Alas.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, Cheerleader Nation. How could I stay away from your sloppy hairstyles (Kaitlin) your flat iron addictions (Chelsea) and your special way of making a full set of eyelashes clump together into 4 spikes (Ashley). How could I abandon you now when, headed into the regional competition, you’ve been slacking on your basket tosses and leaving your coach and choreographer wondering if you Want It badly enough. I could never leave you. No, I couldn’t.

 Especially when this week’s episode brought us the single best throwaway line in television history. One of those offhanded comments that makes you sit up and go “Wait, did I hear that correctly?” a la george bush doesn’t like black people.

Meet Saleem.

Saleem is choreographing the Dunbar cheerleaders of Lexington, KY to what we hope will be their 3rd consecutive national championship. He’s doing such with chants like “WE ARE {clap} {clap} DUN-BAR!” so I’m going to go ahead and assume that he has his phD in literature from Columbia.

We don’t know much else about Saleem other than he has a “day job” that he never describes and he takes things way, way, way too seriously. Then, this episode, Donna (the coach/ mother of teeny cheerleader Ryan– yes, that’s a girl) drops the bomb– Saleem is roommates with the cheer choreographer for their rival team, Tates Creek. Who is also a dude.

Do the math here. Were you to, say,  google apartments in Lexington, KY, you’d rapidly discover that Saleem can live on his own for less than half of what I pay to have a roommate in NY. But instead, Saleem goes home to his (hot) roommate, where they discuss heel stretches and partner stunting. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got your number.