Naya Rivera gets wasted on 'The Glee Project'

Credit: Tyler Golden/Oxygen

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The second season cast of "The Glee Project" tackling sexuality turns out to be about as sexy as Lars von Trier directing an episode of "iCarly." It's either the ugliest cute thing or the cutest ugly thing you've ever seen, and either way it's a bad combination.

Here's how it started:

This week's theme: Sexuality
Homework assignment: Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up"
Guest mentor: Naya Rivera

Aylin is thrilled -- it's her week to shine! (But once again she references how angry/ashamed/upset her parents will be seeing her as a sexual being.) Nellie is concerned because she's never had sex or seen a man naked. Michael considers himself "comfortable" and "fairly experienced" with sexuality, so he should do fine. (Wait, why are we hearing from Michael when we never hear from Michael?)

In other news, Abraham dyed his hair jet black which makes him feel masculine and confident.

Naya Rivera arrives for her guest mentoring and Mario cracks an awkward joke to the camera: "She's so sexy, I can see it." (Ha! Oh Mario, you're terrible. Really. You're terrible.)

Naya's advice to the kids: "To me playing a sensual character is all about confidence. Less is more." And the less we see of their group effort on "I Wanna Sex You Up" the better we'll be.

Now would obviously be a good time for some Santana Lopez put downs -- this crew is asking for it -- but Rivera sadly has to be nice. So she praises Blake (she thinks he's cute and playful) and Charlie (because he did some beat boxing and she loves that), and criticizes Aylin for overdoing it and Nellie for being nervous.

Naya's pick for homework winner: Charlie.

Then she announces this week's music video: a mashup of Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" and Kelis' "Milkshake."

Robert informs everyone that the premise for the video will be a high school sex ed class that turns into a "boys versus girls sexy off." (I wish I was making this up, but he really said that.)

During the group choreography session, Zach observes the contenders will need to "find a balance between overt sexuality and no sexuality." On the no sexuality side of the spectrum: Shanna, who thinks smiling like a lunatic is sexy. Also, Nellie is having trouble with an extra saucy bit of choreography Zach gives her, but she's determined to work hard and nail it.

In the recording both Charlie (who has ADHD) is extra distracted and it's bothering Nikki. He keeps flirting with Aylin through the sound booth window.

"I don't know what me and Aylin is, but it's really fun while it's here," Charlie says about their silly showmance. Aylin admits, "We're both super confused. Well I'm more confused than he is."

But Charlie's goofiness is no match for Michael, who flat out blows it in the recording booth. He can't remember lyrics and things get so bad that Nikki kicks him out.

While they're shooting the video, Zach and Robert praise Lily and Nellie. Nellie may be afraid of sexuality, but she's faking it really well. They also notice Abraham's new hair. "I think taking the red out of his hair opened him up and he's like a different person," Robert notes in possibly the most ridiculous comment of the entire hour.

There's minor drama when director Erik White gets fed up with Charlie trying to take over his scene. This is after Charlie made that improv move last week to steal Mario's cane during the bullying video. It's starting to seem like Charlie's ADHD really is a problem, and another example of the reason someone was cast on "The Glee Project" being the same reason that person should never actually be on "Glee."

At evaluation time, Nellie is first on the callback list. She may have been worried about the theme, but she owned it. Blake, Mario, Aylin, Abraham, Ali and Lily all sail through as well... mostly because someone has to. Although there are concerns about Shanna's ability to show "shades" in her sunny personality, she makes it through.

That leaves the bottom three: Charlie, Tyler and Michael

LAST CHANCE PERFORMANCES

Charlie
Song: Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You"

What Ryan says: "I think it's great you were playing to me because you have three people out here who were very upset with you." [Because of the way he acted in the recording booth and during the video shoot.]

How Charlie responds: "I have a childlike enthusiasm!" But Ryan wonders if it's enthusiasm or disrespect.

Tyler
Song: Charlie Chaplin's "Smile"

What Ryan says: "Sexuality. Where was it?"

How Tyler responds: "I'm a very internal person." Ryan admits it's very "difficult to criticize" Tyler because being transgendered is brave, but basically everyone else in the competition is better and maybe it's time to stop pretending otherwise.

Michael
Song: Jason Mraz's "Lucky"

What Ryan says: "What the hell happened?" [After Michael forgot at least half the lyrics and just started making up nonsense.]

How Michael responds: "I've never forgotten that many words in a song ... It's kind of symbolic of my general problem."

As far as I'm concerned, all three of these guys should get the boot right now. This is the most we've seen of Michael to date, and he's deeply unlikable. Zach begs Ryan to keep Michael around because he's got a creepy crush on the 18-year-old kid, but there's no excuse for forgetting lyrics twice in one week this early on. But Charlie is clearly a mess, and Tyler is just plain awful, so there's no bad decision to be made here.

Not called back: Tyler.

Yeah, we all saw that coming from week one.

What did you think of this week's episode? Was this a waste of Naya Rivera or what? Does anyone other than Nellie deserve to win at this point?

Geoff Berkshire
Contributor

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Geoff Berkshire lives in Los Angeles and writes about film and television. His work has appeared in Variety, the L.A. Times, and Premiere, among other publications. He is the former national entertainment editor and film critic for Metromix.com.