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In Ohio: Everything happens in Ohio this week, actually, so let's try this:
In Glee Club Survival News: Will calls in yet another favor from everyone's favorite orange-skinned alcoholic April Rhodes, so the peppy drunk jets to Lima from her private island in the Caribbean to remind Sue of the endowment she created that grants The New Directions near-exclusive use of the McKinley High auditorium for all time. Of course, there are a couple of problems with this, mainly due to the fact that Will managed to drain all of the endowment's funds to create those ridiculously overelaborate sets he commissioned for rehearsals over the last couple of years, so it still looks like the club's on its way out for good.
In Batshit Bimbo of Broadway News: Old Idiot Rachel returns to Ohio to mourn the untimely demise of her favorite extracurricular activity from high school, but when Mercedes materializes for the exact same reason, Rachel decides to rekindle their old rivalry for reasons which only she and her insane brain will ever understand. Heated words are quickly exchanged, as one would expect, and there's yet another diva-off between the two, but the ladies of course manage to patch things up well before the end of the hour, anyway.
In Ancient Relationship News: Brittany and Santana are probably getting back together, and the old versions of Puck and Quinn finally reach some sort of resolution as far as all of their past issues are concerned.
Featuring Pink's "Raise Your Glass," as performed by April Rhodes, Mr. Schue, with an assist from The Kiddies; "Toxic" from Britney Spears, as performed by Quinn, Brit-Brit, and Santana Lopez, with no assist from The Kiddies; "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, as performed by Rachel, Mercedes, and Kurt, again with no assist from The Kiddies; Amy Winehouse's version of "Valerie" by The Zutons, as performed by Santana Lopez and Brittany, once more with an assist from The Kiddies; Avril Lavigne's "Keep Holding On," as performed by Puck, with yet another assist from The Kiddies; and "Happy" from Pharrell Williams, as performed by Gwyneth Paltrow, April Rhodes, Mr. Schue, Blaine, Mercedes, with one last assist from The Kiddies.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Hallowed Halls of Dear McKinley High. The Batshit Bimbo of Broadway and Mercedes Jones, having heard of The Glee Club's destruction in the wake of last week's positively disastrous performance at Nationals, wander their separate ways towards the music room, where they will presumably join others in mourning the club's untimely demise. You'd think, then, that these ladies would be suitably downcast and contemplative, and you would be oh so very wrong. Thanks to a pair of dueling voiceovers, we learn that both Mercedes and Rachel expected some sort of official celebratory red-carpet, confetti-bedecked reception from the administration, given the fact that they are "the biggest recording artist" and "biggest Broadway star," respectively, that "this school's ever produced," which makes me think they're both mouth-breathing morons, because what intelligent person would ever expect such treatment from a place run by Sue Sylvester?
Whatever. The ladies eventually reach the choir room, where they are fawned over by various of The New New Directions, which leads to a sudden spurt of voiceover bitchery. "She wrote a couple of songs," Voiceover Rachel snorts, while Actual Rachel sneers. "Big whoop!" "So what?" Voiceover Mercedes counters while Actual Mercedes shoots a withering side-eye in Actual Rachel's direction. "She got cast in a play as an annoying Jewish girl -- what a surprise!" The two decide that the only way each can assert her supposed "God-given superiority" is "to sit front and center in The Rachel Chair" (said chair now most conveniently glowing in the heavenly light of an overhead spot that, hilariously, only Urethra Franklin is able to see) and, after an ungainly dash across the linoleum by both of them, The Batshit Bimbo of Broadway triumphs and settles herself down regally while Mercedes scowls. "Greet each other!" St. Gay of Lima hisses at them from one of the cheap seats on the higher risers, and more catty remarks are exchanged until...
...the ever-useless Mr. Schue steps up to the whiteboard from somewhere else to scrawl "100" in gigantic numbers while stating, "One hundred lessons!" And as that makes absolutely no sense, at all, no matter how many different ways I try to think about it, I'll ignore Mr. Schue's pathetic ass for the moment in favor of throwing focus onto my very dear Old Puck, who's wearing his service dress uniform just to remind us all that he joined the Air Force since last we saw him. "Can I get Finn's plaque when we clear this place out?" Old Puck asks, because of course he does. "No," Mr. Schue replies, "because I'll be needing to wrap it up in that jacket I stole and cuddle with it on those lonely nights when I'm feeling especially vulnerable." Or maybe Mr. Schue claims that "Lillian and Finn belong here at McKinley" before finally establishing this evening's musical theme: "Your assignment is to sing one of the songs we sang in here, but reinvented in some way." Here, we get a wide shot of the room, and I should note that -- in addition to Mercedes, Rachel, Kurt, and Old Puck -- Santana, Brittany, Gaylord Wiener, and Old Quinn have also taken time off from their busy, busy lives to travel several hundred miles back to their old high school to mourn the passing of an extracurricular activity they used to attend a couple of years ago. Dianna Agron looks gorgeous, by the way, and her posture is to die.
Anyway, Mr. Schue moves to the center of the floor to remind them all, "Way back in the old days when I started The Glee Club, I would give an assignment, and then I would I would give a little demonstration of what I was looking for." Hoots and hollers erupt from the cheap seats until Santana warns, "You all cheer now, but just wait 'til he starts rapping." Heh. Mr. Schue promises there will be no embarrassing white-boy hip-hop today, but he has invited in a special guest for an assist -- a guest whose "contributions helped save The Glee Club" "way back when" -- Miss April Rhodes! Tiny little Kristin Chenoweth bursts through one of the doors with a jolly, "Hey, y'all!" and as the kiddies offer her a warm round of applause, Single-T Tina leans in towards Stupid Boring New Idiot Rachel to enthuse, "She once taught me how to shoplift meat in my vagina!" Hee! Also: This evening's title card.
We return just as April Rhodes is catching the kiddies up on recent events in her life -- a certain "Mr. Moneybags" bought her a Caribbean island, mainly to keep her away from his suspicious wife. After Mr. Schue thanks her for sharing "that wonderful lesson in female empowerment," April tells the kiddies to hoist one of the plastic champagne flutes she's placed on the piano. "Will and I want you to raise your glass," she explains, "to celebrate The Glee Club by singing hands-down the best song New Directions ever did!" "Wait a second," Dreamboat Blaine interrupts. "New Directions never sang 'Raise Your Glass,'" he continues. "The Warblers did that." "I was wondering why it didn't annoy me every time I heard it in my head," April admits. And with all that out of the way, April hops down from the piano to leap into the song in question. I have to admit, I have zero memory of the original performance from three years ago, and I'm not the biggest Pink fan in the world, so this is kinda doing absolutely nothing for me at the moment. It doesn't help, of course, that it's yet another spinny-camera-in-the-music-room type of deal, this with so many jump cuts that it's almost impossible to tell what anyone's really doing, though I do smile when Santana, Quinn, and Brittany jump up on the risers to reference the moves from their very first number together. I should also probably note that April Rhodes takes a couple of healthy swigs from the flask she's smuggled inside her garter, so: Atta girl. Nice to know you're still on the sauce, honey.
Elsewhere, Santana enters a classroom to find Brittany chalking an elaborate mathematical formula on the blackboard, because Brit-Brit's trying to prove The Riemann Hypothesis, because Brittany, as you'll recall, is a math genius.
Smear sideways to a laboratory at MIT, where a demurely-attired Brit-Brit gets a couple of sensors taped to her forehead as a professor asks, "Miss Pierce, what's five billion, seven hundred fifty-two million, two hundred ninety-three thousand, two hundred eighty-eight divided by nine hundred fifty-eight million, seven hundred fifteen thousand, five hundred forty-eight?" Brit-Brit: "I dunno… six?" A round of applause for the most gifted mind in a generation!
Smear back to the present, where Brittany sighs, "I just wish that I could have my old life back -- where I wasn't a mathematical genius, and all I wanted to do was scissor you and talk to my cat." "Well," Santana replies, apropos of absolutely nothing, "What do you say you and I reunite a little threesome called 'The Unholy Trinity'?"
Smash back to the music room, where Brittany, Quinn, and Santana have donned their old Cheerios drag to refamiliarize us all with Britney Spears's "Toxic." Once again, I have little recall of the original performance. If you'd have asked me to name the most impressively inappropriate school assembly number from the past five years, I'd have said, "this one, duuuuuuuh" but the ladies certainly are...vigorous in their presentation of the song this time around. I'll tell you what pisses me off, though. As entertaining as the choir room version is, what with those carwash skirts all alluringly aflutter and such, they keep cutting over to some bizarre and inexplicable fantasy version of the performance that is so much more interesting. The ladies are over on the stage in The April Rhodes Civic Pavilion, clad in appropriate-for-primetime red-and-black lingerie, locked in crimson-tinted go-go girl cages like the one briefly seen in Other Britney's "Work Bitch" video, and it's just darker and stranger and, oh, so much more fun than the choir room bits are. Basically, I'm annoyed we're not seeing more of it.
BreadstiX. "I've never really noticed, because I haven't spent that much time around them," Gayface observes, "but poor people are generally less attractive than rich ones." "I love you," Quinn more or less replies, because his family is obscenely wealthy, and she's about to unload a couple more lies about her past on him when Santana, Artie, Old Puck, and Gaylord Wiener enter the restaurant. Biff promptly invites them over to the table, and Santana starts the conversation off like so: "Word on the street is that you're old mone. I'm a lesbian, but I'm totally into that." Atta girl. Various other introductions are made, and then Biff asks the other Old Directions to describe Quinn in one sentence. "She's constantly surprising you," Gaylord Wiener replies without hesitation, adding, "Like, one year, she showed up to school in the fall and decided she wanted to be a skank." "She dyed her hair pink," Santana agrees, "she got a Ryan Seacrest tattoo, and then she lit a purple piano on fire!" Quinn laughs a little too loudly at all of this, insists her old friends are just messing with her new boyfriend's head, and quickly sends him out to the car to fetch her lipstick and "lady things." The instant he's gone, Quinn tightly reminds The Old Directions that she's trying to present herself in a very particular way because Gayface's family is "Philadelphia Main Line society," and if she can get in with them, she'll be set for life. She'll eventually tell him everything about her past, of course, but only when she's ready, and would the others please just leave her the hell alone? Please? Old Puck frowns, and he can just shut the hell up right now, because God alone knows what he'd do for a little of that sweet McIntosh cash.
Lair of the Sylvester. Long story short, Will and Orange April remind Sue that "The April Rhodes Charitable Foundation" controls the McKinley High auditorium, which means The Glee Club should be able to assemble there from now until the end of time. Or, you know, until The April Rhodes Charitable Foundation runs out of money. Sue takes a moment, then announces that she'll have her team review the foundation's documentation. "Let's hold off on any official announcements until then," Sue warns, but Will and April are already dancing off to celebrate their victory with some boxed wine. Because they're idiots.
Smear sideways to Gwyneth Paltrow lecturing a classroom full of dumbfounded students while dressed as "America's worst president," William Henry Harrison, until the police arrive to drag her away. Trust me: this schtick was way funnier three years ago.
Back in the present, Gwyneth Paltrow reveals she came a-running the instant she heard The Glee Club was in trouble, and when The Batshit Bimbo of Broadway fills her in on this week's assignment, Gwyneth Paltrow gags, "That's a terrible idea! Listen, that might be fine for you nerds, but when Holly Holliday is in town, this hot bitch is not looking in the rear view mirror -- she's looking forward!" And with that annoying statement thus so obnoxiously delivered, Gwyneth Paltrow barrels headlong into what ends up being this evening's final number, "Happy" from Pharrell Williams. And its fine, I guess, but the staging just repeats the aimless bopping-around-the-music-room choreography we saw in tonight's first musical number, so color me considerably underwhelmed. And the second it ends, we jet straight out into this evening's commercial break.
McKinley High Locker Room. Coach Beiste has placed Dead Finn's football jersey in a display case, and we enter to find Old Puck staring at the holy relic in silence until Quinn materializes at his side. "He forgave us for what we did, right?" Puck asks. "A long time ago," Quinn assures him, and I have no idea if that's true or not, but more importantly: I don't care. Quinn then confirms that Gayface is on his way back to Yale, alone, and with that, we're off to...
...the music room, where Santana tells Brittany, "They can't just chain you to a calculator and keep you as their math monkey -- you need to be having a life. You need to be out in the world going to restaurants and concerts. And dating." And with that, we're back to...
...the locker room, where Puck barfs up something putrid about "soul mates," and then we're off to...
...the music room, where Brittany suddenly leans over to plant a sloppy wet one right on Santana's kisser. "That's a bad idea," Santana opines once she's managed to shove Brit-Brit's tongue out of her mouth, and then we're back to...
...the locker room, and you know what? To hell with this bullshit. I don't care how goddamn good Puck looks in his uniform, I am not listening to another single word of this crap. So, long story short: Puck and Brit-Brit offer themselves forever and always to Quinn and Santana, respectively, but only Quinn accepts. Well, you know. For now.
The Auditorium Formerly Known as the April Rhodes Civic Pavilion. Mr. Schue leads the kiddies over to a wall above the stage manager's desk in the wings, where he's moved the plaques commemorating Dead Finn and Lillian Adler. "For as long as McKinley's around," Mr. Schue vows, "all the students who travel through this auditorium are gonna see these." "And have absolutely no idea who they are," Artie correctly observes. There are feelings, and chit-chat about those feelings, and then some more feelings, and then some more chit-chat about those feelings, and then come the tears and the hugs, and then everyone heads back to the music room to "make the most of" the "few days" they have until "Sue shuts the lights out" for good.
Meanwhile, up in the flies, Gwyneth Paltrow says, "I mean, I know we gotta finish our wine first, but when we do, we cannot let that glee club go the way of the dodo!" "Oh, I couldn't have said it better myself," Orange April agrees, adding, "Holly Holliday? We are going to save that glee club!" No, you're not. We've all read all of the articles about this show's permanent move to New York, so stop lying. Now. The two ladies pay no attention to me, because they never pay attention to me, and as they clink their glasses together one last time, we finally cut to black.
week: Graduation, among other things, including yet another version of that Journey song. See you then!
Demian is grateful he'll remember at least one song they'll be playing week. You may reach him at demian_twop@yahoo.com.