Friday, March 15, 2013

The RBI Report: "Feud"




So, the feuds...

Will vs. Finn






Ryder vs. Everyone with Human Emotions





Blaine vs. Sue



Santana vs. Brody (and Kurt and Rachel)




The RBI Report Card...

Musical Numbers: C
Dance Numbers: B
Dialogue: C
Plot: C
Characterization: C
Episode MVP: Santana Lopez


  1. I think Kurt was more pissed about the NYADA thing than the Brody thing, judging from his tone when he called Santana out for singing a Paula Abdul song.

    (Kurt Hummel, I love you, but you aren't in a position to call Santana out for singing Paula Abdul. You auditioned for NYADA with Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, and you're in a singing group that has covered Sir Mix-A-Lot. You're also sitting next to a girl who performed Britney Spears in that very room. Also, dissing Paula Abdul? Not cool).

  2. I don't understand the snark regarding Brody being a gigolo. Why wouldn't he be? Maybe this comes from growing up poor in a big, expensive city, or maybe it's because my oldest sister and two of my cousins were stripper/escorts, but as soon as they showed Brody with a wad of cash, I thought, "He's a male escort."

    I was dismissive when they suggested he was a drug dealer, because two of my older siblings and several of my cousins were drug dealers. My anecdotal experiences match the current research - drug-dealing doesn't pay. There's a great book called Freakonomics that showed how most drug dealers make the equivalent of $3.30/hour. Meanwhile, "high class" sex work is ludicrous, especially for men.

    Not everyone has two upper-class gay dads like Rachel does, or a father who owns a prosperous business like Kurt's dad. 78% of college students have to get jobs to help pay for tuition and to cover rent, electricity, food, clothes, etc. And apparently, only 0.3% (less than 1%) of all college students receive enough scholarship money to pay for their entire tuition. Of that ridiculous few, most of them received scholarships for traditional 4-year-colleges. There are fewer specialized scholarships for things like performing arts. If Brody were a real person, he'd almost certainly need a job to survive.

    NYADA's tuition is undoubtedly very high. It's a fictional school, but it's modeled after prestigious, exclusive schools like Julliard, Tisch at NYU, and New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts (NYCDA), where the tuition *alone* is roughly $26,000/year - that amount doesn't cover housing or living expenses. These schools are located in Manhattan, the most expensive place in the country to live. Oh, and apparently NYADA students are expected to wear catwalk couture to class, if they don't want to be scorned, mocked, and under-estimated by their peers and instructors alike.

    So... let's be logical. There are only 24 hours in a day. Brody's 20 and a junior, so he must be a full-time student. He's buff, which requires personal training time outside of school (and we do see him working out at the park in one episode.) He's a dancer, which also requires personal training time outside of groups. He's portrayed as being very healthy and committed to fitness and his body, so it follows that he's sleeping a healthy amount as well (1/3rd of each day, typically). We see that he has time to socialize with his peers at bars, go on dates, and cook or sit down for home-cooked meals. We also known that he spends as much time as Rachel or more on his daily beauty regimen.

    Simple laws of physics says that Brody would have very little time left over for gainful employment. The writers could've given him a financial background similar to Rachel's, where he doesn't need a job to get by, or Kurt's, where he only needs a throw-away part-time job to cover the extras. Instead, they gave him a background where he apparently has to earn money towards his tuition - and if his tuition isn't being fully paid, then he's almost certainly responsible for his housing, transportation, food, beauty products, and socially-apropos designer leotards as well.

    What other job could Brody possible have that fits his schedule, requires so few hours, and nets him all of that money? In case you didn't know, as of this year, over 20% of students in France have done sex work to help pay for tuition. 1 in 5 U.K. lap dancers are students. And in the U.S., 25% of college students report personally knowing a student who has done some form of sexual/erotic work to pay towards tuition. Oh, and even homely male escorts can command $100 for an hour's work. Someone like Brody could retire in a couple of years if he worked full-time.

    Would it be less surprising if Rachel's character were male, and it was his girlfriend who was secretly doing escort work to pay for her over-priced NY tuition, housing, fashion, etc.?

    1. For me it wasn't that he was a gigolo but that he hadn't told Rachel.

      I want to know where my boyfriend's been! From an emotional closeness POV as well as an STI POV.

      ALSO I think Ryder's online chat will be key in future episodes. His chat buddy may not be Unique, but may be someone similar.


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