Every year, you apply for the White House Easter Egg Roll lottery, hoping that you and your child can spend the holiday rubbing elbows with the First Couple as that-year's-tween-act bops around on a South Lawn stage. How could that not be the most amazing celebration of Jesus' resurrection ever? That question was rhetorical up until this weekend's Egg Roll, when the cast of Glee clambered onstage in matching blood-red outfits and worked through one of the most disappointing "Don't Stop Believin'" performances of all time. After the jump, Movieline works through some of the questions raised during this weekend's mini-concert.
1. Why Did Producers Force Kevin McHale to Sit in His Wheelchair For the Performance?
Strangely, Kevin McHale, the able-bodied actor who plays Artie Abrams on the Fox hit, performed in his character's wheelchair for the entire concert. If producers wanted to minimize confusion among young audience members by creating the illusion the actual characters were performing, where was Quinn's baby bump?
2. Why Didn't Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison Just Sing Everyone's Parts?
If the cast did not want to lip sync, they should have let the Broadway stars perform the entire set while the rest of the cast worked their choreography.
3. Was Rupert Murdoch Using an Off-Pitch Glee Cast as His Trojan Horse?
This weekend's concert was probably the closest that the conservative-leaning News Corp. (Fox's parent company) chief will ever get to the White House, so maybe the performance (down to the McHale wheelchair controversy) was actually a carefully-designed distraction tactic with Glenn Beck stowed away in Amber Riley's suitcase.
4. Who Is To Blame?
The sound technicians for fumbling the "Don't Stop Believin'" backing tracks? The Glee kids for relying on backing tracks? Sasha and Malia, for inviting the Glee kids to perform? Oprah, for exhausting the performers during a private Chicago concert last week (that will air on her show Wednesday)? Or Jane Lynch, for not jumping onstage during "Don't Stop Believin'" and distracting the audience with salty one-liners about 'nam while the technicians worked out their kinks?
5. Should Viewers 'Stop Believin' After One Lackluster "Don't Stop Believin'" Performance?
No and yes. Thanks to auto-tune, this kind of disaster will never happen on the Fox television show, and judging by the rest of the songs (second video below), Matthew Morrison and the gang can pull their weight. But Glee live concert ticket-holders who were hoping for a truly a cappella experience might want to consider pulling the ripcord on that Rosemont, Ill., concert.