In this week's episode of "Glee," Jane Lynch sings. Really.
That's right, Sue Sylvester — Lynch's alter-ego, the evil coach of the cheerleaders (aka Cheerios) — is at the center of one of the musical numbers. As a performer. Really.
The episode (Wednesday, 8 p.m., Ch. 13), titled "The Power of Madonna," is loaded with — you guessed it! — Madonna's music. And, as it turns out, Sue is a huge Madonna fan.
Madonna's "Vogue" music videos is re-created in the episode, and Sue Sylvester/Jane Lynch is right there in the center of it.
(You may have seen it last week when Fox spoiled the surprise by airing it at the end of the most recent episode.)
Not only is it extremely well done and utterly hilarious, but it's a big departure for Lynch. On more than one occasion, she had vowed she would never sing on the show.
However, "Glee" executive producer Brad Falchuck said it "wasn't hard" to convince her to do the number."
"No, we just gave her the script," he said. "It was in the Madonna episode, which is truly, I think, probably our most spectacular episode to date. It is truly a spectacular that you watch and you can't believe you're watching a television show.
"And when she saw (the script) and saw what she'd be doing, she was so excited. And then when you see her do this … it's incredible."
VILLAIN WITH A HEART: Sue Sylvester is, without a doubt, the villain of "Glee." And yet the character has been astonishingly popular.
A lot of actors who play TV villains are confronted in public by fans who confuse them with the characters they play. But Lynch said she's gotten nothing but love.
"It's always very nice. No one has ever been mean to me," she said.
"I think its liberating for people to see someone so mean. Because she is so extremely mean — if she had a moustache she'd be twirling it. People love that."
And, perhaps, there's some sort of wish fulfillment in a character who says whatever she thinks all the time.
"It's like what we wish we could do in moments in our life but social propriety says we shouldn't," Lynch said. "Sue does not have that filter, and people get a big kick out of that."
And Sue is capable of surprises. On more than one occasion, we've seen that she actually does have a heart.
Of course, it sometimes takes a while to get there. Like the "Wheels" episode when Sue added Becky (Lauren Johnson) — a girl with Down syndrome — to the cheerleading squad.
"When I was first reading the episode and I saw that I was being really hard on this Down syndrome girl, Becky, I thought, 'Oh my (gosh) ... what is she going to do to this kid?' " Lynch said. "Then I got to the scene at the end, it was a great payoff."
That payoff came when we learned that Sue has a sister with Down syndrome — a sister she's very supportive of.
"Sue was not mean to (Becky), she was treating her as if she was one of the other kids," Lynch said. "Because she knows that's the way Becky wanted to be treated. I just thought it was brilliant. I thought it was a great revealing moment. And I think we had to do it in order to redeem Sue so much.
"And (executive producer) Ryan (Murphy) said, 'You just bought yourself seven or eight more episodes of heinous behavior.' "
GENERATION GAP? I watched "The Power of Madonna" episode with teens and twentysomethings. And, while I knew all the songs in the episode, they didn't.
Oh, they knew "4 Minutes," Madonna's duet with Justin Timberlake. (Duh.) And they were aware of a couple of other songs, such as "Like a Virgin" and "Like a Prayer."
But not so much "Borderline," "Burning Up," "Crazy For You," "Express Yourself," "Open Your Heart," "Vogue" or "What It Feels Like for a Girl."
But "Glee" has always been filled with music that isn't exactly familiar to young viewers, from Journey songs to Broadway show tunes.
"When you air a show and you see our version of 'Maybe This Time' — a song from "Cabaret," a 1972 movie — in the top 10 of iTunes, that to me says a whole group of kids who have never seen that movie are discovering it," said Murphy. "When Mark (Salling) did 'Sweet Caroline' and Neal Diamond twittered about it, the next day 'Sweet Caroline' entered the charts, which it had not done in, like, 25 years.
"This show, more than anything, is just a tribute to artists that we love. ... And the fact that people — young people in particular — (are) discovering these people for the first time, that's really thrilling and unexpected."
e-mail: pierce@desnews.com