Glee: Mattress
November 13th 2010 00:35
With yearbook photos coming up and sectionals only a week away, Will (Matthew Morrison) joins fellow teachers Emma (Jayma Mays) and Ken (Patrick Gallagher) for lunch in the teacher’s lounge. Ken’s eating healthier so he can lose weight for the pictures and look “smokin’ hot” for the wedding (no longer in Hawaii seeing as how Emma couldn’t bring her own fruit) a week from Saturday. Will looks up. “But Sectionals are a week from Saturday.” “Oh man,” Ken says, feigning disappointment, “looks like you won’t be able to make it M&M.” Emma stops eating. She totally forgot about Sectionals. She really wanted to be there. For the kids, of course…Sue (Jane Lynch) walks in and Emma spots her black eyes. “Oh my gosh. Sue? Did someone finally punch you?” She tells them that every year when the yearbook photos come around she has a little work done. “And while they were in there I told them to yank out those tear ducts. Wasn’t usin’ ‘em anyway.”
She points out that she’s got all those trophies, and magazine write-ups, “But for the rest of you educators, these yearbook pictures are really the only concrete proof that anything you’ve done in your sorry little lives has made any difference whatsoever.” She’s got her Cheerios on a yam diet. “Brings out the water.” Will says that his kids are probably excited too, but Sue just answers, “Oh the Glee kids don’t get a photo.” She had a talk with Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba), and what with all the vandalism of the Glee Club photos over the years, she convinced him that putting the Glee Clubs in this year’s Thunderclap was “subjecting the little freaks to more humiliation and ridicule.” Emma sticks up for Will’s kids, pointing out that it’s so not fair, and Will tells Sue to stop with the pointless vendetta already! Why can she just accept that his kids are going to take Sectionals this year? “That’s not gonna happen,” she answers simply, then “You three are boring me now. I’m gonna go do something else.” Sue leaves.
In the choir room, Kurt (Chris Colfer) dumps past Thunderclaps on the piano and tells them that based on his investigation, a yearbook photo, “would only fuel the flames of anti-Glee Club terror.” He shows them past Glee Club photos that have been defaced and tells them about the not so great fates of the kids in them. Will walks in and gives them his word that this year’s Thunderclap is going to have a photo “with every one of your smiling faces” in it.
Going to Principal Figgins, Will demands that the Glee Club kids get up in front of everyone no matter what they think about them and sing, and that they deserve a photo. Figgins says he’ll give him one for $1,000. Whoa! That’s a lot of money! Ok, what about a quarter page? Figgins pulls out his calculator and adds it up. $325 That’s still a lot of money. Rachel suddenly appears and threatens bringing in her dads and the ACLU if they don’t get a Glee photo, and Will quickly interrupts, assuring her that they’re in the yearbook. She stops her rant and grins, thanking Principal Figgins and heading out.
“Make fun of me if you want,” she thinks later walking down the hall, “but school pictures are everything to me. They’re great practice for getting photographed by the Paparazzi.” In order to do so, she joins every possible club she can and practices her different poses in each of them. She’s proudest to be in Glee though, so they better have a picture!
In the library, Quinn (Dianna Agron) flips through the Cheerios pictures in past Thunderclaps and is suddenly determined that she WILL be back on the squad whether Sue Sylvester likes it or not.
At home that night, Will asks his wife which tie looks the best with his shirt. “You’re blocking the TV Will,” she answers, and he asks her again, “I need your help. School pictures are coming up.” She glances distractedly at his ties and tells him to go with the red one for the teacher photo and the green one for the Glee Club. “It’ll pop more with the cool kids deface it,” she finishes. “Yeah,” he answers, putting down the ties, “I wanted to talk to you about that.” He tells her about not getting a Glee Club photo this year and that he feels really bad for the kids. They’ve worked so hard. He sits down on the couch next to her and starts massing her feet as he tells her that he’d like to buy the photo himself. Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) immediately puts him down. She makes him feel even worse by telling him that that money goes into food that goes right into their baby. He reminds her that they have a few hundred dollars left over from selling the Blue Bomber 2, but she vehemently tells him, “The answer is no, Will. No”
“But—“
“No!” She tweaks his nose. “No.”
Will sighs.
The next day at school, Will rights a check despite his wife’s demands, and hands it over to Figgins. He pauses a moment and asks if the principal could wait until Thursday to cash it. Figgins shakes his head yes, taking the check.
Will enters the choir room with the great news. They get a photo! The kids look at each other. Oh yay… He tells them since they only get a ¼ page though, they’re going to have to vote on two team captains. He seems to be the only one other than Rachel who’s excited. When the kids vote, they nominate Rachel. When they vote, “looks like everybody voted for Rachel,” Mr. Schue announces, reading the votes. “Including Rachel.” Nobody else wants to step up as co-captain.
After wearily telling Emma that the kids still think of themselves as losers, and that no one will step up, he mentions the fact that he kind of thinks Ken picked the date for their wedding so she wouldn’t be able to go to Sectionals. Why would he do that? He hints that Ken doesn’t like their relationship, and Emma tells him that, despite all of Ken’s many flaws, he’s still kind and good with kids, and she’s marrying him. Will apologizes. “You’re right, I was out of line…It won’t happen again.”
Mr. Schue enlists the help of Rachel to try to get a co-caption, after all, she has so many great ideas why shouldn’t she have help pushing them through? Good point. Rachel seeks out her fellow Glee-clubbers, none of who agree to co-captain with her, and finally talks Finn into it. To help him get ready for the picture, she sings with him, coaching him how to smile. Everything seems to be going great…until picture time arrives. And Finn doesn’t show. After being teased mercifully by his football “friends”, he just can’t go through with it.
Tearfully, Rachel forces herself not to think about it, and takes the picture by herself. When the photographer snaps a few pictures and is done, Rachel jumps up. Wait! She still has more poses to do! He tells her he’s got to get going to go film a commercial, he just does these school pictures for the money, and suddenly Rachel starts to cry. Panicking, the photographer tells her he can take a few more. Rachel stops crying, telling him that she can cry on demand. “And aside from nudity and the exploitation of animals, I’ll pretty much do anything to break into the business.” Okay…she seems talented and all, “but I need, like, a bunch of other actors too.” Rachel’s eyes light up . “I can help with that.”
Walking into the choir room, Rachel announces that even though they all think of Glee Club as a joke, she’s gone out and landed them their first big break. They’ve all been cast in a local commercial. “Hold on to your hats…and get ready to sell…some mattresses!” Everyone is excited. Artie’s (Kevin McHale) already planning on getting some new suspenders.
After running through the, uh, “great” script about losing their jobs at the factory, Rachel politely tells the owner of the mattress place that they’re a Glee club. The script is brilliant and all, but maybe they should perform. “Perform the lines,” the photographer/producer tells her, “As I wrote them.” But the owner wants to hear more. What does she have in mind? They end up performing “Jump” while jumping and singing on the mattresses, and they’re a big hit. “Come on down to Mattress Land!”
Searching for his pocket square, Will calls out to his wife if she knows where it is. Terri doesn’t answer. He continues the search, opening drawers and rifling through clothes, and suddenly finds something unexpected…Terri’s fake pregnancy pad. He stares at it a long moment, then takes it into the kitchen. “A pocket square’s gonna make you look like Ted Knight,” she mutters, stirring the food on the stove.
“Terri?” he asks, holding up the pregnancy pad. “What is this?”
She looks up and does a very good job at covering her surprise by telling him that it’s just a pregnancy pad, that her sister stole it for her so she could see how she’d look in maternity clothes. Will’s not buying it. When Terri walks over to take it from him, he lifts it out of the way. “Pick up your shirt.”
“Will, no.”
Furious, Will throws the pregnancy pad, knocking it into the shelf above the stove. “Pick. Up. Your shirt.” He starts towards her and she tells him he’s scaring her. “Think about what you’re accusing me of. Think about it and turn around and go find your pocket square.” He grabs her arm, backing up against the counter and slowly lifts her shirt. Will finally finds out the big secret. His wife has been lying to him this whole time. She’s not pregnant, but faking it.
Crushes, Will rips off the pregnancy pad, tears in his eyes as he asks, “Why did you do this to us? I don’t understand!”
“I thought you were leaving me!” She insists that he’s different, that he’s pulling away from her, and when he asks, “Why, because I-I started standing up to you? Tried to make this a relationship of equals?” She blames the Glee Club, telling him that ever since he started it, he’s been walking around like he’s better than her, and he argues, “I should be allowed to feel good about myself!”
“Who are we kidding, Will?” she cries. “This marriage works because you don’t feel good about yourself!”
“This marriage works because I love you. Because I’ve always accepted you, good and bad.”
She argues that she’s not that girl anymore, that she really did think she was pregnant, and when she found out she wasn’t, she panicked.
“This is insane,” he cries. “What were you gonna do when the due date came?” She tells him about Quinn. That’s the last straw. “I loved you Terri,” he answers, broken. “I really loved you.”
Desperately trying to stop him from leaving, Terri babbles on about how he could still love her, but Will leaves. Terri stares at the door. She’s really messed up this time.
Devastated, Will grimly drops his bag, pillow, and blanket on his school desk. Suddenly he notices a big stack of mattresses in the other room and a thank you note from Mattress Land. Will pulls off the top mattress and opens it, flopping it onto the floor. He stares down at it silently, highlighted by the light from the choir room.
Sue finishes up her Sue’s Corner on the News that night, asking all the “fatties and uglies” to stay home the Friday after Christmas to give her eyes a rest, and on her way out, she freezes at the sound of a familiar voice. What’s Rachel doing here? She spins around and spots the mattress commercial on the monitor.
The next day at school, Sue uses her new knowledge to disqualify the Glee Club. Their little commercial put them out of amateur status. Will can’t believe she could be that cruel, and is further broken when he realizes it’s his fault his kids will be disqualified. Even though he didn’t know they were doing the commercial, he was the one who slept on the mattress. Figgins apologizes, but there’s nothing he can do. “Glee Club is over.” Sue leans down over Will, relishing in her triumph and enunciating, “It’s over!” Will doesn’t answer, sitting silently with his head in his hand.
“VICTORY” Sue writes in bold letters across the whole top page of her Journal. “Dear Journal,” she writes, “I’ve finally gotten Will Schuester and that Glee Club out of my hair. This is a day that will live in infamy. Once again, I’ve won!”
“Miss Sylvester.” Hearing about what Sue’s done, Quinn finds the cheerleading coach in her office and, after demanding to be back on the team and deciding she didn’t want to be part of a team that didn’t want her, that she’d rather be part of a group that appreciated her, like Glee, Quinn threatens to tell Principal Figgins about all the free stuff the Cheerios have gotten over the years. She’s pretty sure if he finds out Sue will be disqualified. Even more so, Quinn tells her she’s giving up one of the SIX cheerleading photos to the Glee Club. Sue studies her ex-cheerleader, telling her she’d forgotten how ruthless she’d taught her to be. She reminds her of a young Sue Sylvester.
Sitting in Emma’s office, Will laments, “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t slept on that mattress, we could have just returned them and moved on.”
“Can I give you some advice?” she asks gently, and he answers, “Please.” He’s in desperate need of some right now. “You need to give yourself a break,” Emma tells him. “You’ll figure out what to do with the kids, you always do, but I think right now you need to focus on your own life. I mean, divorce is a big deal.”
He looks at her confused. “Who said anything about a divorced?”
Whoops. “I’m so sorry, I just assumed, that’s…”
“Is that what you’d do?” he asks, and she tells him that after she heard what Terri did, “oh gosh, I thought there should be some sort of law.” But then she thought about it some more, “about what I’d do if I felt you slipping away…”
“You would never be that cruel,” he says softly, and she agrees that whereas Terri’s methods were very wrong, she understands why she did them. Emma looks at him. “You’re a lot to lose Will.”
Back in the choir room, Will tells the kids that they’ve worked too hard not to get their shot. He’s been disqualified, not them. “He’s taking the bullet for us,” Puck realizes. “Solid.” They’re all sad that Mr. Schuester isn’t going to get to go with them to Sectionals. They don’t believe they can win without him. Finn isn’t convinced they can win WITH him. “That’s not true,” Will tells them. “You guys are good, really good. Y-you did Jump without me for that commercial right?” Walking around his kids, he adds, “Look, the best teachers don’t give you the answers. They just point the way and let you make your own choices, your own mistakes. That way, you get all the glory…And you deserve it.” Everyone sadly sits listening. “If you can’t win without me there?” he says, “then I haven’t done my job.”
“We’re really sorry Mr. Schue,” Rachel says quietly, and he’s not mad at them at all. “I know.”
“I want you guys to go get gussied up,” he tells them, trying to put on a smile, “and take that Glee Club photo with pride. I want to see a smile on every one of your faces.”
The kids get ready in the bathroom. Will gets ready alone in his office.
Smile, though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds
In the sky,
You'll get by
If you smile
Through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun
Come shining through
For you
Will sits, his picture is taken for the yearbook. He walks out. “Will Schuester, Spanish” appears in the Thunderclap next to the picture of “Emma Pillsbury, Guidance Counselor”. Ken’s picture is next to Sue’s.
Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear
May be ever so near
That's the time
You must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life
Is still worth-while
If you just smile
With the teacher photos done, Will stands outside the choir room, watching his kids get their Glee Club photo. Slowly he smiles to himself and walks out. Later on, the Glee Club photo is defaced as usually in the Thunderclap, but at least they’re all smiling it.
“You’ll find that life is still worthwhile,
If you just, smile…”
1. Van Halen - Jump
2. Lily Allen - Smile
3. Charlie Chaplin - Smile
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