"The Spanish Teacher" is the twelfth episode of the third season of the American musical television series Glee, and the fifty-sixth overall. Written by co-creator Ian Brennan and directed by Paris Barclay, the episode aired on Fox in the United States on February 7, 2012. Ricky Martin guest stars in it as a night-school Spanish teacher whom Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) introduces to McKinley High, and shows several of McKinley's teachers competing for a promotion when a tenured position unexpectedly becomes available.
The episode received mixed to positive reviews, and many critics considered Martin to be a highlight. Reaction to the music as a whole was less enthusiastic than for the episode itself, though "La Isla Bonita" and "Don't Wanna Lose You" were given a generally favorable reception. The former song charted on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard Canadian Hot 100; of the remaining four singles, "Sexy and I Know It" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, and the other three singles did not chart.
Upon its initial airing, this episode was viewed by 7.81 million American viewers and received a 3.3/9 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic. The total viewership was down significantly from the special tribute episode, "Michael", which aired the previous week.
Plot The retirement of a history teacher opens a tenured position at McKinley High. Spanish teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) and cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) both want the promotion, but anonymous students have registered complaints about the pair. Determined to polish up his language skills, Will goes to night school for a refresher course and meets instructor David Martinez (Ricky Martin), who points out that kids learn better through music. Will assigns a Spanish-themed week to New Directions and David helps by singing "Sexy and I Know It" partially in Spanish. Santana (Naya Rivera) suggests that Will now has a rival and needs to defend his honor.
Rachel (Lea Michele) tells Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Mercedes (Amber Riley) that she has accepted Finn's (Cory Monteith) marriage proposal. Kurt later tells Finn that he would be lucky to have Rachel some day, but he believes Finn is considering matrimony because he has given up too early on his own dreams.
Mercedes is torn between her feelings for Sam (Chord Overstreet) and her boyfriend Shane (LaMarcus Tinker). Guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) recommends that Mercedes and Sam stop speaking to each other for a week so they can hear what their hearts are telling them. Mercedes sings "Don't Wanna Lose You" and Sam reciprocates by singing a mash-up of "Bamboléo" and "Hero".
Sue's position as coach of the Cheerios is challenged by the synchronized swim coach, Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes). Roz is also pursuing the tenured position, and she views herself as a serious competitor for tenure and for replacing Sue on the Cheerios. She believes Sue's coaching style and cheerleading choreography are old-fashioned, and plans to update the team if she becomes the new coach.
Sue reveals her desire to become a mother and asks Will to be the sperm donor. When Will's fiancée, Emma, confronts her about this request, Sue admits that she wants Will's capacity for kindness for her child. Emma and Will's relationship becomes strained as he focuses on impressing Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) to win tenure, and denigrates her newest set of counseling pamphlets. He is surprised when Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones) enthusiastically praises Emma for her recent pamphlet on genital sanitation, which has just been adopted by the Big Ten football teams.
Santana and David duet with "La Isla Bonita" and Will responds with a bilingual rendition of "A Little Less Conversation" while dressed as a matador, which offends Santana. Will accuses her of complaining about him, and she says she did so because of the negative Latin stereotypes he has been perpetuating. She then asks him why he decided to become a Spanish teacher, to which he responds that it was the only open position at the time. Santana tells Will that he shows real passion with the Glee Club and should stick to it. Sue discovers that Cheerios co-captain Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter) was the one who complained about her coaching. Becky believed that Sue had become less focused on the squad, to its detriment, and Sue praises her devotion to the team.
Will arranges with Figgins to become the new history teacher, and successfully proposes David to be his replacement as Spanish teacher. Ultimately, Emma is the one who is given tenure.
Production
On November 29, 2011, the day news broke that Ricky Martin had "closed a deal" with Glee to guest star in an early 2012 episode, Martin himself tweeted, "I hear McKinley high has an opening for a Spanish teacher... Maybe I’ll apply. ;o)". It was rumored he would be a recurring character and a romance would begin with recurring character from season 1 April who was rumored to appear in season 3, but this did not happen. He turned out to be only a guest.
The episode was written by co-creator Ian Brennan and directed by Paris Barclay, and began filming on January 5, 2012, with Martin in attendance; he had recorded his songs the day before. He finished filming his scenes that week, ending early in the morning of January 7, 2012. The previous episode—the Michael Jackson tribute—had not yet completed, and the two episodes continued in parallel until the final Michael Jackson number was shot on January 13, 2012, the same day that the thirteenth episode commenced filming.
One of the songs Martin performs is a Spanglish version of LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It", as part of a competition with Morrison's character, who sings an Elvis Presley song in Spanish, "A Little Less Conversation. Martin's other musical number, Madonna's "La Isla Bonita", is a duet with Rivera. The two remaining numbers performed in the episode include a mash-up of "Bamboleo" by the Gipsy Kings and "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias, performed by Overstreet with the other New Directions males, and Gloria Estefan's "Don't Wanna Lose You" performed by Riley. The six cover versions have been released as five singles for digital download, with the two-song mash-up in one single. The brief, flashback performance of "La Cucaracha" was not released as a single.
Recurring guest stars who appear in the episode include glee club members Sam Evans (Overstreet), Rory Flanagan (Damian McGinty) and Sugar Motta (Vanessa Lengies), Principal Figgins (Theba), synchronized swimming coach Roz Washington (NeNe Leakes), cheerleading co-captain Becky Jackson (Potter), football player Shane Tinsley (Tinker), football coach Shannon Beiste (Jones) and tenured history teacher Mrs. Hagberg (Mary Gillis).
Reception
Ratings
"The Spanish Teacher" was first broadcast on February 7, 2012, in the United States on Fox. It received a 3.3/9 Nielsen rating/share in the 18–49 demographic, and attracted 7.81 million American viewers during its initial airing, a significant decrease from the 3.7/10 rating/share and 9.07 million viewers of the previous episode, the Michael Jackson tribute "Michael", which was broadcast on January 31, 2012. Viewership also decreased significantly in Canada, where 1.57 million viewers watched the episode on the same day as its American premiere. It was the fifteenth most-viewed show of the week, down five slots and 14% from the 1.84 million viewers who watched "Michael" the previous week.Canadian viewership data: "The Spanish Teacher": "Michael":
In the United Kingdom, "The Spanish Teacher" first aired on March 15, 2012, and was watched on Sky 1 by 771,000 viewers. Viewership was up over 13% from "Michael", which attracted 682,000 viewers when it aired the week before.UK viewership data: "The Spanish Teacher": "Michael": In Australia, "The Spanish Teacher" was broadcast on March 2, 2012. It was watched by 564,000 viewers, which made Glee the twelfth most-watched program of the night, up from thirteenth the week before. The viewership was up over 5% from the previous episode, "Michael", which was seen by 535,000 viewers.Australian viewership data: "The Spanish Teacher": "Michael":
Critical reception "The Spanish Teacher" was given mixed to positive reviews. Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club wrote that "much of this episode felt like a very deliberate throwback to season one, in some very good ways", and IGN's Robert Canning said that "the overarching storylines on Glee have become far more engaging than what we saw in the first half of the season". John Kubicek of BuddyTV stated that the episode "does a lot of things right when it comes to the plot", and Billboard Rae Votta described the plot as "consistent and well managed, with believable motivation, response and action all around". However, Jen Chaney of The Washington Post wrote that the episode "brought more narrative developments that didn’t make sense", and Rolling Stone Erica Futterman stated that aside from Martin's scenes, "the rest of the episode found us back in scatterbrained plot territory". Amy Reiter of The Los Angeles Times liked the episode and described it as "the kind that makes you belly-laugh and chortle and snicker despite your better judgment".
The introduction of Ricky Martin as David Martinez was welcomed by most reviewers. Futterman wrote that "Ricky Martin carried on the Gwyneth Paltrow tradition of pretty great guest teacher cameos", and TVLine Michael Slezak said that the episode was good "at least whenever Ricky Martin appeared on screen". VanDerWerff called him "fun and infectious", and Kate Stanhope of TV Guide said he "showed himself to be a guest star with mucho potential". Kubicek, though he said Martin was "great at singing", found him "kind of dull as an actor", and Canning said Martin "felt out of place" in the episode.
Although Canning wrote that "the writers did a fine job of incorporating the tenure, Will's terrible Spanish and the songs into the storylines", Will's lack of Spanish skills was questioned by other reviewers. Entertainment Weekly Joseph Brannigan Lynch said this did not "seem to gel with the passionate Will Schuester I remember from season 1", and Slezak expressed surprise that "he hadn't even mastered the basics of the language!", as did Chaney. Slezak also said Will, as evidenced by his "La Cucaracha" rendition for his class, was "suddenly dumb as the cardboard box that Finn winningly turned into a robot head", and Chaney commented, "Mr. Schuester always seemed a bit more sensitive than this." VanDerWerff wrote of "the weird, dark despair at the heart of Will's plight: He's a high school Spanish teacher, and he mostly is that because he doesn't know what else to do." She added, "I think this was probably the best episode for the character since early season one." Canning stated that "the tension between Will and Emma was a welcome change", and Votta commented on the episode's less dramatic ending with Will's apology and "celebrating Emma's new-found tenure with a dinner" with the conclusion, "sometimes you don't need a big bang to get oomph out of an episode". Chaney, however, was puzzled as to why Emma was given teaching tenure "when she's been working at McKinley as a guidance counselor and handing out absolutely horrifying self-made pamphlets".