Fallout from Principal Figgins's end-of-episode dictate last week is, as you would imagine, immediate, as new Glee co-director Sue Sylvester quickly moves to exploit a readily apparent chink in the club's armor: Will's terrible habit of shunting the minority students into the background in favor of showcasing Rachel and Finn. To that end, she unearths a loophole in the show choir rulebook that allows smaller subsections of eligible teams to perform individual songs at Sectionals, and siphons off Santana Lopez, "Wheels," "Gay Kid," "Asian," "Other Asian," "Aretha," and "Shaft" to form "Sue's Kids." Will, at Terri's urging, retaliates by academically disqualifying nearly all of Sue's Cheerios because, as it turns out, McKinley High's faculty has been socially promoting functionally illiterate cheerleaders for years rather than face Sue Sylvester's considerable wrath.
When Sue responds to this outrage by further poaching Puck and Britney -- he's Jewish, you know, and she's a member of that infamously oppressed minority group known as "the Dutch" -- the co-directors' simmering war of attrition erupts into the titular throwdown between Sue and Will right there in the middle of the auditorium during a Sectionals rehearsal, and all of the kids end up flouncing in disgust, with the football players most awesomely carrying Artie out in his wheelchair. And in the end, it's Sue, oddly enough, who proposes a truce, stepping aside to allow the reconstituted club to proceed without her interference. I'm convinced it's merely a strategic retreat on her part, and week will find her slowly poisoning the entire ungrateful lot of them with arsenic-laced PowerBars when she's not busily sneaking Nair into their shampoo bottles.
In actual baby news, Will escorts Finn and Quinn to one of Lima's two obstetricians for an ultrasound, and it's a healthy girl with nary a mutation -- not even any of the cool ones. Quinn's still determined to hand the thing off for adoption, but Finn's feeling increasingly paternal, even going so far as to propose several utterly inappropriate names for the child. Meanwhile, J-Fro threatens to plaster Quinn's pregnancy all over his McKinley High gossip blog, but Rachel manages to purchase the perv's momentary silence with a used pair of her granny panties. Unfortunately, Sue finds those granny panties during a routine locker check and, after beating the entire sordid story out of J-Fro, forces him to publish it anyway.
And finally, in nonexistent baby news, Terri and her delightfully horrible psychopath of a sister, Kendra, blackmail Terri's obstetrician into faking an ultrasound in order to keep Will fooled about that pregnancy pad Terri's been lugging around for the last couple of months. I'm not 100% positive about this, but I'm pretty sure Will's an idiot.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see where the Glee Club will be in 20 years at the McKinley High School Reunion.
Previously on Glee: The show added its own previously-on-Glee bit, which LTG refused to recap, so I'm going to ignore it, too. Take that, Wackily Voiced Announcer Man!
As various Glee Club members look on with stunned, disbelieving expressions of vaguely disgusted horror (or, in Britney's case, "blankly"), Miss Sylvester and Mr. Schuester engage in an extreme slow-motion Godzilla Versus Megalon-style giant-against-weakling duel to the death in the middle of McKinley High's auditorium, all exaggerated gesticulations and baying mouths, with their voices reduced to the sorts of drawn-out yowls one expects to find in pretentious mid-'80s New Wave videos. "How did this happen?" Will's voiceover wonders as the camera focuses tight on his face turning various shades of violet and crimson. "I look like a crazy person -- that's not me!" Alas, but it is, for Will's been brought low by the constant bickering that's been going on ever since last week's decongestant incident when, as you'll recall, Principal Figgins ordered Will to accept Sue as co-captain of the club. "I'm so ashamed of myself," Will's voiceover continues while his on-screen self pushes its face into Sue's to bellow while flapping its arms around in the air. "She's turned me into her!" And this would be unfortunate...how, exactly? Oh, right -- sorry, I forgot whom I'm supposed to be rooting for, because Miss Sue Sylvester is quite simply that awesome, especially after she assumes narrative responsibilities as her theme song -- "O Fortuna" from Orff's Carmina Burana -- kicks in on the soundtrack. "Look at me!" her voiceover marvels as her on-screen self contorts its screaming face into a rictus of rage and draws its hands into gnarled claws. "Even in the heat of battle," her admiring voiceover continues, "I'm so elegant! Regal! I am Ajax, mighty Greek warrior! God, it feels good to finally pop that zit known as Will Schuester!" "Shut up, Sue!" Will's voiceover interrupts before catching itself and sighing, "Look at us -- we're even fighting in our voiceovers." Will's voiceover muses that the real trouble began "a couple of days ago," when Principal Figgins summoned the two of them into his office for a summit, and with that, we're...
...back in the past, where Figgins asks for a progress report on how "Sue and Schue" are working together. Sue and Schue initially stumble over each other attempting to offer Figgins an answer, but after grandly and over-elaborately apologizing to one another, Sue replies first: "Things couldn't be going more smoothly." "I couldn't agree more!" Will lies, laughing and playfully bopping Sue on the shoulder for emphasis. Sue laughs along with him, but you know she's now secretly plotting to dismember Will's offending limb with a rusty hacksaw. Figgins, no fool, sees right through the forced jocularity and leans forward to emphasize, "I don't want to hear any reports of either of you trying to curry favor from the children, am I clear?" and I'm not sure if his use of the word "curry" in that sentence is a deliberate attempt to pepper his dialogue with what one might call "slur-adjacent" language, given the fact that the only other instance in tonight's presentation that I can remember at the moment is Sue's upcoming "chink in the armor," but if I notice a trend, especially considering tonight's central plot device, I'll be sure to point it out to you. That said, don't expect Will to complain about the Glee Club's "niggardly budget" anytime soon.
Smear ahead briefly in time to Will blatantly violating Figgins's curry ban by transparently begging for approval through soliciting the Glee Club's thoughts on what they should be performing at Sectionals. "Anything?" he prompts, as most of the club members stare at him, bored. "Any music in particular that you guys want to do?" Mercedes raises a hand. "Could we maybe try something a little more black?" "I agree," the eleven-year-old German milkmaid sighs, "we do an awful lot of showtunes," and honey, you were the one wiping single, perfect gay tears from his eyes when Orangina tore down the house a couple of weeks ago with a Liza impersonation, so I don't want to hear that kind of crap coming from you, missy. Rachel, sharing my outrage, protests, "It's 'Glee Club,' not 'Crunk Club'!" "Don't make me take you to the carpet!" Mercedes boldly threatens, for she is indeed a Big Bold Mama who, in short order, will actually stop the show this evening. Long before that happens, however, Gaylord Weiner or Butt Lunch or whatever the hell his name is raises a hand of his own to note, "I can pop and lock!" "Not really what we're going for, Mike," Will racistly replies, "but noted!"
Smear back to the summit, where Principal Figgins affixes his gimlet eye on Miss Sue Sylvester to stress, "And no pitting the kids against one another!" "Never!" Sue agrees.
Smear ahead briefly in time to Sue blatantly violating Figgins's pit ban as she cocks a devious eyebrow into the camera and spits, "I want to pit these kids against one another -- am I clear?" The camera spins around to take in Britney, Quinn, and Santana Lopez prettily perched on folding chairs across from Sue in the latter's office, nodding their heads in unison like the toadying little princesses they are. "Quinn!" Sue barks. "Update! Go!" Quinn eagerly leans forward to gossip, "The minority students? Don't feel like they're being heard!" We get an inscrutable reaction shot of Santana Lopez for a moment before heading on back over to Sue, who croons, "Oooh! Chink in the armor, hmmm?" before vowing to create "an environment that is so toxic" that no one -- not even the neurotically driven Rachel Berry -- will want to stay. "Like the time I sold my house to a nice young couple," Sue reminisces fondly, "and I salted the earth in the backyard so that nothing living could grow there for a hundred years!" Wanna know why she did that? "Because they tried to get me to pay their closing costs." I want to be Sue Sylvester when I grow up.
Smear back to the summit, where Principal Figgins asks for their specific plans for Sectionals. It's all very cheerily collaborative, with Sue and Will directing one each of the two required numbers, with the program order to be decided by a flip of the coin. "Very civilized," Sue assures Figgins. "Very sportsmanlike." Figgins takes a moment, then visibly relaxes as he grins, "This arrangement is pleasing to all!" Sue and Will wholeheartedly agree, and grin and chuckle along with him until he orders them to "hug it out." Their false smiles faltering a bit but not cracking completely, Sue and Will jovially protest, but Figgins will not be swayed: "This meeting doesn't end until I see your bodies touching!" He learned it last week at a leadership seminar, you see, so Sue and Will reluctantly rise to their feet and gingerly embrace. "I will destroy you!" Will murmurs into Sue's ear. "I am about to vomit down your back," Sue replies. HA! "It's on!" Will vows, and the two disappear behind the title card.
Quinn -- in her cheerleading uniform, naturally -- lies on an examination table in Dr. Amy Hill's House Of Obstetrics, nervously awaiting her first sonogram with gallant Finn at her side, holding her hand. While passing that sonogram wand thingy across Quinn's abdomen, Dr. Hill wonders if, given their ages, the two have made plans for what to do after the baby's born. Finn smiles and dorkily insists they'll do whatever Quinn decides is best, and Dr. Hill announces they're expecting a girl.
Meanwhile, out in the waiting room, Will scans an old copy of Parenting magazine until a nearby canoodling couple catches his eye. The male of the pair presses his ear against his partner's distended belly -- the better for the alien growing inside her body to kick him in the head, I suppose -- and Will smiles wistfully until Frankenteen lurches out of the examination room for a chat. "Baby's fine," Finn reports. "No mutations or anything -- not even any cool ones." Finn again thanks Mr. Schue for driving them to their appointment, and from there, the two gentlemen babble about paternal responsibility and other such crap I care nothing about until Quinn emerges into the waiting room to leave. Will looks thoughtful. Or, you know, furrowed, which I guess is the same thing.
Over at McKinley High, Rachel slams shut her locker door to find J-Fro lasciviously lurking on the other side. "The independent polling company in my Dockers has determined you're the hottest girl in this school," he opens, and oh, my GOD, that's disgusting. And funny. Mostly disgusting, though. Rachel once again shares my opinion and takes off down the hall, but J-Fro will not be deterred, chasing after her while wondering aloud if she's read his blog. Of course she hasn't, for he's nothing more than a tawdry gossipmonger whose filthy Internet site is filled with little more than trash and lies, most of them about her. J-Fro stops her cold, though, when he reveals his big story involves not her, but the bun Quinn's got in the oven. Rachel's apparently shocked that the story's spread beyond the confines of the music room, but thinks fast and, hoping to preserve Quinn's reputation for whatever reason, denies it all. She attempts to flounce off, but J-Fro calls out that his source also told him Rachel's "heartbroken Finn Hudson didn't choose [her] to carry his litter." She freezes, sighs, and spins around to demand, "What is it gonna take for you to not run the story?"
"Lady's choice!" Sue Sylvester seems to answer for J-Fro, and ha! Of course, Sue's actually referring to the Sectionals program coin toss and calls heads before flipping the thing into the air as we...
...smear back in time to Sue, in sunglasses, stalking the halls of McKinley High with her Blackberry against her ear. "Trickster's Trick Store?" she asks. "You got any of those double-headed coins?"
Will catches the toss, and so Sue goes first. "The following students," she announces, sliding a prepared roster from her clipboard, "have been selected for a special elite Glee Club called 'Sue's Kids'!" Will immediately protests that dividing up the club is against Sectionals rules. Not so, Sue claims, flipping him a bookmarked copy of the Show Choir Rule Book, in which the second addendum of Provision 14 states, "Twelve members must perform for each team. However, not all members must perform every song." Temporarily defeated, Will throws his hands into the air all, "Fine! Go ahead and take all the football players and your Cheerios!" Au contraire, Mein Herr -- Sue's actually selected the following: "Santana! Wheels! Gay kid! Asian! Other Asian! Aretha! And Shaft!" HA! "See, Will?" Sue grandstands once the club members in question have shuffled over to her side of the music room. "I don't want to participate in any group that ignores the needs of minority students." "You have got to be kidding me!" Will splutters. "I wouldn't kid about this," Sue magnificently condescends before adding, "Maybe that's your problem -- bigotry is no laughing matter." "And that's how Sue sees it!" Santana Lopez brightly chimes in, parroting Sue's television catchphrase with the appropriate hand gesture. "Out-standing!" Sue smiles in Santana Lopez's direction. Will, flummoxed, shakes his curly head around in disbelief until we...
...cut to that evening, where the screen splits as Terri -- enjoying some Chinese takeout with Will at home -- chats on the phone with her fabulously psychotic sister, Kendra, who's carefully balancing a large and half-empty wineglass in one hand while her redheaded demon spawn shriek and jump around on the bed behind her. Kendra, who's also sporting an absolutely hideous belted cowl-neck sweater-dress over a pair of white stirrup pants, brays, "I wanted to remind you to tell that Quinn girl not to vaccinate in the hospital -- I'm pretty sure those shots made my kids stupid." Ha! Terri unhesitatingly accepts her sister's advice, and immediately plans to spend the vaccination money on "the organic crib mattress." HA! "I mean," Terri rolls her eyes, wondering rhetorically, "what are the chances of the baby getting polio, right?" HA! And with just three brief lines of dialogue, Ryan Murphy takes down all of the vapid anti-vaccination assholes. Bravo, Mr. Murphy. Bravo. In any event, Will's had enough of this crap, and snatches the phone from Terri's hand to hang up on his sister-in-law. "I HATE YOU, WILL!" Kendra slurs into her now-dead cell while Terri howls, "That was rude! Don't take the stress of your workday out on me!" This sets Will off, and he launches into a self-serving, chauvinist, Neanderthal tirade about maintaining control over his own home even though he's losing everything resembling control at work, and of course it's all really about Terri's supposed pregnancy and how out of touch he feels with the whole process, especially after that morning's trip with Finn and Quinn, and when his pissy little hissy finally runs out of steam, he rises from the dinner table to insist, "I am coming with you to your doctor's appointment." With that, he exits, and Terri freaks her insane little lying ass straight into the first commercial break.
The day at school, Finn and Rachel amble through the hallway, with Finn wondering what Rachel had to do to keep J-Fro from publishing the pregnancy story. "Let's just say I feel sorry for my dads," Rachel replies, "because they're probably gonna have to dip into my college fund to pay for intensive therapy." But she doesn't mind, she hastens to add, as she'd gladly do anything to protect Finn. Oh, and Quinn, of course, because they're all teammates now. Finn thanks her for her awesomeness, and promises to repay the favor somehow someday before he heads off to his class. Rachel, positively beaming from his attentions, smiles to herself and spins... right into J-Fro's chest! Ew! "I need another pair," he insists. Rachel gags. "What's wrong with the ones I already gave you?" she hisses. He reaches into his backpack to retrieve a lime-green thong, which he waves in front of her face while accusing, "They still have the tag on them!" EW! "I want Rachel Berry panties!" he demands, and he expects delivery by tomorrow morning or the story goes live. Rachel bats him away, then flails about in frustration, completely unnoticed by the swarms of teenagers around her.
That evening, Terri pleasantly surprises Will by bringing him a beer while he's dealing with some leftover work. He thanks her for the gesture, but thinks he'd best abstain until after he's finished grading the papers. "What?" Terri smiles. "You think the kids weren't drunk when they wrote them?" I think Terri and I went to the same high school. Terri has several ulterior motives here, of course, and she proposes to help Will with the Sue situation at school not only to reestablish Will's blind faith in her after the evening's spat, but also to ensure her primary source of income (along with her primary source of an actual baby) because she actually understands the threat Sue represents. Her advice? "You got to do whatever it takes, honey! You got to get down in the gutter if you wanna win this." And that psychotic gleam in her eye tells us she knows exactly which gutters he needs to crawl through, starting with...
...this one: Sue arrives for scheduled Cheerios practice the following morning to find her entire squad missing, save for Quinn, Britney, and Santana Lopez. Quinn hustles over with the explanation: The other squad members are no longer "academically eligible" because "Mr. Schuester flunked them." DUN! The Wheel Of Fortune -- well, it's actually the camera -- has swung 'round to smack Sue Sylvester in the face, knocking her right into the commercial break.
"This is a travesty of international proportions!" Sue seethes in Principal Figgins's office, shortly after the scene ended. She jabs an accusatory finger at Will's face and growls, "You are jeopardizing my Cheerios' role as goodwill ambassadors!" That's what they're calling a bunch of bubble-brained bimbos in bikini bras and carwash skirts nowadays? Good to know. Thanks, Sue! In response, Will shows his hand: "I have a Spanish quiz in which one of your cheerleaders misspelled her name, and answered every question with a drawing of a sombrero!" Hee. Sue, of course, accuses him of misogyny before railing, "Your psychosexual derangement would be fascinating, Will, if it weren't so terrifying!" Figgins shuts her down by revealing that Will's research has shown that most of Sue's cheerleaders are functionally illiterate. For example, at last Friday's football game, they tried to spell out "GO TEAM," but it ended up as "TO GAME." In fact, as Will points out, since 1992 -- when Terri was part of the squad, don't you know, and that's how she knows Sue's M.O. -- 95% of Sue's Cheerios should have flunked Spanish, and he self-righteously declares he can no longer with good conscience contribute to such an academic farce. Sue's response to this scurrilous accusation? "Let me break this down for you: I empower my Cheerios to be champions. Do they go on to college? I don't know, I don't care. Should they learn Spanish? Sure, if they want to become dishwashers and gardeners, but if they want to be bankers and lawyers and captains of industry, the most important lesson they could possibly learn is how to do a round-off!" Truer words, I suppose. Will shouts for Figgins to fix this, now, and Figgins, cornered, abruptly declares there will be no more free passes for the cheerleading squad. Will exits, triumphant, and Sue wheels on Figgins to threaten him yet again with that sordid Mumbai Air anti-embolism stockings spot he shot during his wanton youth, but he's already loaded it onto YouTube himself -- "And it only got two hits!" "Let me break it down for you," he jazz-hands, mocking her. "Nobody cares!" O Fortuna! Sue goes apeshit, hurling books and errant students out of her way as she rampages back to her office.
Spanish class. Finn oh-so-surreptitiously passes Quinn a note in the middle of an exam, earning himself a sharp rebuke from Mr. Schuester, but Will's soon distracted by a clueless football player -- well, a different clueless football player -- so Finn spins back around to explain the note's contents. Inspired by Gwyneth Paltrow's pioneering forays into the realm of unconventional baby names, he's come up with the perfect one for their impending stranger: Drizzle. Quinn looks like she's ready to ram a pen into his carotid. "You know how awesome it is when it's just drizzling outside," he excitedly explains, completely oblivious to her mood. "It's not really raining, so it smells like rain, but you don't need an umbrella to go outside?" "Are you a moron?" Quinn interrupts, and I'm assuming the question's rhetorical. "We're not naming our baby 'Drizzle' -- we're not naming our baby anything! Finish your test!" Finn's crushed, but I'm totally not paying attention to him because in the background, Britney's snaked Quinn's completed exam to copy the answers, and Quinn's hissing, "Will you give me my test back?" "I just don't understand anything!" Britney whispers. HA!
Out in the hall, Quinn and Finn pedebitch at each other at decibel levels so loud, I simply cannot understand why everyone else in the hall isn't pointing and laughing and jotting down their exact conversation for future reference. Long story short, Finn feels... something I don't care about, because it's not his goddamned ass that's knocked up, for Christ's sake, and he completely blows it by announcing that Quinn leaves much to be desired as far as girlfriends go, whereas Rachel actually cares about his bullshit, or something like that. Instead of shoving a protractor so far up his nose that it pierces his brain and kills him dead, Quinn basically threatens to castrate him should he ever cheat on her with that thing, and then she flounces off to the music room where...
...all their concerns magically melt away as they join the other ten members of the Glee Club in an impromptu jam session centered around Nelly's "Ride Wit Me." I've been told this number was inspired by the cast's actual impromptu jam sessions on the set, and while that's all very lovely, I'm sure, I frigging hate Nelly, so to hell with this. And when it's over, The Sylvester Seven head off to the improbable dance studio that is, apparently, an actual part of the school, briefly crossing paths with the just-arriving Mr. Schue, and then we're into Will's much-delayed initial Sectionals rehearsal with the five remaining club members: Finn, Rachel, Quinn, Britney, and My Glorious Husband, who's had depressingly little to do thus far this episode. Rachel hesitantly voices her objection to the way the club's been divided up, but Will blows right past her concerns to pass out the sheet music, and it's a song called "No Air" by someone named Jordin Sparks, and it says here that she was born in 1989, so she can't possibly have anything interesting to say, lyrically speaking, and... wait a minute. She was on American Idol? And this was a duet she did with Chris Brown? Oh, hell no. Fuck this shit. !
O Fortuna! Will's apparently gotten wind of the latest defections, and he accosts Sue in the teachers' lounge, but Miss Sylvester is cooler than the other side of the pillow, and calmly counters his anger with a proposal: "You pass my Cheerios, and I'll give you back your team of losers and snot faucets." "You'll have to pry those Fs from my cold, dead hands!" Will shoots back before spinning on his heel and flouncing on out of there. Sue's all, "Well, that can be easily arranged!" Will's screwed.
Over in Dr. Wu's House Of Obstetrics, the good doctor lectures his unseen clients on the relative merits of various stress relief activities while snipping away at his bonsai. "Can we cut the crap?" Kendra blares, and we're off! Dr. Wu wonders what Kendra and Terri could possibly want from him, as neither of them is pregnant at the moment. "Well, Wu," Kendra opens, flipping her hair around before starting in with the threatening tones, "you delivered all three of my kids -- each one is dumber than the last, plus they all have ADD and, although my husband nor I have red hair, they are all creepy ginger kids!" "It's caused by a recessive gene," Dr. Wu patiently explains. "That's one theory!" Kendra retorts. "Do you wanna hear mine? You gave me too much pitocin when I was in labor, and it screwed up their DNA!" Dr. Wu wonders if Kendra's "on some new kind of psychotropic medication," Terri denies it, and Kendra takes offense, but eventually, they get to the point: If Dr. Wu refuses to acquiesce to their as-yet-unnamed demands, Kendra will sue Wu for malpractice. As there are only two OBs in all of Lima, the mere whiff of a lawsuit would quickly destroy Wu's business, so he caves.
McKinley High. Quinn slams Rachel's locker shut in Rachel's face and threatens, "Listen here, Treasure Trail, we're about to have a smackdown!" Rachel feigns ignorance, but Quinn's relentless. "Don't play stupid with me, Stubbles -- I'm having Finn's baby, and you need to back off!" Rachel considers her options, then apologizes for allowing her romantic inclinations to get the better of her. However, she points out that Quinn's no innocent given the Glee Club's current situation -- Rachel knows Quinn's acting as Sue's mole and states, correctly, that Sue's looking out for no one's best interests but her own, and that if Quinn thinks Sue won't rip Quinn's cheerleading uniform off with her bare hands the instant she learns of Quinn's pregnancy, then Quinn's got another think coming. "Every time you whisper in her ear," Rachel argues, "you empower her to do more damage to the Glee Club, and right now? Glee Club is all you have. And if I were you, I'd recognize who my true friends are." "And I'd practice a little more," she adds, if only to set up the musical number, "because you obviously have a lot you need to express." "Oh, you have no idea!" Quinn clenches, and barely have those words escaped her mouth when she whips around to launch herself into The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On," and to be honest with you, I don't know precisely what to say about it. Not that I don't like it -- Dianna Agron's proven her facility for 1960s girl-group songs before with "Say A Little Prayer," and it's a nice contrast to all the hyperemotional belting we've been getting from the other female solos thus far on this show, and I appreciate it as this episode's sole character number with all that it says about Quinn's utterly screwed-up priorities at the moment -- but the execution seems a little off to me. The bits where it's masquerading as a straight cheerleading routine are fine, as are the fantasy sequences where she's screaming relevant lyrics at various oblivious characters, particularly Sue Sylvester and Finn, but the parts where it turns into a stage routine with the female Cheerios costumed in football pads just don't seem to gel (though those parts, mind you, are entertaining to watch). Oh, well. At least it's not Nelly, or that Jordin Sparks crap.
And when it's all over, ending as it does smack on the fifty yard line down on the football field, Quinn tells the other Cheerios to take five, watches for a moment as they disperse, and then wanders off on her own into the commercial break. Is that supposed to mean something?
Auditorium, where Quinn, Rachel, and Finn are about to perform that hateful number I detest for the rest of the club, and we are fast approaching the titular slow-motion Godzilla Versus Megalon-style giant-against-weakling throwdown that opened the hour. Rachel barely makes it through the first bar of the wretched excuse of a so-called song when Sue disgustedly calls a halt to the proceedings and orders her Kids to exit the auditorium immediately, lest the malodorous foulness rising from this trash heap of a travesty invade their bodies and liquefy their brains. Or something like that. Finn, ever the astrophysicist, wonders if there's a fire. "No," Sue sharply replies, "and that's the point: There is no fire." "It's sad enough," she continues, shaking her head, "that my Sue's Kids are living in squalor and probably on food stamps" -- here Mercedes interrupts that her father's a dentist -- "but for you to drag 'em in here and bore 'em to death? I won't stand for it -- come on, kids! Out! We're goin' for Coneys!" Once again, Will's had enough of Sue's abuse, and after the two trade increasingly heated insults, the entire argument grinds down into super-slow-motion for a moment until Finn steps forward to call out, "Enough!" He apologizes for being so disrespectful to the purported authority figures present but adds, "If we wanted to hear Mom and Dad fight, those of us who still have two parents would just stay home on payday." Mercedes boldly agrees, for though she is a dentist's daughter, she is still sassy. "Glee Club is supposed to be fun," she protests, "and furthermore, I don't like this minority business. I may be a strong, proud black woman, but I'm a lot more than that. I'm out!" As Mercedes heads for the door, the camera pans down to T-T-T-Tina, who stammers, "M-M-M-Me, too!" At this point, with the rebellion in full swing, Rachel -- who never appreciated this segregated arrangement in the first place -- sings out from the stage, "Fellow Glee Clubbers, it would be an honor to show you how a real storm-out is done! I encourage you to follow my lead." And with that, everybody flounces. With the football players sniffily carrying Artie up the stairs in his wheelchair. Hee. Sue, wild-eyed in defeat, races out the side door, leaving Will alone, saddened and dejected. Or, you know. Furrowed.
Doctor Wu's House Of Obstetrics, and oh, I kind of really don't care about this subplot anymore this evening. Long story short, Kendra and Terri actually blackmailed Doctor Wu into faking a sonogram for Will's benefit (or, actually, for whatever the opposite of Will's "benefit" might be), and further instructed him to claim he misread Terri's earlier test, and to announce they're actually expecting a girl. You know, because the thing growing inside Quinn's uterus is female. Which Terri found out about earlier in the episode. Did I forget to mention that? Whatever. Will gets all weepy, and it is A Very Touching Moment Indeed, but the most important line of the scene goes to Terri, who draws Will close and begs, "No matter what happens, I want you to remember at this moment that we love each other, okay?" Will's far too overcome by emotion at this point to find that statement odd, and the two kiss. Or maybe he's just a frigging moron. Commercial.
The following Monday (I'm guessing, because the obstetrician appointment was Friday at 4 PM), Will hesitantly approaches Sue's open office door and raps on the jamb, noting he'd been wanting to talk to her about the auditorium incident. She invites him in, admitting she'd wanted to do the same, but she hadn't a clue where his office was. Heh. The big bombshell is that Sue's decided to step down as co-captain of the Glee Club. "It's not for me," she offers by way of explanation. "Too fruity, and I can't stand the sight of kids getting emotional, unless it's from physical exhaustion." She'd still like to stay on as "consigliere," however, offering her opinions on set lists before competitions, just so she can feel like she's contributing to the process. After all, she was a VJ for a couple of years, don't you know. "Not MTV," she shrugs, "but still." Oh, Sue, Friday Night Videos was just as good. For a while. Will -- frigging moron that he is -- finally thinks to ask an excellent question: "Why do I feel like I'm about to fall through a trap door into a pit of fire?" Because you are, Will. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday. And someday soon. Sue's far more pleasant about it than I am -- because hoodwinking this fool in this moment is all part of her grand plan, I'm sure -- and simply jokingly chides him for not trusting her. "I know my methods are extreme," she admits, "and I know I'm not like the rest of you hippies, caring about the kids' feelings as if they were real, but I do care about teaching, and when I coach them? And they win? I win." Will nods in understanding as Sue concludes, "And you know how I feel about winning." And then, Will finishes things up by conceding Sue did exceptionally well in one regard: "You were right to shine the spotlight on the fact that those kids are minorities..."
"...because you're all minorities," he continues, now addressing the club members themselves over in the music room. It's the sort of earthy-crunchy, touchy-feely rally-the-troops kind of asinine crap I'm surprised Sue Sylvester can tolerate without choking back on the bile now in her mouth, but there she is, off to one side as Will reminds the club members, "There are only twelve of you, and all you have is each other, so it doesn't matter that Rachel is Jewish, or that Finn is..." "Can't tell my rights from my lefts?" Finn offers good-naturedly. "Sure!" Will smiles before continuing, "Or that Santana is Latina, or that Quinn..." "...is pregnant," Sue interjects, and a-HA! That's why she was sitting through this garbage. Everyone gapes as Sue faux-apologizes, "Sorry, Q, it'll be all over the blogosphere by this afternoon." "Now everybody knows," Sue states, before adding pointedly, "including me." Bombshell thus so efficiently dropped, Sue exits, leaving Quinn practically hyperventilating with shock, both Finn and My Glorious Husband looking guilty, Santana Lopez with a sly Cheshire grin on her face, and Rachel absolutely outraged.
BAM! Rachel confronts J-Fro by nearly taking his fingers off in his locker door, and demands to know why he published news of Quinn's condition. Alas, a routine school-wide check turned up Rachel's droopy white granny panties in J-Fro's locker and, after Sue Sylvester ascertained J-Fro was not, in fact, "an Eve who was born a Steve," she browbeat him into spilling all of the sordid details, and decided to punish Quinn by having J-Fro release the story. Her tenure's on the line, you must understand, tied as it is to the Cheerios' performance, and she therefore views Quinn's transgression as a personal insult. J-Fro apologizes profusely to Rachel, but the damage has been done, and when she turns away from him she spots Quinn sobbing in Finn's arms across the hall while Finn, shell-shocked, can only stroke her back while repeating, "It's okay!" over and over and over again.
And then, after all the angst, more angst! All twelve members of the Glee Club reunite to perform a version of Avril (Gag) Lavigne's (Hoarf) "Keep (Retch) Holding (Hork) On (Yack)," and I would link to the original as I've tended to do in the past, but searching for Avril Lavigne videos on YouTube has made me both depressed and enraged, so I will note both that the performance is very touching and Quinn-centered -- even though Rachel and Finn as a matter of course have been assigned the lead vocals -- and that many compassionate tears are shed over Quinn's unfortunate predicament. And not just by the gay boy, either. Also, because it is centered on a pretty young blonde whose been knocked up by a scurrilous ruffian, and because that pretty young knocked-up blonde is certain to be ostracized socially once everyone finds out she's been knocked up by a scurrilous ruffian, and because it contains lyrics like "You're not alone -- together we stand; I'll be by your side, you know I'll take your hand," it reminds me of nothing so much as this: "You'll Never Walk Alone" from frigging Carousel, of all the sappy things. I think I'll start calling Quinn "Julie Jordan." I will not, however, be referring to My Glorious Husband as "Billy Bigelow," because that's just way too WASPy for my very hot Jew.