Becoming One - Understanding

Season 3

episodes 1, 2 and 3

A new school year and the Wemma shippers are back with hope in their hearts. We’ll give RIB one more chance to get this right. If not, we’re out of here.

Wemma’s love for one another has seen them move into Will’s apartment over the summer vacation. Once again any meaningful discussion appears to have happened off screen and the Wemma shippers jump back into their relationship without being privy to this momentous decision.  Slightly disappointing but not unexpected. We get so much Wemma at home and there is so much obvious love between them that the shippers are distracted with delight and are considering Sue’s comment, ‘I’ve put plastic on your chairs in anticipation of this announcement so feel free to wet yourselves with excitement’ as RIB’s personal ‘Welcome back to Wemma’ message to them.

Will and Emma now mirror each other in words and actions and their morning routine is filled with looks of adoration and synchronization. They both wake up smiling, unerring in their desire to see and touch each other again, greeting one another with the phrase: ‘Rise and shine sleepy head’; they take turns sleeping on the alarm clock side of the bed; they pack each other’s lunches in unison, placing the contents in a mirror image of the other’s; they share the same piece of toast; after glitter-bombing Sue, they each rest their hand at the same place on the other’s arm and exit as one. There is no leader, no follower, no domination; they are on completely equal footing.

They’ve chosen lunch boxes that reflect the way they see each other - they are each other’s heroes because they’ve saved each other’s lives although there is some irony in their choices. Wonder woman used the lasso of truth and although Emma helps other people realize the truth and Will once told her she was ‘the most honest person he knows’, she really struggles to be honest with herself. Superman is a man of action and he uses his strength to help humanity. His decisive action is what turned Lois Lane on. Will struggles with taking the right action, but it’s what turns Emma on the most – someone willing to take action (a contributing factor to Carl’s appeal).

The shippers have to wonder if Will has spoken to Shelby about him and Emma. When Will enters the lunchroom and their eyes meet, there seems to be some kind of silent agreement between them that they will not remain in the same room together. Shelby immediately ends her conversation with Bieste and gets up to leave while Will delays his entry by passing comment with other teachers until he sees Shelby begin her exit. She makes a slightly flirty exit around him but Will ignores her (as he ignored April in ‘Rumours’). It seems Will is taking no chances with Emma jumping to any wrong conclusions this time round.

Emma is at ease with her love for Will. They no longer sit opposite each other, instead, they sit closely together in the lunchroom, Will always resting his arm on the back of Emma’s chair. He can’t get her close enough. Emma finally experiences what ‘being turned on feels like’ and she’s able to initiate a passionate kiss. She sees herself and Will as one when she refers to Mercedes as ‘our little girl’. Emma wears a lot of yellow in these episodes symbolizing the happiness she feels. She calls Will ‘sunshine’. She’s not cleaning obsessively. There is no doubt Emma is improving and they complete each other.

However, apart from their kitchen scene in episode 1, the choir room scene introducing Bieste and Emma as directors of the school play in episode 2 and the dinner scene in episode 3, they are not, on the whole, wearing complimentary clothes and this is slightly unnerving. As we know, when the Glee characters are sharing the same headspace, they wear matching outfits (eg Rachel and Kurt both in red, white and blue plaid when they enter Emma’s office to reveal their shared future plans). Over the holidays, Will seems to have become intent on ‘starting a family’, he’s also frustrated by Emma giving him ‘the green light then the red light follows just as quickly’ and the idea of children is once again raised in front of Emma’s parents when he says ‘if we are ever blessed with a child’. Will, don’t jump the gun! Have you forgotten that last season you did some research on OCD and indicated to Emma that you’d actually learnt something about her condition? You should know better. Emma is far from ready for a family. She won’t even have sex with you yet. The minute you alluded to your erection, Emma slipped out of bed before any of the hot action Brad Falchuk promised us at the end of last season could occur. Reign in your horses. The shippers realize that although Emma is no longer in denial, avoidance is still her mistress. After all who would choose to watch TV in bed when you’ve got Will Schuester’s body lying next to you? Are we heading back to Season One’s poor communication streak?

The evidence points us in that direction as Will unearths Emma’s inner bridezilla. This whole scene didn’t ring true for either character. Emma knows Will doesn’t like secrets after what Terri did to him, so why would she keep her magazines a secret? Especially as she’s always shown a keen interest in being married (Ken and Carl) and as Will says, ‘It’s clearly the road we’re headed down’. In addition, Will, pining and lusting after Emma for a whole year, doesn’t seem the type to keep a porn magazine collection (but maybe I’m wrong…maybe I need a male perspective on this one.) The long and the short of the whole magazine thing needlessly clarifies to the shippers that Will is intent on marrying her and therefore he’s wondering why she hasn’t introduced him to her parents? It’s a reasonable question when you’re feeling a little insecure about your partner’s long term intentions. Emma tries the avoidance strategy once: ‘They’re dead’. Will calls her bluff. ‘You spoke to them last night.’ Twice: ‘I spoke to ghosts’, Will takes a step closer to her, forcing her hand.  Three times: ‘I can’t lie to you,’ Emma says, avoiding the truth anyway, ‘I just want to take it really slow,’ She kisses him and runs off. Will folds. The inroads he made in understanding Emma last year are seemingly forgotten as his own insecurities take hold: ‘Always marry up’ says Vera Wang; Carl made $80,000 a year; is she ashamed of me? Oh Will, don’t you remember season 1, episode 1 when Emma persuaded you not to become an accountant and told you the only life worth living was one you were passionate about? Will, she’s passionate about you, she just has trouble showing it. Bieste is there to remind him, to take matters into his own hands because 1. Emma is crazy about him and 2. Will is quite the catch. The Wemma shippers can only agree.  Besides Carl’s spontaneity seemed to do Emma good, why not ask her parents over?

Bieste’s advice highlights that she is unaware of Emma’s OCD which means Emma manages to keep it quite well hidden or Bieste has never been cognizant of it. In the scene where Bieste and Artie are in Emma’s office discussing who will be given the role of Tony, Emma can’t take her eyes off Bieste’s shoes, replete with chewing gum on the sole, resting on her desk. It’s not until Bieste shifts her feet back to the floor that Emma relaxes. Emma’s discomfort completely bypasses Bieste’s radar and Emma doesn’t say a word.

Enter the parents from hell. Emma’s parents get a big fat Anglo-Saxon F for parenting. Are you ashamed of me? Asks Will’. No! I’m ashamed of them. They are ginger supremacists! Opinionated, bigoted, racist, insensitive, callous, highly critical and they have perpetuated Emma’s OCD to such a degree that the minute she sees them, she regresses…dramatically. The confident, self-assured woman at work transforms before our eyes into their silent ‘freaky deaky’ child who used to have her thumbs tied together. They call her ‘weird’ and are unsympathetic and disdainful of her disorder. The shippers flashback to the staff lunch room where Sue asked Emma if her email was still ‘freakish boney ginger at gmail’ and the hurt look on Emma’s face suddenly makes sense. This is a label she’s grown up with, only not said in jest.

Will looks at Rusty and Rose in horror. ‘I don’t know where she got it,’ says Rose. Flashback to young Emma at a restaurant with her parents and the mother handing her a wipe to clean the glass of water the waitress has placed on the table. Will loses his temper with them and confronts them about their attitude towards Emma’s OCD. ‘If we’re blessed enough to have a child, I wouldn’t care what he or she looked like and you know what if my child had OCD I’d maybe show her a little more compassion instead of calling her a name that makes her feel like a freak.’ Emma’s BTW tshirt with ‘Ginger’ written on it, suddenly takes on a new meaning. Being a ginger has caused her problems…it associates Emma with her parents and her parents have, if not created her OCD, then certainly contributed substantially to it. Emma remains silent and we are reminded of Sue’s advice to her in Bad Reputation: You refuse to stand up for yourself you’re so afraid of confrontation. If you want to get better you need to start communicating your feelings’. Will is her voice. Emma looks at him with gratitude and places her hand tightly over his. He grips her fingers. He’s never letting her go. He looks at her with remorse. He feels he’s made a big mistake but this is a pivotal moment for Will and the shippers. We finally see the cause of her OCD and how Emma came to be and Will needed to know this. Will now realizes there is no quick fix, no easy fix, in fact he doesn’t know how to fix Emma at all. Neither does Emma. Avoidance has been her only strategy, but Will is not an avoider, and even though he doesn’t know what to do yet, as he wraps his hands, like a cocoon around her agitated ones and sings to her, there is no doubt that she will be kept safely in his hands until with his help she is ready to be reborn and can fly.

So we end with a traumatized and relapsed Emma sitting on the bed in her yellow nightdress, juxtaposed with photographs of a smiling Will and Emma on the bedside table in a double frame. (Perhaps when they have had sex, the photos will change to both of them in the same frame?) The photos remind us that in ‘becoming’ we must take the good with the bad because it deepens our understanding of who we are and makes us whole. ‘I’m sorry, I should have believed you when you said you didn’t want me to meet your parents’ says Will. But even if she’d told him the truth, he really had to meet them for himself to ‘unlock’ Emma. ‘Come on let’s go to bed,’ he tries to coax her away from her debilitating counting ritual but Emma falls to her knees and starts praying. Will is bamboozled yet again. ‘I do it in my head all the time, Emma explains. Another classic OCD ritual and this time, we’re pulled back to ‘Grilled Cheesus’ and the scene where Emma angrily confronts Sue about not believing in God and how she shouldn’t take away a vestige of hope for Kurt. She may well have been talking about herself. Will is realizing, just how much is going on in Emma’s head all the time and how well she keeps it all hidden. He doesn’t try to lift her up off the floor or belittle her actions, instead he shows her the compassion he voiced earlier and moves to her level, indicating their equal footing once again. ‘When you get what you want but not what you need…’ Will sings. Emma has Will, but she needs something more now…a remedy. Thirty two years of unchecked OCD is difficult to battle on your own and the fact that she doesn’t fall into his arms a blubbering mess suggests that she is used to trying to deal with it all alone. The more Emma is willing to open up to Will and the more he learns about her condition, the deeper their understanding, the stronger their bond and the greater their love. Will has become a man of action and he is focused on his and Emma’s future together.  They are on their way to finding a remedy and becoming one - emotionally, mentally and physically.

The first three episodes are emotionally fulfilling for the Wemma shippers. RIB have gone back to what matters most: The characters’ development. Wemma lives and Glee is back!