Episode Report Card Demian: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT We'll Always Have Branson
By Demian | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 09.30.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.An encounter with a 24-year old Vocal Adrenaline member (who's a 6th year senior) helps Will to realize that there are ways to bring ringers into the Glee Club. He tracks down April Rhodes, a former Glee Club star (she was a senior when Will was a freshman) who dropped out when she was three credits shy of graduating. It turns out that she's Josh Groban's favorite type -- a blowsy alcoholic. So she enrolls in his Spanish class and joins the Glee Club. And did I mention that she's played by Kristin Chenoweth? Despite her amazing pipes, the kids are a little disturbed by having a 30-something drunk as their new member, so April wins them over one at a time, introducing them to booze, porn and the joys of shoplifting. And, in the case of Puck and the football players who joined Glee, the joys of group sex in the showers.
Finn turns out to be a diabolical mastermind when it comes to manipulating women -- or, at least, Rachel. He plays with her attraction to him to get her to rejoin Glee. But only after Sandy is a total ass to her and drives her away from the musical. Of course, Rachel returns mere moments after Puck tells the rest of the group that Quinn is pregnant and that Finn is the father. So Rachel slaps the crap out of Finn and calls him out for leading her on. He admits that he persuaded her to rejoin Glee only so to increase the chances he would get a music scholarship. So she leaves again, but only after getting Sue to guarantee that she will have full control over the musical.
Will realizes that drunk April is a horrible influence on the Glee Clubbers (especially after a drunken Kurt vomits all over Emma) and gets her to promise to sober up. She breaks that promise the very next night, when Glee is performing their first big concert for an audience. After the first half, Will benches April for being an incorrigible drunk. She realizes that it's wrong for her to try to steal the spotlight from these kids, and she heads off to find her fame on Broadway, or maybe Branson.
As the kids prepare for the second half, Will tells them there won't be a second half because he's sacked April. But Rachel appears and offers to fill in for April, because she's realized that she'd rather have the Glee kids as friends than be a star, so she rejoins Glee and quits the musical (again). And then the kids perform a great cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love." -- LTG
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Currently on Glee: A Previously sequence! Let's let the wackily voiced announcer man handle this, shall we? "Quinn told Finn, 'I'm pregnant!' but she didn't tell him that he's not the father -- Puck is. Can you believe that? But that's not the only baby drama -- Terry says she's pregnant but really, she's faking, and Mr. Schuester doesn't know. Also, Rachel quit the Glee Club because Sue got Sandy to come back to direct a musical, and that's what you missed on Glee!" Thanks for that, Wackily Voiced Announcer Man, but you forgot the best part of the episode: "Hand. Hand. Point to the finger. Hip. Head. Oh, sneak attack back to the ring! Comb through the hair. Slap. The. Butt!"
The camera catches Will taping a "William McKinley High Glee Club Invitational" poster to a hallway wall as the by now very familiar opening to this show's version of "Don't Stop Believing" hits the soundtrack, and soon enough, we've been shunted over to the music room, where Will's leading the recently expanded Glee Club in a full rehearsal of the piece, accompanied by my favorite non-speaking students on this or any other high-school-based show, The McKinley Jazz Ensemble. That bassist is fierce. But what's this? Quinn singing the female lead? Heresy! Do you think we should stone her? I think we should stone her. Fortunately for her sake, Quinn suddenly throws up in her mouth a little bit, and bolts for the ladies' to indulge in a morning sickness-induced hurl. Finn, quick to cover, blurts, "I think she just had a bad breakfast burrito!" but Kurt couldn't care less about Quinn's dietary habits, real or imagined, and instead plants his hands firmly upon his hips to ask, "Can we please talk about the giant elephant in the room?" "Your sexuality?" snarks Santana Lopez, of all people, but Kurt simply tosses her a supremely hairy side-eye as he corrects her. "Rachel," he stresses. "We can't do it without her." Will suggests layering Santana Lopes and Mercedes over Quinn's inadequate vocal stylings, but Artie immediately protests this proposed solution, noting that they might get away with it for the invitationals, but the sectionals and regionals are going to be a different story. "The wheelchair kid's right," my glorious husband Puck interjects. "That Rachel chick makes me want to light myself on fire, but she can sing." And how does Will answer all of this insubordination? By working his panties into a tremendous wad and tossing a massive hissy, of course. Smooth. After snapping about how everyone just needs to get the hell over Rachel, already, he pisses out an order for everyone to take five and flounces over to the grand piano, where he huffily takes a seat. Frankenteen, foolishly heedless of the tension now flaring out from Mr. Schue's unreasonably curly head, lurches over to bumble, "I don't wanna tell ya how to do your job, but with all the dancing around that Quinn's doing, I'm kinda worried about..." -- and here his voice dives into an exaggerated whisper -- "...the baby." To his credit, Will does not choose to make that Ticonderoga No. 2 in his hand disappear into Finn's eye, but instead offers to give T-T-T-Tina some of Quinn's verses before wondering if Finn might maybe possibly want to let his mother know what's going on in Quinn's uterus. Finn quietly notes that he'd rather handle it himself for the time being, as his mother has "enough to worry about," what with replenishing her supply of mom jeans and cunning little denim vests and such. Frankenteen lurches away while Will looks pensive, or something.
The camera cuts to the interior of one of Lima's finer dining establishments, where the pregnancy-padded Terri's wolfing down her third piece of grasshopper pie while Will thoughtfully dips a French fry into a bowl of ketchup before wondering aloud, "How come you haven't had any morning sickness?" Terri's eyes widen in momentary panic, but Will obliviously fails to notice this in favor of explaining that Quinn's "been upchucking every fifteen minutes." "That's a really good sign!" Terri breathily enthuses while slyly angling to change the topic for a moment. "It means the baby's not a mongoloid!" Of course, this just makes Will worry about their nonexistent fetus's health even more, but Terri, thinking fast, hastens to reassure him. "You should ask Howard Bamboo about my Linda Blair impersonations every half hour at work." Will, idiot that he is, buys this, and is about to launch himself into another round of bitchery regarding the Rachel situation when their not unattractive waiter stops by to see how they're doing. Terri, of course, would like another slice of pie, but that's not important at the moment, because what really is important is that Will thinks he recognizes this Chris person from Spanish classes at McKinley a few years back. "Like, five years ago," Chris nods, before adding, "I go to Carmel now." "How is that possible?" Will buhs. "You must be 22." "Twenty-four," Chris corrects with a smile on his face. "I'm a sixth-year senior," he explains. "They keep failing me so I can stay in Vocal Adrenaline." "Is that legal?" Will eyebrows. "I'm the only one who can do the triple flip," Chris shrugs, and no, he's not the same guy who did the triple flip in the middle of "Rehab," but whatever, because Terri is hungry, and Will has suddenly stumbled across a cunning plan. This should go well for everyone involved.
And after we zip past the title card, we land in Emma's office, where a nervous-looking Finn fidgets in his chair while Emma models an adorable sweater, as is her wont. Finn quite reasonably wonders if he's in trouble, but Emma assures him he's not. "I've just, um, taken a...special interest in you," she haltingly explains, adding, "I know that life can sometimes come at you pretty fast, and, uh, you reach a point where you might just need a little, um, special guidance." Finn, surprisingly quick with the suspicions for one who's so frequently special in the specialest sense of that word himself, wonders if someone's been talking to Emma about his personal life. Emma goes wide-eyed. Well, wider-eyed. "Nope," she shakes her head. "Uh-uh."
Smash wipe to the teacher's lounge the previous afternoon, where Emma's sanitizing a strawberry. "Can you keep a secret?" Will asks, leaning over her shoulder. Emma's entire face lights up right before we...
...smash wipe back to the present, where the lying liar who lies skillfully redirects the topic of conversation over to Finn's scholarship opportunities. She notes that athletic scholarships are vanishing rare, but that numerous colleges offer full rides to students who excel in vocal performance, and I feel like I should be calling bullshit on that, but the last time I had to worry about such things, there was music still on MTV, so I'm giving her a pass for now. "Maybe if you were able to go to college," Emma continues, "you wouldn't, say, end up stuck in this town in a dead-end job living hand-to-mouth with a wife and a kid you never intended to have. You know, for example -- that's just something off the top of my head." Heh. Finn's pretty stoked with the idea of Glee Club being his ticket out of that Midwestern hellhole, but worries, "We lost Rachel -- do you think we can do it without her?" "Sure!" Emma smiles.
Smash wipe to yesterday afternoon, where Will's just asked Emma pretty much the same thing. Her response then? "Remember the Jamaican bobsled team? Biiiiiig longshots!" And with that, we're smeared again to...
...the present, where the lying liar who lies adds a too-bright, "Definitely!" before deviously suggesting that it would be in Finn's best scholarship interests to persuade Rachel to rejoin the club. Frankenteen s-l-o-w-l-y nods his head as that idea gradually works its way into his skull.