Spoiler Glee Season 3 Episode 11 Michael
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Spoilers about upcoming episodes
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The rivalry between McKinley High’s New Directions and Dalton Academy’s Warblers heats up for Regionals. The two groups feature the music of the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson. New Directions does a cover of MJ’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” Santana and Sebastian face off in a performance of “Smooth Criminal.”
While they’re discussing their Michael Jackson idea for Regionals, McKinley High’s glee club members share their favorite Michael Jackson memories. For example, Artie uttered his first words when he watched Michael Jackson do the moonwalk. When musical theater snob Rachel admits that she never really got Michael Jackson, Kurt chides her, saying that Michael Jackson was best friends with Liza Minnelli. Sebastian, who has become captain of the Warblers, shows up to tell them that the Warblers are also doing MJ songs for Regionals. They drew first position, and when Blaine unwittingly told him what New Directions’ plan was, he changed their set list accordingly. Puck somewhat cluelessly accuses Blaine of being a modern-day Eggs Benedict.
Meanwhile, exactly three days since the minute he proposed to her, Finn follows up for an answer from Rachel. Will she or won’t she? If you can’t wait to find out the answer to that question, then wait no more because photographic proof exists that Finn and Rachel get engaged. At around 8 PM on January 18, 2012, Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk tweeted a photo of Lea Michele in costume as Rachel, and she’s wearing a super-cute little heart dress that’s exceedingly appropriate for Valentine’s Day and what appears to be a large diamond engagement sparkler on her ring finger. You can check out the pretty solid photographic evidence for yourself at http://www.wetpaint.com/glee/articles/huge-glee-spoiler-is-rachel-is-engaged-to-finn-photographic-evidence
If you happen to like Mike Chang as well as (or maybe even more than) Michael Jackson, then here’s another way to celebrate Glee’s Michael Jackson episode: check out Harry Shum Jr.’s Facebook page http://on.fb.me/z7ilAo and enter to win an autographed copy of Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. All you have to do is correctly answer Harry’s question (which involves Michael Jackson) by January 31, 2012, 11:59 PM Eastern Time, for a chance to win one of twelve signed copies of the movie.
It’s hardly a secret that Harry Shum Jr. is a terrific dancer, so the Michael Jackson tribute episode would logically be a chance for Mike Chang to shine. Harry said in an interview with givememyremote.com that Mike does some classic MJ moves plus some interpretations of MJ’s dancing. Glee has showcased a lot of dancing, with different styles and different songs that Mike was able to participate in, but for this particular episode of the show, Harry wanted to surprise people with what Mike’s capable of. Harry also hoped to showcase things that people haven’t seen on national television before, in terms of what has been put on film for dance.
When you think about it, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” is quite a fascinating choice of song for New Directions to perform. It’s a 1983 single from Michael Jackson’s multiplatinum-selling 1982 album Thriller. It’s the first track of the album but was the fourth of the singles to be released. It is also the longest track on the album, and its length might be one of the reasons it did not have an accompanying music video when it was released as a single. The song made its mark on the pop and the R&B charts, and though it gained some time on radio playlists across the United States, it was often not played at its full length, because of industry format standards.
“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” was Michael Jackson’s song of choice for opening live concerts. Since it was not associated with specific dance routines the way that “The Girl Is Mine,” “Billie Jean,” and “Beat It” were, it may have allowed greater flexibility in the performances and staging. Thus, the song was used on every set list of MJ’s tours from the Victory Tour in 1984 to the HIStory Tour in 1997, and MJ never lip-synched it during any of his tour performances. The song was originally written in 1979. It was intended for his album Off the Wall but was not recorded until the sessions for Thriller. Michael Jackson re-recorded the song with Akon for the 2008 album Thriller 25.
For this Glee episode that’s all about Michael Jackson, 2Cellos play their intense dueling-cellos version of “Smooth Criminal” when Santana and Sebastian perform the song. After it racked up an impressively large number of plays on YouTube, their cover of “Smooth Criminal” uploaded in January 2011 became their signature performance. The two guys known as 2Cellos are Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, although Santana doesn’t call them by their actual names. She just calls them “cello guys” when she asks them to hang back for a while because she needs them for her duel with Sebastian. He responds by telling everyone else in the room to clear out because he doesn’t want them to see him make a girl cry.
Luka completed his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, while Stjepan did the same at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Stjepan was also the last student of Mstislav Rostropovich, the acclaimed Russian cellist and conductor. Each of these two musicians has performed at many international venues and won prizes for his musicianship apart from their collaboration as 2Cellos.
In conjunction with the “Michael” episode, Glee participated in a promotion for Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour by Cirque du Soleil. It has a Ticketmaster offer at http://bit.ly/GleeImmortal that people can use to save $10 on tickets to the Los Angeles shows, which will be held at the Staples Center on August 14 and 15, 2012.
Also specifically for the Michael Jackson tribute episode, Glee asked people to join the conversation on Twitter, by using the hash tag #GleeHee when you compose a tweet about it. You can catch Glee’s all-new episode “Michael” when it airs on January 31, 2012.
