Tonight's episode of Glee, "Home," was beautiful and fantastic. Such emotion and realistic dialogue and directing let the actors really shine. Here are my thoughts on what I loved, what I hated, and what I thought just worked really well for the show and the characters.
Things I loved
I loved finn's mom's scene where she's explaining letting go of her husband/finn's dad and that their home hasn't really been the home it would've been with finn's dad weren't missing. So spot on in dialogue and beautifully acted by both Cory and Romy (the actors playing Finn and Carole). So accurate. My mom was riveted on Finn's mom and I was riveted on Finn's reaction to the chair.
I loved the Mercedes and Quinn scene. So touching. Another example of fantastic and accurate writing. When Quinn said that eating to keep her baby healthy and strong made her ask why isn't she willing to give herself that kind of care and attention... so spot on.
I love how Mercedes's "Beautiful" ballad was powerful, yet toned down from the high pitch of Aguilera's equally amazing, but different, version. Amber Riley really hit the emotion and the music.
And I loved how Will Schuester is acknowledging and feeling his loneliness – the loneliness that comes from having been in the same serious relationship since when he was 16.
What I hated
On another note, I hated how the investigative reporter never interviewed any students or faculty, or even Sue herself since he interrupted her in her office right before she was about to put her foot in her mouth. A good reporter lets the subject speak for itself. And a good reporter never goes and tells the subject how the article is going to turn out.
I didn't really care for the song selection, either. And while I love Kristin Chenoweth's talent and energy, the songs they gave her didn't pop the way it could have with different songs and thematic ties. The music-in-story seemed a little forced and disjointed and even Kurt's rendition of "A House is Not A Home" was pretty painful, thanks to it coming out of nowhere and being infused with both the parent-dating drama and the Kurt has a crush on Finn drama.
What I thought worked
How nice was it to have a break from the kid's angsty love lives and other melodrama going on. In other words, thank you, writers, for putting Rachel and Jesse in the background this episode. They're talented and all, but Glee needs this to be an ensemble cast with ensemble scenes, not designated "stars." And Glee needs to show that it knows it has the potential to be more than just the music – and the music is only as good as the emotions tying it to the story.
It was also nice to see a responsible, competent and sane school nurse on the premises. When she showed up on the screen telling Mercedes that her mother was on her way to pick her up, and said it all calmly and with sympathetic understanding, well, that was a not insignificant moment for me.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the leading cause of death among infants younger than 1 year old, could result from a deficit imbalance of serotonin levels in the brain, according to a new study published in the July issue of the journal Science.
SIDS describes the sudden, unexplained death of an infant between 1 month and 1 year of age. Also called "crib death" since it often occurs while the infant is asleep, SIDS strikes many seemingly healthy infants and can only be diagnosed after ruling out all other possible causes. African Americans and Native Americans are two to three times more likely than Caucasians to die from SIDS, and boys are more often affected than girls.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter - a signaling chemical - that affects brain and organ function throughout the body, influencing an individual's mood balance and playing a role in everything from depression, anger and appetite, to the regulation of body temperature, heart rate and arousal from sleep.
Dr. Cornelius Gross, Ph.D., and colleagues from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory near Rome, Italy, made the "chance discovery" of SIDS-like symptoms while attempting to determine serotonin's role in aggression and society. They observed that genetically engineered mice with abnormally low levels of serotonin experienced erratic drops in heart rate and a drop in body temperature. But it was after over half of the mice used in the study died, all before three months of age, that the scientists made the association between serotonin levels and SIDS.
Dr. Gross emphasized that the SIDS-like symptoms exhibited by the lab mice were not indicative of symptoms experienced by human infants who suffered from SIDS, since the mice had been engineered to have an overactive gene that inhibits serotonin production.
SIDS incidence rates peak at three to four months in babies born at full-term, and at around three to four months after the due date of babies born prematurely. This period is notable as the time around when infants can turn over by themselves while asleep, thus increasing the likelihood of putting their faces against soft material.
However, as noted by Dr. Gary Emmett, a general pediatrician with Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, precautionary measures have cut the incidence rate in the U.S. by more than 50 percent in the past 20 years. According to the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics, SIDS deaths are down from 1.43 deaths per live birth (1984) to 0.51 deaths per live birth (2005) - around 2,500 deaths annually.
The study's findings are far from being conclusive, it supports previous studies done by Dr. Hannah Kinney, from the Children's Hospital of Boston, where inadequate serotonin levels were linked to SIDS, but not in a way that could establish a method to measure risk or related symptoms.
Doctors and researchers hope that this connection might spur further awareness, interest and development into creating ways to screen infants for risk of SIDS.
"Now that [low serotonin levels has] come up as strongly related to two different species, we know we're on the right track [and] it'll encourage people to study this more in living human beings," said Dr. Emmett.
Referring to his study, Dr. Gross added that "Maybe there is some kind of signature we could find in these mice before they have a crisis, some way they respond when they wake up from sleep. That might help us identify those kids most at risk [for] SIDS and provide parents with some[thing] ... before a crisis occurs."
Heather Chin can be reached at hchin@thebulletin.us