes to Mary picking at a doughnut (or stuffing her bra with one) to June and her Babycakes for Blaine.
