Fictional Friday :: 5 women I’d love to invent an alternate canon for

5. Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene, Twilight)
I’ll admit to enjoying Alice.  I think that’s just because I’ve had alt-canon for Alice since I made myself sit down and read Twilight back when, so much so that when my cousins asked me Team Edward or Team Jacob, I had a long-winded explanation that I called Team Jasper for their innocent minds but was really Team Jasper and Alice Befriend Spike And Dru And Have Wacky Morbid Adventures.  That’s the life I want for Alice.  I mean, I love her, because she’s the only one not mired in a compulsion to marry and procreate, and because she’s got that whole wacky seer thing going for her, but I’d want more for her.  (Maybe I also like Alice ’cause Ashley Greene models for Stop Staring!  That could be part of it.)

4. Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays, Glee)
In part because she gets, you know, three-or-less minutes of screen time per episode and that’s a shame, and in part because she really hasn’t gotten to do much this season but have crappy parents and be Will’s lady friend.  I mean, I’m happy that so far they’re letting her be Will’s lady friend consistently and not trying to fudge it up with some stupid plot diversion, but.  I think the only time I really like Will any more is when he’s with Emma, and even then sometimes I feel like he needs to just think before acting.  He’s gotten better, I’ll allow.  But still.  I want a world where Emma gets to actually say more than a line or two per episode and not a line or two that’s directly encouraging or discouraging the actions of another character.  I want those adorable cardigans-tea-and-neurosis parties with Bennett Halverson that I mentioned way back when.  Or cardigans-tea-and-neurosis parties with anyone.  I just want more people around Emma who really like Emma and understand Emma, I guess.

3. Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz, Glee)
Really, I had a hard time with narrowing it down to two Glee women, because I think that Quinn, Santana, and Brittany probably also deserve a world that’s better for them, but I love Tina and Emma the most sincerely, which we already know, so I’m sticking with them.  I don’t know what I want for Tina, but I want something.  I want her to get to be the star of her own life, with her awesome style; apparently, she’s really morbid (she’s claimed that she is) but we never really get to hear it because we rarely get to hear her say anything more significant than “yeah, that’s right!” or a synonym for that.  I want her to get to live in a world where someone doesn’t make reference to her Asianness every day.

2. Knives Chau (Ellen Wong, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World)
I think Knives is adorable, I really do.  Maybe she and Tina could go be stop-talking-about-my-Asianness buddies in some super-alt-canon.  I also think that Knives would be way less crazy if she had a different life situation than she does: if her first boyfriend wasn’t quite so, you know, Scott-ish, I think she’d be less apt to go craycray on him.  And she’s a total badass, I want her to get to go be a badass somewhere.  She deserves that chance.  And she somewhat gets to be awesomer by the end of the comics, but there just wasn’t the time in the film continuity, and I understand.  So film!Knives, I want to magick up an alt-canon for.

1. Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner, Game of Thrones)
I don’t know what fate has in store for her in the books — I’m still finishing the first one.  But Sansa, I’ve always wanted to have a completely different life.  I feel like all of the hate that she gets is because of her reactions to situations in her life, and her not knowing how the hell to handle them.  And I think that if she had a different life, she’d learn how better to handle them, and there would be different situations altogether.  I mean, she’s betrothed to the d-bag whose mother had her father killed, and society is consumed with getting her to be proper and ladylike, no wonder she can act like a twit.  She doesn’t know better.  Let’s take her to a completely different world, like, I don’t know, Hogwarts (Founders’ Era, to keep it period, or modern, to completely AU the hell out of it) or something else with magic and let that shape her instead.  Yeah.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: insert witty Glee pun here.

I have 5 main subheadings for this post:

1. I’m not done with Glee, but I’m… getting there.
2. If Mercedes (Amber Riley) is pregnant, I am gonna cut a bitch.
3. Can the entire program just be Mike’s (Harry Shum Jr.) dancing, Tina’s (Jenna Ushkowitz) clothes, Emma’s (Jayma Mays) adorableness, and Brittany (Heather Morris) saying funny things please?
4. Marti Noxon my baby where are you?
5. I just looked up the definition of “retcon” on Urban Dictionary, and I’m pretty sure that’s what they do to everyone every single episode.

I figured since there was no new Glee this week, I could discuss my feelings about the show and the season thus far without accidentally forgetting a new happening.  So I’ll address each subheading.

1. Many of the reasons I mentioned for why Glee doesn’t suck earlier this year have kind of become stagnant.
   • Sue (Jane Lynch)?  Well, yes, there are funny one-liners.  Lynch delivers them well.  But really, woman.  You had a great emotional turn around the end of last season.  But the writers needed you around to be a raging bitch all the time, so they, well, retconned you.  And it’s getting old.  It really, really is.  The more jokes Sue tells, the more it feels like nagging.
   • I still appreciate what Chris Colfer did for people re: gayness and all.  And I still adore Darren Criss (mostly because he was singing Harry Potter).  But I’m just… kind of over Kurt and Blaine as characters.  And by “kind of” I mean really.  Kurt has been having the exact same emotional crisis over and over since season one, and I understand it, I do, but does he have to have some variation of it every single episode?  And Blaine just isn’t that interesting.  I understand that he could act Tony in their production of West Side Story better than Kurt could, I don’t doubt that, and I don’t think Kurt’s voice is right for Tony either, but Blaine… kind of isn’t rangy enough for it.  They had him sort of faking/fudging a few of the high notes.  And maybe that’s just me being neurotic, but I wasn’t really buying it.

   Also, a lot of the things that annoyed me always haven’t changed.

   • Rachel (Lea Michele) is still on my Fictional Women to Punch list.  I mean.  She’s a very good singer, I love all the vintage dresses she’s been wearing this season, she’s super cute.  But she’s frustrating.
   • Mercedes is also frustrating.  If I have to see her whinge about being second to Rachel one more time, I may scream.  It’s not that she’s not talented.  She is.  She and Rachel are both talented.  But they’re not like objects.  Mercedes would have been a subpar Maria in West Side Story for the same reason that Rachel would be, to use one of Mercedes’ favorite metaphors, a subpar Effie White in Dreamgirls.  Could the Glee Club come up with new songs to sing that could showcase what Mercedes does better than with a riffing trill at the last ten measures?  Yes.  But that’s not a reason to swear vengeance against Rachel (much).
   • Quinn (Dianna Agron) is also frustrating.  The whole diversion into the land of having dyed hair and smoking at the season’s beginning?  Pretty much pointless.  Quinn is one of those people that I feel bad for, but at the same time want to smack: yes, a lot of crap has happened to her.  She got pregnant, she gave up the baby, her boyfriend dumped her.  But at the same time… well, girl, get over it.  Giving up the baby was a smart decision, and she apparently forgot about it for an entire season, but now suddenly it bothers her again?  Her boyfriend would have dumped her no matter what: it’s high school.  People break up.  There are very few high school relationships that last.  WikiAnswers says it’s a 2% chance.
   • The writers are trying so hard to make it a show that embraces diversity and differences that it’s inadvertently a little bothersome.  I mean, we get it.  It’s wacky!  There are black kids!  There are geeky kids!  There are Hispanic kids!  There are stupid kids!  There are Asian kids!  For some reason, this one bothers me the most: it’s like when they were doing the bit in season one where everyone had their stereotypes drawn out of a hat and Tina and Mike were called “Asian” and “Other Asian,” they decide that that would be the only defining factor of their existences.  Not an episode seems to go by without an Asian joke or reference; last week’s episode was called “Asian F,” for crying out loud.  Apparently A minuses are Asian Fs; I had never heard that before.  But hey.
   • And speaking of embracing differences… you know a weird pattern I’ve noticed?  There can be an interracial hookup at the end of one season (Tina and Artie, Mercedes and Sam) but by the beginning of the next season, that nonwhite girl will be hooked up with a nonwhite guy.  I actually think Tina and Mike are adorable, so I’m not complaining from that standpoint, but really?  Once was weird but I could shrug it off; twice now with Mercedes dating an also-black football player?  Because they actually had to take Sam off the show?  (He was sort of boring, yeah, but sometimes he was a nerd and that was theoretically neat.)  Didn’t Mercedes express disinterest at Kurt’s offer to set her up with an also-black football player before?  And if said player loves her so much, he’d be willing to be in West Side Story and dance without bitching.
   • Why is it that all the main relationships go through the same pattern over and over?  I mean, Finn (Cory Monteith) and Rachel.  They’re secretly crushing on each other.  Then they’re dating.  Then they’re broken up.  Then they’re crushing again, and one or both of them has another love interest.  Then they’re dating again.  Then they’re broken up again.  Then they’re dating again.  I’m just counting the episodes till there’s tumult again.  Finn and Quinn, same story.  Will (Matthew Morrison) and Emma.  They’re secretly crushing on each other.  Then one or both of them has another love interest.  Then there’s a dramatic breakup.  Then they’re dating.  Then there are differences and they break up.  Then they’re interested in each other again.  I’m really hoping they stay together this time.  I mean, I kind of want to punch Will sometimes (he’s well-intentioned, but not always correct) but my punching desires are usually regarding things other than Emma.  Usually.  He seems to want to do right by Emma, and he makes her happy, I think, so that’s good enough for me.
   • If all of the Glee Project kids have as random of cameos as Lindsay did?  What, what, what even.
   • LET THE OTHER GIRLS HAVE SOLOS OCCASIONALLY.  They let Santana (Naya Rivera) and Brittany sing more, and that’s cool.  They let Mercedes sing more, which… see above.  I’m actually just talking about Tina, because… Tina.  Baby.  I love her, I always have, there are no reasons for it other than my need to latch onto the backgroundiest background characters with the best clothes and a morbid bent. I thought when they started dressing her in more colors this season that that would mean they’d let her sing more.  She’s less Goth and more Mod; I mean, I miss Goth Tina.  I do.  Especially last season neo-Victorian Goth Tina.  But Mod Tina is still cute, too.  And she does have a nice voice.  And I’m pretty sure she hasn’t sung a single line alone since the stupid Willy Wonka song in the funeral episode last season.
2. This was something my dad brought up last week.  I didn’t think of it, but during the giant Dreamgirls dream sequence, he exclaimed, “Oh my god, Mercedes is pregnant, isn’t she.”  I… had to admit that it was a valid possibility.  She’s tired, she’s cranky, she feels sick.  But really, kids: we do not need another teenage pregnancy line on this show.  They beat that one into the ground.  The only way it would be at all different would be if it was like an I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant kind of thing, and that would be really annoying too, so.  I actually suggested that she might have cancer or something instead; that would also be frustrating, but at least it would be different.  (And can I just talk about the Dreamgirls sequence for a minute?  Because that made me want to stab someone.  [This season of Glee is bringing out my theoretical violent impulses, apparently.]  At first I was like, “okay, dream sequence, wacky fun.”  But then my analysis hat kicked in: yes, Kurt should have been one of the other Dreamgirls.  Yes, Santana can sing it – though given the fact that she’d just rejoined Glee after being kicked out, she didn’t really have an emotional right.  Quinn did pretty much the same thing, and had just as little emotional right, and I thought Mercedes and Quinn were bonded for… no wait, just kidding, they completely forgot about that once season one ended and Quinn birthed her baby.  Tina could have been singing it.  She would have been a more emotionally appropriate Anika Noni Rose character, being the one who always gets neglected and backgrounded, but psh, we can’t let Tina have solos.  That would be crazy.  And why on Earth did they keep calling Mercedes Effie, but everyone else got referred to by their real life names?  And… okay, done.)
3. This is straightforward.  Mike, Tina, Emma, and Brittany are the only characters I care about at all anymore.  “Asian F” was a frustrating episode for many reasons, but it was all worth it for Mike dancing.  (And Riff is a part that you can kind of talk-sing, so good choice, them.)  Tina, see above. Emma… is just too precious.  I don’t think they always have the right thing to do with her, but I think she’s darling.  And I just want to hug her always.  Brittany’s one-liners aren’t old yet.  They’re just so random and ridiculous; they’re not mean-spirited or bitchy or repetitive.  They’re just things that come out of her mouth that make no sense and yet make absolutely perfect sense.  And despite being pretty bookstupid, she’s very peoplesmart, and I honestly think she’s got a better head on her shoulders about people things than just about any of the other characters do.
4. Marti Noxon was reported to be joining the writing and producing staff of Glee this season, and after this interview with her especially, I was giddy.  I mean… one of my Whedon mafia writer women who completely looks at it logically?  But she doesn’t even have a page on the Glee wiki yet.  She has not helped yet.
5. Observe.
   retcon:
   1. (original meaning) Adding information to the back story of a fictional character or world, without invalidating that which had gone before.
   2. (more common usage) Adding or altering information regarding the back story of a fictional character or world, regardless of whether the change contradicts what was said before.  (urbandictionary.com)
   Retconning is something I generally frown at.  The example they give of Dawn on Buffy is actually a great one, and actually one that I’ve found myself adjusting to.  I mean, I still hate early Dawn.  But she became slightly less punchable by the end.  And she made for good plot things.  But on Glee it’s silly.  They keep trying to add to everyone’s lives and backstories and personalities and it’s like just leave it alone, people.  Season one was warm fuzzies because it was more genuine.  It wasn’t trying to please millions of teenagers.  (I read someone in Entertainment Weekly saying that it felt like last season’s Glee had been written on Twitter or something.  TRUE FACTS, kids.)  And it needs to go back to that.  The retconning needs to stop.

Sigh.  Sigh.  Sigh.  (And if Mercedes really is pregnant, which I want to doubt but cannot fully, I may actually have to stop watching altogether.)

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: Top 10 television ladies whose wardrobes I want to steal/kind of do steal

Not that I don’t have themed ModCloth wishlists based on a variety of characters.  (I do.  Shamelessly.)

10. Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I know she isn’t a fashion plate. By any means.  And I don’t know that I want to steal her wardrobe, necessarily, but I do… sort of really do it anyway.  And I’m not talking like cool college Wiccan Willow.  I do high school 90s Willow, really without even trying.  Nothing like giant sweaters and wearing my sneakers with tights, right?  I found a beaded choker I must have gotten out of a vending machine in one of my drawers and died of happiness, almost, it was the missing element for those days I just want to get all Willowy.

9. Winona Hawkins (Natalie Zea, Justified)
Woman is classy as can be, and she’s that kind of classy where you know it’s work-appropriate but it almost isn’t because it just looks so damn good on her, all form-fitting and with splashes of color sometimes.  I don’t know I could personally pull off the look, but I’d steal it for my mother, certainly.

8. Adelle Dewitt (Olivia Williams, Dollhouse)
Much as I’d steal hers for my mom, which you all already know.  There is just something so classy about pencil skirts with nice but not too nice of tops and — gah.  Yes.  So much good.

7. Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau, Dollhouse)
Normally I group my like canons, but because Adelle’s is stolen for my mom and Bennett’s stolen for myself, well.  This is another one that I was kinda sorta doing anyway, unconsciously, prior to her appearance on the show, and one that I am even more shameless about doing now just because.  (My glasses actually sort of work for it, so it makes me happy.)  Sweaters?  Specifically pretty cardigan sweaters?  Plus… oh yeah, pencil skirts?  I’m so there.  It says “hi, world, I’m sort of cute, but I’m not thinking too hard about it right now, because oh yeah, I’m busy pwning you intellectually and stuff.”  I dress like this for school a lot.

6, 5, 4.  Inara Serra, Kaylee Frye, River Tam (Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite, River Tam Firefly)
Inara’s more in the category of I gape and admire it, but probably couldn’t actually pull off any of it, ever.  I’m not sure I’m suited to that kind of splendor, but hey.  And I don’t actually wear pants like ever.  But the last xyz amount of times I have worn pants out in public and not sweatpants to the gym, they have been my teddy bear Kaylee pants, so that’s got to count for something.  And that one dress she wears in the flashback in “Out of Gas” and in “The Message” I’d totally steal easy.  And I would wear her “Shindig” dress, no lie.  Laugh at me all you want.  But I would.  As for River, well… I’ve also mentioned before how I really do have a proclivity for pairing my combat boots with flowery dresses and stuff.  (Actually, lately, I’ve just been pairing my combat boots with everything.)  Another one I don’t even need to try to do, because I’ve already got the dresses in my closet.  Un/subconsciously, I might as well rock it.

3. Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz, Glee)
Another I’ve mentioned in passing.  But especially this season when she’s gone more neo-Victorian!Gothic and a little less random stuff and stripes!Goth.  I’d wear… pretty much everything she wears, ever.  I think there were a pair of plaid pants once that I wouldn’t wear.  (Part because just no, part because I don’t wear pants, remember?)  But the rest of it?  Oh, yeah.  Even if all she’s doing is hanging out in the background saying like three words at a time, she’s still doing it while looking adorable, so.

2. Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickens, Deadwood)
Most impractical choice ever, but still one I’ll attempt from time to time.  (Again, thank you ModCloth.)  I can’t do full Joanie just for going out on the town without funny looks (not that they’d faze me, but it’s also expensive) but dear God, do I wish I could.  She is just beautiful.  That blue dress from the first season, or the black one sort of like it, with the beads.  Those velvet or silk waistcoats that just fit so pretty. I wish clothes were still that pretty, that people still took that much effort with what they wore.  (And under the pretty dresses, more boots.  Not quite combat boots, but they’ll do in a pinch.)

1. Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks, Mad Men)
Another pre-existing fact.  Another excuse for me to go OH YEAH I AM IN LOVE WITH HER.  But I attempt the Joan look whenever possible, regardless of situational appropriateness; the only things standing in my way of doing it all the time are time itself, the fact that such dresses are sort of expensive, and the fact that I’ve got so many other looks I love to rip off shamelessly.  The magical thing about this is that finally, finally it’s a look I’ve got the curves to do properly.  I’ve got the pen necklace.  I’ve got the gold earrings.  I’ve got the red lipstick.  All I need is an accordion and I’m set.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: top 11 reasons Glee doesn’t suck (in my opinion)

Now, even if Glee didn’t star two Broadway people I’m inordinately fond of (I’ve been on the Matthew Morrison train since 2005, when I saw him in The Light in the Piazza and fell in love) I’d probably have started in on watching it.  I am that kind of person.  I am fully aware of how utterly ridiculous it can be at times, but at the same time I think it’s doing things that other network shows wouldn’t necessarily do, and as such bringing things (as serious as gay teenager dynamics and as light-hearted as the occasional showtune) to an audience that might not otherwise get exposed to them as much.

Having the mid-season break makes sense for networky reasons, but it really does build the anticipation up.  And by this point in the break, where it’s almost over, I really do start to feel a sense of withdrawal.  I need my weekly dose of smartly arranged pop songs and fluff and the romantic drama I’ve never actually experienced in real life.  So, in the spirit of this, and in anticipation for Sunday’s ridiculous-as-all-get-out Super Bowl episode, I present this list.  As usual, I couldn’t narrow it down.

11. Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester.
This one is all but obvious, given all the awards this woman has won.  But I’ve always been fond of her, so seeing her be famous all of a sudden is sort of awesome.  Even though you may hate Sue Sylvester, she’s the single funniest thing on Glee and her one-liners are priceless.  The occasional times we see her relationship with her sister (and, though it’s not so much the case now, the beginning of her relationship with Becky) are redeeming.  But not too redeeming, that wouldn’t be fun.

10. Asian love.

I was into Tina and Artie, don’t get me wrong.  I sort of adore Artie a little, but the business with Tina and Mike just got too cute for words.  (And if Artie really was blowing Tina off for video games, I say she made the right choice.  That isn’t cool.)  Tina and Mike may have their ups and downs, but they aren’t too annoyingly in-your-face about it (cough, cough, Finn and Rachel?  Sweet Jesus) and they come out of it all right.  I like that Mike is into Tina for who she is, and I like that they complement each other.  And I loved their cover of “Sing!” from Chorus Line.  Kind of awesome.

9. Actually, kind of just Tina in general.
I have loved Tina since the very beginning.  Maybe it just started with my inability to allow myself to associate with the other female roles.  I couldn’t allow myself to associate mentally with Rachel (though I do love me some Lea Michele) and Quinn was at first too perfect, then her problems were just so far from anything I’d ever experience ever; Mercedes was too sassy for me, Emma too neat-freaky, Terri too plain old freaky, Brittany too ditzy and Santana too bitchy.  And I am incapable of watching something and not putting myself with at least one person, I’m not entirely sure why but it’s always been that way.  So, sure, it started as a default thing, and a little bit of an “awesome, Jenna Ushkowitz was in Spring Awakening and I totally love the track of her as Ilse I found on YouTube” thing.  Then it grew into an “aw, I sort of get being that awkward one in the corner that isn’t really the star of anything ever” thing.  Then it grew into a “holy crap, I love the way you dress” thing (seriously.  Her Gothic cheerleader outfit was sort of adorable, I do not even care what Artie thought of it, and that burgundy velvet coat she was sporting in the last song in the same episode was absolutely amazing).  She’s just precious and underrated and I feel strangely proud of how she’s grown as a character.

8. Heather Morris as Brittany S. Pierce.

So I didn’t think much of Brittany at first.  Then she danced a bit.  Then she started dropping one-liners.  Then the one-liners started making me just about roll on the floor laughing.  Then they revealed she and Santana were totally friends with benefits.  Then she danced some more.  Then she and Artie started dating and I feel like they go better together than Artie and Tina did in a strange way (they’re what the other needs, instead of what the other theoretically wants, I guess?).  Then the Rocky Horror episode rolled around and she was Columbia.  (For whatever reason, I’ve always had a strange fondness for Columbia, and when I found out they were doing a Rocky Horror episode and cast it in my head, she was easily my choice.  It’s sort of perfect.)  I don’t know.  Where once she was just good comedic relief, she’s now spilling comedic relief while being what I sort of think of as the Glee version of a whore with a heart of gold.  She may be a ridiculous skank at times.  But, darn it, she’s just adorable.

7. The occasional showtune.
Now, I don’t listen to pop music much, so most of the songs they cover on Glee are, if not entirely new, then at least somewhat new to me.  I can safely say that I would not know a sort of disgusting amount of the songs as well were it not for Glee, and I thank them similarly for giving me a version of the song that I can listen to without feeling guilty (“Keep Holding On” anyone?  I remember when I actually listened to Avril Lavigne seriously.  And, aw, their cover of that song is amazing.  “Bad Romance” too, because I love that all the girls get to tear that one up so fiercely).  But my favorite of all time is when they bust out a showtune.  I’m not really talking when Rachel does a theater ballad, although I love Lea doing theater ballads, but the moments, like Tina and Mike’s aforementioned “Sing!” or the completely nonsensical Will-sick-and-hallucinating “Make ‘Em Laugh” or the apparent Rachel/Mercedes “Take Me or Leave Me” that’s been announced as coming up soon.  Because, really, c’est fantastique.

6. Chris Colfer as Kurt Hummel.

Enough said.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  Guest stars of awesome.
Darren Criss as Blaine
He’s Harry Potter!  He did “Teenage Dream” better than Katy Perry.  He actually made me listen to “Hey Soul Sister” even though I hate that song deeply.  He is so completely amazing with Kurt.  (They just need to happen already.)  What’s not to love?
Kristin Chenoweth as April Rhodes
Even though I sort of hate April, I love how amazingly Kristin plays her.  And excuses for Kristin to bust out belting random anythings are always good, too.
Idina Menzel as Shelby Corcoran
I love Idina so so so much.  I’m pretty sure the Glee people saw that internet people were saying “OMG IDINA SHOULD BE LEA’S BIRTH MOM” and decided to make it happen, and I’m happy that they did.  Treating the whole world to Idina/Lea duets on both “I Dreamed a Dream” and, strangely, “Poker Face” was a brilliant move.  And she managed to do the whole plotline without getting too painfully sappy, so I commend her on that.
Jonathan Groff as Jesse St. James
I could caps lock everything I have to say about Jonathan Groff because holy crap do I love that man.  I do.  He is honestly one of the sweetest actors I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting at the stage door, and he’s sort of an awesome performer, too.  My single favorite thing about Jesse was the Jesse/Rachel botched non-sex scene, because it was amazingly awkward.  That, and my mom and I spent the entire scene pointing out moments that could have been (probably weren’t, but could have) Spring references.
Neil Patrick Harris as Bryan Ryan
IN AN EPISODE DIRECTED BY THE LORD MY POP-CULTURAL GOD JOSS WHEDON, NO LESS.  It was a tiny bit of a goofy nonsequitor of an episode, but the opportunity for Neil Patrick Harris and Matthew Morrison to epically duet on an Aerosmith song is pretty much the definition of awesome.

–your fangirl heroine.