Admittance

season 2

episodes 13-17

After the first two episodes show no sign of Emma, the shippers get restless. Couldn’t Emma have shown up at the football match? We could have made a nice screen cap of her at the football match alone, contrasting her last foray into the stands hugging Will. Couldn’t she have walked past Finn’s kissing booth and looked wistfully at Will? Couldn’t she have sung a silly love song? ‘Comeback’ to the show Emma. Glee is not Glee without you. For Gleek’s sake, we don’t have any emotional investment in the adolescent characters, teenagers are by nature, fickle, all we want is Wemma stability back. The Glee family is totally dysfunctional without you. ‘Comeback’ to Will, Emma, the shippers are praying, begging, hoping, demanding. Emma comes running, but not into Will’s arms, she stops at his classroom door. So Will and Emma are talking again and Will is still the one she runs to in an emergency. He’s back to seeking advice from her but this time Will is not pussyfooting around Emma. ‘We’re not here to give Sue a pep talk…  Emma, let’s go!’ And Emma’s back to wearing gloves. She’s stressed and it’s not hard to guess why? We’re back to where we started in season 1!

‘Blame it on the Alcohol’, and all I can say is thank God for alcohol because finally Will’s head doesn’t get in the way and his heart reveals why he really loves Emma: her gloves, her OCD, her body…the things she hates the most about herself (flashback to Will telling Rachel, that the things she hates the most about herself are what someone will find the most attractive about her). In hindsight perhaps Rachel singing ‘Need You Now’ in the Superbowl episode was pre-empting Will’s drunk dial to Emma: ‘Reaching for the phone, cos I can’t fight it anymore…it’s a quarter after one, I’m a little drunk and I need you now, said I wouldn’t call but I’ve lost all control and I need you now..’ But I digress. Jump back to the beginning of the episode and we have Emma’s hand covering her wedding ring and asking Will if he’s dating anyone. She can’t look at him as she suggests maybe he should try dating. Yeah, maybe he should try dating HER!  Emma doesn’t even believe the words coming out of her mouth. There is pain all over Will’s face at her suggestion and the shippers are ready to slap her again but Sue steps in. Some unconscious touching of hung over Will by Emma in the corridor reminded me of their collision in Season 1 where she comments on them both wearing periwinkle. All we needed was Santana passing by cutting to the chase with ‘Get a room’. Even if Emma’s head isn’t ready to admit her true feelings, her body is. After hearing the drunk dial, the shippers are dizzy with delight and Emma is looking a little flushed. Emma knows exactly how Will feels about her, he finds her sexy, he wants Emma for her personality, she’s ‘taken’ and she has hurt him but he still wants her. He has withstood the test. He has resilience, perseverance and passion; attributes of a winner. Her excuses/denial/reasons for letting Will go have all been made null and void. She must now face the truth. It’s your move Emma. Someone get the girl a drink.

Enter Emma’s polar opposite: Holly Holiday. While Emma has become even more uptight (running the celibacy club and tightening even bigger bows) and seems to have regressed with her OCD management, Holly breezes into McKinley, brash and forthright and full of sexual freedom. She provides a welcome distraction for Will, however the shippers consider her something akin to medicine; we’ll take her if she’s going to make Wemma better, but we don’t really like her being injected into the arms of our man. Neither does Emma. When introducing Emma to Holly, Will seems so discombobulated that he forgets Emma’s name! It’s just not on. How dare she! Emma’s jealous. More importantly, Holly is the metaphorical ‘slap in the face’ Emma needs. ‘Ouch!’ In ‘Sexy’ we cringe at Holly’s insensitivity towards Emma, but enough is enough, it’s time Ms P verbalized her true feelings and when Holly asks her point blank if she’s ‘still in love with Will Schuester’, Emma gets close to the truth by admitting her feelings are ‘confused’. The camera shoots Emma from Holly’s perspective, at a high angle, making her look small; she is ‘weighed down’ by her ‘confusion’. She recoils at Carl’s touch and the shippers are not confused at all. Neither is Carl. He’s had enough and is off to the Radisson. The Wemma shippers let out a cheer: ‘The Carl’ has been eradicated by Holly.

Emma takes a week off to sort out her ‘sham of a marriage’ while the Glee kids write their Original Songs for Regionals; Emma’s not even in a fit state to turn up to see them off, but Will doesn’t seem to dwell on it, he’s trying to move on and has taken Emma’s advice and is ‘dating’ Holly. This time Will hasn’t chosen the songs, but Rachel’s lyrics still reflect his feelings and this time Emma’s: ‘what do you do when your good isn’t good enough and all that you touch tumbles down… I keep making a mess of things, I’ve got to fix it somehow.’ (I bow to you RIB). Can Emma find a solvent for this mess?

A Night of Neglect follows and within that night was the scene that set the Wemma shippers’ hearts into a frenzy and the screen caps and gifs into overload. THE GRAPE SCENE! The scene that showed just how much these two characters have evolved and need to be together. Emma ADMITTED her marriage was over. She ADMITTED she never consummated the marriage with Carl. She ADMITTED her OCD is a problem. She ADMITTED she’s tired of fighting it. The only thing she didn’t admit to was being in love with Will, but that was ok, it wasn’t the time and it made Will’s ‘I’m here for you’ totally selfless. Her single teardrop had the shippers crying with her and forgiving her immediately for all that she had put them through this season. For the first time Will said and did all the right things and the symbolism of him cleaning her grapes melted our collective heart: Will putting on the rubber glove confirms his acceptance of her OCD and his love for her. Cleaning and passing the grape to her symbolizes the sustenance/strength she gets from him and she is now willing to accept it. Now the only thing standing in Emma’s way is Holly. Emma doesn’t have the strength to fight her and thankfully, unlike Terri, Holly is not conniving. The Wemma shippers totally agree with her when she explains to Will 'You're too nice for me.' After one last song (thank God, it was only one) she bows out graciously to true love’s ways. She even leaves Will with a gift ‘You’re in love with someone else and thanks to my counseling she’s available. And by the way, she’s totally into you.’ Emma could not have found a stronger cleaning agent. The Wemma shippers say thank you very much, shut the door firmly behind her and crack open the bubbly. A week is way too long to wait for Born This Way.

See Grape Scene analysis for more in depth analysis.