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So, our little love triangle (Quinn, Finn and Rachel) has morphed into some freakish love sextagon. (Yes, yes, I know -- it's a hexagon. But a hexagon doesn't have "sex" in it, and a sextagon does. So bite me, ancient Greek.) Puck steals a baby book for Quinn, causing her to think that maybe he could be good father and boyfriend material. In order to free herself up to spend a little time with him to test her theory, she decides to wave Rachel in front of Finn as a distraction. Said waving of Rachel involves recruiting Kurt to give Rachel a make-over. During the course of the make-over, Kurt learns that Rachel is in love with Finn. Since he's also in love with Finn, he uses the make-over to turn Rachel into exactly the kind of girl Finn doesn't like -- the sexy, dirty type of girl. Quinn takes Puck on a babysitting gig, and is impressed with his ability to charm the little snots. It looks like she's leaning towards keeping the baby and raising it with Puck. Until she learns that while they were babysitting, he was sexting with Santana. Which drives her right back to Finn, leaving Rachel and Kurt both feeling forlorn.
In our weekly dose of baby drama, Quinn (as mentioned above) is thinking of keeping her baby. This freaks out Terri and Kendra (who is now involved in the baby-swap plot). Their plan is to expose Quinn to the little demons that are Kendra's three kids, thereby causing her to abandon all desires to raise a child. But Quinn (and Puck) turn out to be far better caregivers than Kendra or her husband. It's only after Quinn learns that Puck is incapable of being faithful that she returns to the plan of giving the baby to Terri. (Which is good, because Terri and Kendra's back-up plan seemed to involve some kind of spring break kidnapping.)
And then there's the actual Glee Club, which is the reason we're all watching the show. Will suspects that Sue is leaking the club's competitive set list to the other schools that will be at sectionals. He goes to confront the director of the show choir at the reform school for bad girls, who shames him into playing Lady Bountiful by letting her choir (which has to rehearse outdoors) come use the McKinley auditorium. Their performance is pretty good, and very flashy, freaking Will out. He decides that New Directions needs to get flashy, which involves performing a number in ridiculous wigs. It's only after the director of the choir at the school for the deaf shames Will into inviting his choir to practice at McKinley that Will realizes that Will realizes the true power of a simple, heartfelt performance. At the end of the episode, we see that Sue is in fact trying to get the other two choirs to cheat at sectionals. Will they give in to temptation? We'll know sometime in the two episodes.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Pointless previously sequence. And when it's done, Sue Sylvester's signature drum-line cue marches across the soundtrack as the Sue-POV camera stalks the ever-hapless Will Schuester down in the teacher's lounge, where he's grading sombrero-bedecked Spanish tests, or something. Sue tosses a magazine onto the table right beneath his face and cheerily opens, "Hey, fella! So, unless my recent write-up here in Splits! Magazine naming me Cheerleading Coach Of The Decade has me driven completely insane, I'm pretty sure you and I had an agreement that you were going to show me your Glee Club set list for Sectionals!" Will, looking puzzled, replies that he was under the impression she'd lost interest in the whole thing, but Sue strenuously begs to differ and notes that she'd hate to have to go to Principal Figgins about all of this, so Will promises to get her a copy of the list as soon as possible. And after a bit of business with Splits! that isn't half as amusing as that sassy little exclamation point in the magazine's title, Will voice-overs, "Here's the problem with Sue Sylvester: You never quite know where you stand." No shit, Schue. It's called "inconsistent characterization." You might want to have the show's writing staff look that one up. In the meantime, though, we'll follow along as you lead us through a series of flashbacks that demonstrate how devious Sue's been since last we saw her sweetly reading Little Red Riding Hood to her differently abled elder sister two weeks ago. In the first, Will leads the Glee Club through a dance routine until he notices Brittney filming the entire rehearsal on her iPhone, and when he asks for an explanation, Brittney goes all deer-in-the-headlights for a moment before whispering, "Coach Sylvester? Didn't tell me to do this?" Heh. In the , Sue herself sidles up to Will in the hall and too-casually wonders whom the Glee Club will be competing against in Sectionals -- Jane Addams Academy and Haverbrook School For The Deaf, in case you've forgotten -- before too-pointedly asking if Will remembers those schools' ZIP Codes. D'oh!
Will, to his credit, swiftly connects the set list demand to the non-surreptitious taping to the ZIP Code request, and the thing we know, he's ranting at Emma, "She's leaking our competitive set list to the other schools -- if the other glee clubs get set lists and videos, they'll know exactly how to beat us at Sectionals!" Okay. We'll go with that. For now. Emma counsels against allowing Sue to become a distraction again, some more, then mangles a cliché thusly: "If you can't take Mohammed to the mountain, then you gotta get Mohammed to bring the mountain down. To his house. Mohammed's house, wherever he's staying." Hee. Will's furrows are deep and strong, so Emma rephrases, "You should drive over to Jane Addams Academy and ask the director point-blank -- if something's going on, you'll know." "Hmmm!" Will hmmms, right before he gets whacked out of the frame by the title card.
Jane Addams Academy. As you'll no doubt recall, Jane Addams Academy is little more than "a halfway house for girls just getting out of juvie," and the elaborate network of security procedures Will must negotiate just to gain entrance to the main hall certainly backs Mercedes's assertion up, what with the multiple buzz-entry doors and the sign-ins and the temporary IDs and the enormous guard who wands him down before letting him go on his way. Meanwhile, International Recording Star Eve and her scraggedy-ass blonde wig sit behind a desk somewhere wondering, "You're a good kid, Aphasia -- why did you try to rob a bank?" Aphasia -- sassy, naturally, and just a tiny bit wonk-eyed -- of course replies, "Because, Miss Hitchens, that's where they keep the money." International Recording Star Eve And Her Scraggedy-Ass Blonde Wig order Aphasia back to class just as Will arrives for his appointment, and Aphasia rather obviously bumps into him, leading Miss Hitchens to chide, "Aphasia! Give Mis-tah Schue-stah his wallet back!" Aphasia complies with some perfectly timed head flips, and then we finally enter the scene proper, in which Will explains the reason for his visit, and Miss Hitchens instantly takes offense. "What kind of messed-up school are you people running?" she demands. "You think that because our students are thieves and arsonists, that we're cheaters, too?" Well, it seems a reasonable assumption, yes, but my opinion matters little at this moment, because Miss Hitchens continues to steamroll right over Will and his spluttering explanations with, "Do you know that we don't have costumes, or even an auditorium? Our show choir has to practice out in the rec yard." "This is Ohio," she reminds him. "We have wea-thah!" Will blathers something about underfunding for the arts until Miss Hitchens states, "Look: All I know is that our choir seems to be the only thing that keeps my girls from recidivism -- it makes them feel good about themselves, and I'm not gonna cheat and risk that just so we can get a leg up on your school of privileged misfits." Will apologizes profusely for offending her, and offers to make it up to her by gifting the Jane Addams girls with use of McKinley's auditorium. "Let's have a little scrimmage at our place!" he smiles. International Recording Star Eve And Her Scraggedy-Ass Blonde Wig Plus Her Odd Enunciation Patterns fold their arms and toss him The Eye, but the thing we know...
...the McKinley kids squirm uncomfortably in the McKinley auditorium's seats -- with Kurt sneaking a glance at Finn's package, by the way -- as Mr. Schuester welcomes The Jane Addams Show Choir to Lima before scampering off stage to allow the juvenile felons a chance to strut their stuff, which they proceed to do to the tune of "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child. And it's...wildly inappropriate. Enthusiastically so, I must note, especially when they manage to jiggle their derrieres while performing handstands and singing at the same time, but still. They also seem to be quite fond of flipping their hair around as well, and that's...pretty much all I have to say about that, I suppose. Well, save for the fact that their lead singer "Shatonda" is chola-fabulous and could give Mercedes a run for her money as far as her vocals go, but I find my heart drifting towards the bit of backup jailbait whose got an afro out to Jesus. Just because. And when it's all over, the Jane Addams girls hoot and holler their way out of the auditorium while Will allows his instantly depressed head to drop into his hands. "You seem concerned," Rachel astutely notes. Mr. Schue weakly denies this, but it's clear to everyone he now thinks Jane Addams is going to trounce their privileged misfit asses at Sectionals, so Rachel attempts to reassure him -- in her typically unbearable know-it-all tone of voice, of course -- with, "What they were doing was all smoke and mirrors -- it's called 'hairography.'" Mr. Schue goes, "Whaaaaa?" so Rachel elaborates, "All of the whizzing of their hair around just to distract from the fact that they're not really good dancers and their vocals were just so-so? Trust me -- we have nothing to be afraid of." Mr. Schue remains unconvinced, so...
...he shows up at afternoon's rehearsal session with yet another new song for Sectionals, which happens to be the title song to the musical Hair, which I most certainly will not be linking to, thank you very much, because hippies suck. Finn, in a rare moment of lucidity, wonders, "If we're going to do a song about hair, shouldn't we have mo
re...hair?" Mr. Schuester has that one covered, and slings a leather satchel stuffed with wigs into Finn's lap. Rachel, no dummy, sees where all of this is going and flies from her seat to hiss in Mr. Schue's ear, "What are you doing? We are fine where we are! We don't need hairography -- it's just a distraction!" Spineless and deeply insecure, Mr. Schue insists that the Jane Addams girls have something the McKinley kids don't, and asserts that they'll have to "pull out all the stops" if they want to win. Rachel remains unconvinced, because Mr. Schuester's being a complete frigging dumbass, but before we can deal with that, we're "treated" to a shot of Puck, Finn, Kurt, Artie, Gaylord Weiner, and Butt Lunch modeling their new, flowing tresses, and with that, we're shunted out into the...
...hallway, where Puck's just given Quinn a copy of How To Raise A Baby On Five Dollars A Day which, you know: Timely! "Saw it in the bookstore," Puck notes. "Figured I'd steal it for ya -- you know, in case you change your mind and decide you want to keep it." How thoughtful. Quinn agrees with me, and confesses that she's no longer certain what she's going to do with the fetus once it claws its way out of her body, adding, "My mind's pretty messed up about everything." My Glorious Husband's all, "No pressure! Whatever you decide!" and exits after granting her a warm grin, so Quinn's hormonally fickle heart sets to fluttering over Puck and his mohawk again, some more, and she starts voice-overing something about acceptance and her need for same, and I try my best to give a single, tiny, heartfelt, vermin-infested rat's ass about Quinn and her stupid fetus, but all I can think is ABORTION IN COLUMBUS, and look at that! While I was so busy not caring, Quinn flashed back to a recent encounter with the delightfully insane Terri Schuester and her equally delightfully insane sister Kendra! "You don't drink diet soda, do you?" Terri breathily snaps at the knocked-up cheerleader. "Because the phosphoric acid causes male pattern baldness!" Quinn reminds Terri that the fetus is female. "Women go bald, too!" Terri retorts. "You worry too much!" Kendra blowzes. "Mom smoked and drank a bottle of Riunite on ice every night when she was pregnant with us, and we're totally normal!" Can't argue with that. "Just take your vitamins," Kendra blares in Quinn's general direction, "stay out of the hot tub, and avoid rum-based drinks, and you'll be fine!" Solid advice for all expectant mothers. Thanks, Kendra! Alas, that's all we get of Terri and Kendra at the moment, for we've leapt back inside Quinn's head as she watches her fellow Glee Clubbers bounce and bop around the piano in the music room while musing to herself, "Maybe I didn't give Puck enough of a chance -- he is the real dad, after all." She's thinking about reneging on her deal with Terri, you see, and she knows she can't raise the fetus with Finn, who's little more than an overgrown child himself at this point. Unfortunately, she also can't risk pissing Finn off at this juncture by taking Puck "for a test drive" to see if Puck truly is suitable father material, so she plots to distract her purported boyfriend with Rachel's as-yet-unobvious charms. And just how does she intend to go about this, I hear you ask?
By enlisting Kurt's aid, of course! "Hey!" she calls out to...oh, my holy crap, WHAT IS HE WEARING? It's this hideous grey-and-green shiny plaid two-button tailored jacket over a black t-shirt atop a pair of matching grey-and-green shiny plaid pants that have been tucked into knee-high black riding boots, with all of it topped off by a heinous white trilby. It's...it's...it's hateful. Plus, his bag doesn't match his shoes. AUUUAAUAAAAGH. ANY-way, Quinn calls out to the fashion-forward Hitler Youth now striding through the halls of McKinley High and, once she's got his attention, asks, "Can I pick your pink brain for a second?" Kurt icily notes with perfectly arched brow that this is the first time Quinn's ever spoken to him, but he listens as she hits him up with a proposition: "Makeover!" "I'm in!" Kurt declares, instantly warming to her, because "makeovers are like crack" to him. He immediately suggests she try "a double-knit camisole with control top for the baby bump," and advises she avoid baby-doll dresses, as they're a "dead giveaway." "Not for me," Quinn grits, "for Rachel." "Why would I want to do that?" Kurt scoffs. "I admit I like a challenge as much as the guy," he allows, "but Rachel somehow manages to dress like a grandmother and a toddler at the same time." "My point exactly," Quinn smiles, luring him into her web of deceit. "You're as concerned about the Glee Club succeeding as I am," she lies, "and she's a distraction." "Look at her," Quinn urges. "She's wearing a pantsuit." The camera swings in between them to focus on Rachel at her locker, and the unfortunate egomaniac is, indeed, sporting a 1975-vintage polyester concoction in cerulean blue. It's still not as evil as Kurt's present outfit, but Quinn's point has been made. "Don't you think the judges are going to take one look at her and maybe wanna knock her down a peg or two?" Quinn deviously inquires. "Deal," Kurt nods, and with that, he promptly exits into this evening's first commercial break.
Chez Schue, later that evening. Terri bids her husband goodnight, and settles down to sleep on her side of their queen-sized bed, upon which she's built a wall of pillows that separates them should Will get any frisky ideas in the wee small hours of the morning. Will reaches across the barrier to stroke her hair, and Terri immediately freaks, bolting upright to excoriate him for attempting to make with the sexy times while she's feeling so vulnerable about her nonexistent pregnancy, or something like that. He apologizes, sweetly enough, and rolls over to leave her alone, allowing her a moment to lapse into what I believe is her very first voice-over of the series. "There's no way I can keep this up," she admits to herself, one hand clawed around a pillow while she stares into the middle distance with a deeply worried and somewhat guilt-ridden expression on her face. "He's gonna catch on," her voice-over continues before confessing, "I miss him, too, though." She turns to gaze at his sleeping back while explaining, "I do want to have a family with him -- I only ever started lying about all of this to give us a chance." "I just need to buy myself some more time," she decides, realizing, "I've got to distract him with something." "But what?" she wonders. As the opening bars of Dionne Warwick's "Don't Make Me Over" hit the soundtrack, Terri stumbles across a cunning plan.
The song continues as an instrumental as we cut over to Rachel's bedroom, where Kurt's being absolutely and unnecessarily vicious to her, telling her he volunteered for makeover duty primarily because Rachel needs "something to distract from [her] horrible personality" before noting, "Most of the time, I find it hard to be in the same room with you." "Especially this one," he adds, eyeing his surroundings with wary distaste, "which looks like where Strawberry Shortcake and Holly Hobbie come to hook up." Poor, obnoxious Rachel looks devastated, so Kurt graciously allows, "You're extremely talented, Rachel -- watching you perform is amazing -- but sometimes it's hard to appreciate what a good singer you are, because all I'm thinking about is shoving a sock into your mouth." By this point, I would have thrown his snide little precious and badly dressed ass out of the window, but Rachel for whatever reason -- likely because the script says she must -- accepts his criticism, and wonders what his plans for her involve. "I want every boy in school to do a double-take when you strut past," he smiles, and while that's not an outright lie,
t's not what's really great about you, Rachel." Rachel's impending tears threaten to dislodge her carefully applied false eyelashes, and she whimpers that she thought this sort of thing was what Finn liked. "Not at all," Finn shakes his head before realizing, "Funny! I was just having this conversation last week with Kurt!"
Smear to a week ago, with a furiously scheming Kurt too-casually wondering, "So, what kind of girls do you like?" Finn, ambling along beside him down McKinley's halls, replies, "Oh, well, I like 'em when they're natural and stuff? Not a lot of makeup, not skintight clothes -- that sort of thing, you know?" A foul, wicked smile spreads across Kurt's face, and he perks, "Totally!" right before we smear back to...
...the present, where Rachel's abject humiliation continues apace. "I feel like an idiot," she whispers, crushed. Finn hastens to assure her it's far more his fault than hers and, realizing he's doing neither of them any good by remaining in Rachel's boudoir, he apologizes again, and flees. We don't get to see it, but I'm sure Rachel collapses to the floor in tears. Poor Rachel. Poor, stupid, obnoxious Rachel. Sigh.
Casa...what the hell is Kendra's last name? Ah, yes: "Giardi." Kendra's trio of redheaded, mouthbreathing morons have lashed Puck and Quinn back-to-back in a pair of chairs, and now run rampant through the living room, toppling tables and plugging each other in the face with cakes and such while Quinn snarls at Puck for a little assistance in slipping the knots that bind them. Puck, who'd supposedly been texting either Gaylord Weiner or Butt Lunch because one of them's been having "weight problems," finally drops his phone to offer an assist, and I think we're meant to believe sparks of romantic electricity pass between the two when their hands inadvertently touch, but I don't watch this show for the crappy and pointless high-school dating angst they seem determined to shove down my throat, so I'll be ignoring all of that in favor of zipping ahead to the point where they've freed themselves. In a desperate attempt to get the shrieking little mutants to shut the hell up already, Quinn yells, "Hey! Want to see a real, live music video?" For whatever reason, the feral imps do, and so, the thing we know, Puck's unleashed his acoustic guitar, and he and Quinn treat the hellions to an impromptu version of Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach," and sweet Jesus, that video I just linked to takes me back. That goddamned song was everywhere during the summer of 1986. Shut up, Madonna. And Staten Island can cram a sock into it, too. But I'm meant to be typing about Quinn's performance, aren't I? Well, it's sweet-sounding enough, but her technique is a little light for a song I've long associated with Miss Ciccone's heavier, throat-rasping wails, so whatever. I think I'd like it better if Quinn stuck to, like, Shirelles covers, or something. And then it ends, and Kendra's vile little rug monkeys are of course mesmerized because music has charms to soothe the savage breast, and as I'm on the verge of shoehorning yet another boob-related joke into the recap at this point, I'll simply note that one of the evil ginger dirt smears bays, "Sing it again!" and leave it at that.
Later that evening, the wretched threesome are sound asleep in their bed, much to Terri and Kendra's horror. "What's that smell?" Kendra grimaces, crinkling her nose. "Soap," Quinn mildly replies. Terri and Kendra snap their heads around towards Quinn like they're in some day-glo colored remake of...well, you'll hear it in a second, and Terri gasps, "You got them to take a bath?" "Mmm-hmmm," Quinn smiles. "What are you?" Kendra spits. "A exorcist?!" And thanks for stomping all over my joke, Kendra. Yes, it was a lousy one, but still. Cow.
Meanwhile, out in the kitchen, Will's waxing rhapsodic over his shitty little crapped-out Corvette to his brother-in-law, but when Phil asks, "What're you gonna do when the kid comes?" Will's face falls, for you cannot install a car seat in a shitty little crapped-out Corvette.
And then it's Puck and Quinn's turn to pull focus as they coo and canoodle over in the hall. Quinn admits she had some qualms about how the evening would turn out, what with Puck constantly texting Shaft or Other Asian or whomever at the beginning there, but he managed to pull it all together in the end, and that's making her feel a lot better about keeping her fetus. "We proved something tonight," Puck agrees, adding, "This parenting thing? We can do this!" Quinn smiles.
BAM! Rachel slams Kurt's locker shut in his face the day at school and seethes, "You set me up!" Kurt plays dumb, an act he really should avoid, because Brittney's so much better at it. "How could you do that?" Rachel rants, getting all up in Kurt's face. "I thought we were friends!" "And what made you think that?" Kurt airily replies, shutting her up but good. "You should be thanking me," he snottily pisses, reveling in Rachel's humiliation. "All I did was help you realize that your schoolgirl fantasy of running off with Finn was nothing but a fairy tale!" And, yeah: "Fairy tale," just like the little fairy's fairy tale himself, and ha-ha, and whatever, and Kurt haughtily sniffs, "I was just helping him understand that you are not a viable second choice!" "If I were second," Rachel immediately counters, earning major points for her proper use of the subjunctive, "or fiftieth, I'd still be ahead of you because I'm a girl!" Kurt, momentarily stung, pinches his prissy lips together to collect himself, then freezes her with, "Okay, here's the dope, princess: There's no hope for either of us. He loves Quinn -- they're having a baby together! -- and we're nothing but distractions. The sooner we realize that, the better." And with that, he flounces off down the hall. Bitch.
BAM! Santana Lopez slams Quinn's locker shut in her face and seethes, "Keep your paws off my man! Clear?" Quinn plays dumb, an act she really should avoid, because Brittney's so much better at it. "Who's your man?" Quinn icily inquires. "Don't play stupid, Tubbers," Santana Lopez snottily pisses, apparently agreeing with my point above. "And for the record?" she continues with much waving of her hands. "Asking someone to babysit with you is super '90s." Quinn, her confidence faltering, nevertheless counters, "I happen to know that Puck cares about me." "Well, wake up!" Santana Lopez sneers, getting all up in Quinn's face. "While you two were babysitting, Puck and I were sexting!" There follows an entirely unnecessary definition of "sexting" for the especially slow in the audience before Santana Lopez challenges Quinn to check Puck's cell for her "super-hot texts" if Quinn doesn't believe her, as Santana Lopez's sexts are "too hot to erase." And with that, she flounces off down the hall. Bitch. And God love her for it.
BAM! Oh, sorry. Thought they were going with The Rule Of Threes, there, but they're not. That should actually read "COMMERCIAL!"
Music Room. It's time for the scrimmage between McKinley High and The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf and for some reason, I'm certain the experience will be excruciating for everyone involved. Well, for everyone involved who happens also to be in the audience, at least. Mr. Schuester introduces "The New Directions" to their guests with Dalton Rumba translating for the benefit of his charges, and they're off! Like, really, really off. The hair-heavy number they perform for the vaguely disgusted ladies and gentlemen of The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf is actually a mash-up of "Hair" and Beyoncé's "Crazy In Love," and while it's nice to see Artie and Mercedes trading off on the leads again, the song...well, let's face it: The song sucks. And Will seems to realize it, go figure. Dumbass. The vaguely disgusted yet proper ladies and gentlemen of The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf, barely suppressing their hearty rounds of eye-rolls, politely applaud when it's o
ver, but Rachel knows they sucked, and she immediately bounds over to Mr. Schue to inform him of same. Mr. Schue attempts to bluff his way through something reassuring-sounding, but he fails, and Rachel slumps into the audience seating with the rest of her compatriots as the proper ladies and gentlemen of The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf take their places on the risers, and oh, shit. Why do I get stuck with all of the Very Special Episodes? Didn't I suffer enough on Charmed, for Christ's sake? Ugh. In any event, the proper ladies and gentlemen of The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf are dressed in matching crimson-and-grey private academy uniforms, which I mention only because I'm desperate to delay the start of their mawkish rendition of John Lennon's inexcusably maudlin "Imagine," and as Dalton Rumba strikes the opening chords on the piano and, like, nods at them from somewhere off-camera to give them their cue, I guess, The Proper Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf...oh, I hate this. Their lead singer is actually speaking the lyrics slowly to match the tempo while his fellows sign along behind him, and it's making those already awful lyrics even more obnoxious and annoying to listen to, if that's even possible. Shut up, hippies. And of course, because this is A Very Special Episode, the McKinley kids -- led by Mercedes and Artie -- one by one rise from their seats to join The Proper Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Haverbrook School Of The Deaf in the performance space, with the hearing kids singing while the not-hearing kids teach them the sign language appropriate to those awful, obnoxious, annoying, insipid lyrics, and Mr. Schue and Tinkles are over there in their corner misting up, and why doesn't some asshole just buy the fucking world a fucking Coke already and be done with it? Shut UP, HIPPIES.
BAM! Ah-HA! I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Quinn more or less slams Puck's locker shut in his face the day at school and seethes, "You lied to me!" She's referring, of course, to the supposed texting he was enjoying with Gaylord Weiner or Butt Lunch or whomever during their Friday-night babysitting date, when a quick glance at his cell phone's inbox confirms he was actually sexting with my special TV girlfriend, Santana Lopez. Puck plays dumb, an act he really should avoid, because Brittney's so much better at it, but he eventually drops the act to apologize, after his own fashion. "I'm sorry!" he insists. "I tried to resist Santana -- I did! -- but I'm young, and girls have this...power over me!" Quinn, momentarily stung, pinches her prissy lips together in an attempt to collect herself while Puck continues, "But hey, it's all good." "It's definitely not 'all good'!" Quinn rants, getting all up in Puck's face. "I thought you wanted to be with me!" "I do -- like, a lot!" Puck assures her. "But," he adds, "you haven't given it up to me since the night I knocked you up, and baby, I'm a dude. I have needs." And there are many, many people who would happily help him meet those needs -- and you all know who you are -- but inappropriate audience-wide lust for a supposedly underage fictional character is not the point of this scene, and so I will hop off that train of thought as quickly as I'd jumped onto it in favor of noting Quinn's reply. "You expect to raise a baby with me," she immediately counters, "and text dirty messages to every other girl at this school if I don't 'give it up' to you every day?" "No!" Puck sniffs, disgusted by her implication. "Just the hot girls!" Atta boy. "Look, I'm gonna be a good dad," he assures her, "but I'm not gonna stop being me to do it." And with that, he flounces off down the hall. Well, he would flounce off down the hall, I'm sure, were he the flouncing type. And had they not immediately cut to...
...Chez Schue, where Quinn's telling a stunned-looking Terri, "You can have her." "Are you serious?" Terri gasps. "A girl really needs a good father," Quinn sadly replies, "and the only way she's gonna get that is if I give her to you." "You think Mr. Schue's going to be a good father, don't you?" she asks, and Terri gets all misty-eyed and such before answering, "I think he's gonna be an amazing dad." Just then, of course, Will arrives unexpectedly from the scrap yard, where he'd supposed to have spent the entire afternoon, and while he's mildly surprised to find Quinn chatting with his wife on the sofa, he brushes it off to ask Terri for a moment alone in the garage whenever she gets a chance. Quinn immediately rises to make her excuses, but before she leaves, she quite unexpectedly lunges into Mr. Schue's chest for a hug, and when it's over, she mumbles, "Later, Mr. Schue," and bolts out the door. Will gawps at Terri for a moment, but she apparently smooths things over, for the thing we know, Will's...
...leading a blindfolded Terri into their apartment complex's garage, where he presents her with...a crapped-out 1980s-era wood-paneled minivan? Ah, it's his gift to her, for the baby, as you cannot install a car seat in a shitty little crapped-out Corvette. Terri's touched. In the head, of course, but we knew that already. !
McKinley High Hallway. Finn and Quinn kiss and make up. Well, actually, they make up first, and then they hug, and then they float off towards their class on a cloud of bliss that may or may not be boob-related without any kissing at all because...oh, I don't give a shit at this point. Both Rachel and The Fashion-Forward Hitler Youth -- yes, he's wearing Those Boots again -- watch them drift away as a sad -- nay, a veritable lachrymose piano tinkles away in the background, Rachel and Horst Wessel acknowledge each other (and, in doing so, acknowledge each other's pain, of course) before the bell rings, kicking us over to...
...Sue Sylvester's office, where Will ducks his meek yet untrustworthy curls through the door to ask if Sue has a moment. She does, so he enters, and long story short, he passes her a copy of the revised set list. It contains "Proud Mary," a song to be revealed later in this episode, and a song to be revealed even later in this episode, which -- get this -- Sue Sylvester doesn't recognize, even though it's goddamned "True Colors" by Cyndi Frigging Lauper, and ooops! Spoiler! In any event, the goal with this latest song selection after all of the hair-flipping nonsense this wasted episode wasted so much time presenting to us is simplicity, as Will finally understands that the more show-bizzy numbers don't really play to his kids' strengths. Or something like that. Of course, barely an instant passes before Sue's summoned International Recording Star Miss Oddly Accented Wig and Half-Deaf Guy to her lair, where she shows them the set list -- it's "Proud Mary," "Don't Stop Believing," and "True Colors" -- and suggests they divvy up the first two songs between their respective choirs, after which she'll ensure McKinley performs last at Sectionals, thereby giving the appearance that McKinley poached its routines from Jane Addams and Haverbrook, rather than the other way around. International Recording Star Miss Oddly Accented Wig and Half-Deaf Guy initially object strenuously to Sue's proposed strategy, but the scene ends ambiguously, as Sue's ultimate argument -- "Don't let anything distract you from winning!" -- seems to sway them. Um. DUN!? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was a DUN!
And, finally: "True Colors." The number, as promised, has been simply staged, with the kids clad in black Chucks, jeans, and t-shirts in all of the colors of the rainbow while perched ('cept for Artie, of course) on stools spread from one side of the proscenium to the other while a multi-hued LED display drizzles all over a set of screens behind them. Sin
gle-T Tina takes the lead on this one, and it's a lovely rendition, even if the song itself seems to be just the tiniest bit ubiquitous at this point in its pop-culture life. Then again, the seeming ubiquity of "True Colors" might just be a gay thing, so what the hell do I know? In any event, a lot of loving and/or guilty and/or wistful and/or rueful and/or completely-befuddled-and-kind-of-freaked-out-by-all-of-the-attention-he's-so-undeservedly-getting-Finn glances shoot amongst tonight's primary players (with the notable exception of my special TV girlfriend, Santana Lopez), and in the end, Mr. Schuester saw that it was good, because the dimwit thinks he's God, or something.
I have no idea what's happening week because the promo was awfully thin on plot points, but I do know they're singing "Jump" by Van Halen, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be awesome.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see where the Glee kids will be in 20 years.
See the cast of Glee before they were stars.
Read interviews with Glee co-stars Jessalyn Gilsig and Harry Shum.
Demian's not certain if he's mentioned this to you at any point thus far during the season, but he really, really hates Very Special Episodes. You may reach him at demian_twop@yahoo.com.