Episode Report Card LTG: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Home-O
By LTG | Season 1 | Episode 16 | Aired on 04.27.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's real estate week on Glee. Sue's used her evil wiles to get the Glee Club evicted from the auditorium for the week, so Will has to find them a new home. That home turns out to be the cabaret roller-skating rink run by our little orange friend April (who never made it to Branson, but who did make it into the arms of a wealthy older lover). But they don't actually ever rehearse there -- it's all an excuse to get Will and April together. See, he's decided he needs to sublet his fabulous apartment and move to a smaller place, and April just happens to be looking for a place to rent. So she spends the night at his place to try it on for size, and they end up spending a non-sexual (but decidedly musical) night in bed together. But she doesn't end up subletting his place, because her lover kicks the bucket and his wife buys April's silence with a hefty payment, enabling her to leave town and pursue her Broadway dreams.
Meanwhile, Kurt has decided to redecorate -- his bedroom, his father, Finn's mother and Finn's house. That's all because he fixed his dad up with Finn's mom in an attempt to build a new family -- one that he wants to share with the object of his unrequited crush. But then his plotting bites him on the ass when he discovers that he's insanely jealous when his father starts to bond with Finn. Finn, for his part, is completely opposed to his mom moving on with her life, but he comes around in the end when he realizes how much his mom and Kurt's dad mean to each other.
And in other real estate news, Sue tells Mercedes that she's got a little too much real estate. In her booty, that is -- Sue wants Mercedes to lose ten pounds before a reporter arrives to do a cover piece on Sue, or she'll kick her off the Cheerios. Egged on by Kurt, Mercedes starves herself until she faints and finds herself in the nurse's office, where Quinn is extremely nice to her and tells her how beautiful she is. Mercedes gets the message, because at the pep rally (attended by the reporter), she ditches the planned program and leads the school in a lovely rendition of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful." Sue is mortified, but it turns out the song convinced the reporter that Sue wasn't actually a horrible harpy. Even when she loses, she wins.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, on Glee, Demian linked to the entire internet. Way to make me look like a slacker, pal. Also, before we begin, a quick note: it seems clear from the reaction on the forums and from my casual perusal of the tubes that this may be the most polarizing episode of Glee yet. Some of you hated the cheesy sentimentality, some of you loved it. Some of you thrilled to the Bacharach-heavy musical selections, while the same songs left some of you yawning (or running for Google, because you thought Bacharach was a kind of crystal, or a card game James Bond played). Some of you are infuriated that Rachel didn't get a single solo and barely had a line, and some of you seem almost insanely pleased by that. As for me, the music wasn't entirely my cup of tea, although it was exquisitely performed (for the most part). And after last week's Madge-stravaganza, it was inevitable that there would have to be an episode that gave Lea Michelle a break and featured no real choreography, so the Rachel-lite, low-key nature of the performances was understandable. And, finally, I have at various times in my life been in almost the exact same emotional space as Kurt, Finn, and Finn's mother. (My denim vest addiction was legendary.) So the episode left me quite emotionally drained. (Also, two of the plot line are pretty much completely recycled from Ryan Murphy's last major-network teen show, Popular, which definitely dropped the grade a bit.)
Sue's office. Kurt and Mercedes, in their Cheerios duds, are sitting across from Sue. Sue is dressing down Mercedes for the way she's been dressing. At first, Sue thought the fact that Mercedes was constantly wearing a Cheerios tracksuit was "a subtle homage to yours truly. But now I fear it's some sort of ironic comment." Mercedes is uncomfortable wearing those shorty-short cheerleading skirts (because, she claims, she's "afraid of showing too much skin and starting a sex riot"). But Sue doesn't care about Mercedes' feelings (or about the adorable simultaneous finger-wiggling, hair-smoothing gesture Kurt and Mercedes just used in place of a high five). "Splits magazine, after much campaigning by one Sue Sylvester, has named me cheerleading coach of the last 2,000 years." The last 2,000 years? Come on, Sue, you're good, but you don't hold a candle to Priscilla the Hun. It is widely acknowledge that the Huns would never have made it across the Danube in 440 A.D. without the inspiration of her genius performance set to "Vinciamus," by the kithera and cornu group, Regina. And her human pyramids contained up to 1,000 people. Of course, most of those were headless corpses. But still. In any case, Sue is expecting reporter Tracy Pendergrass to come to the school in seven days to write her profile, and if Mercedes doesn't lose ten pounds and start wearing a skirt, she'll be off the Cheerios. Kurt protests, but Sue tells her that he could stand to lose a few pounds himself, pointing out that he has "hips like a pear." Sue dismisses them: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to put in a call to the Ohio Secretary of State notifying them I will no longer be carrying photo ID. You know why? People should know who I am." Title card.