{greener}

We arrive at McKinley High to find that due to a rampant debilitating flu and lack of any semblance of a reasonable school district administrative system inclusive of things like vice principles, Sue Sylvester has temporarily usurped principal position.  Also, she’s not friends with Will anymore.  Why?  Because she’s bored.

Will: I thought we were friends.

Sue: That got boring.

I imagine that “That got boring” is used as justification a lot in the writers’ room.

Naturally, Sue vows to destroy glee club.  Her first orders of business are to disband the football team and rid the cafeteria of tater tots.  Neither of those things are glee club.  That’s not hugely consequential, because Mr. Schu is also ill.

The show dead ends-itself in its constant efforts to be cute with a scene in which he hallucinates his students are little kids.  It will never beat that again.  Schu goes home to decorate his bed with snotty tissues, and his kooky ex-wife Terri shows up, because, I don’t know, maybe Jessalyn Gilsig has a certain number of episodes in her contract.  Luckily, she remembers just how to take care of him: baby talk, Singin’ in the Rain, and thermometer butt-rape.

Back at school, the glee club is “floundering” without a leader, which means that no one’s suggesting Journey songs and coming up with sexually inappropriate assignments.  Kurt has a stroke of brilliance, and asks the Spanish substitute teacher Holly Holiday to fill in because he saw her do a jazzy version of School House Rock in another class last week.  Enter Gwyneth Paltrow.  A talented woman, to be sure, and high-falutent enough to nail a Spanish accent, lisp and all.  I’d trust her to teach me how to conjugate a verb in a heartbeat.  But sing and dance?  Methinks there may be a reason that in her 2-decade, award-winning, Actors Studio interview status career she has never done a musical.  Regardless, Holly Holiday’s real skills are gettin’ down with the homies yo and saying “I’d thought you’d never ask” at nonsensical times.

She’s so cool that she glides through the buttered floor hazing and into the hearts of the glee club with a reference to medical marijuana and the mention of Taco Bell.  She CLEARLY has her finger on the pulse of America’s youth culture today.  Then she says “hit it!” not in a sexual way, and the school’s resident conga player  appears in the corner with a few other musicicans to back her up on Cee Lo’s “Forget You: The Show Tunes Version.”  Ugh, singing.  It’s not all bad though, because during the song we learn that Quinn is an excellent finger waving and Kurt running in circles is the most adorable thing in the world. (Maybe I take back the dead-end cuteness thing.  I mean, little kids are so demanding).

Then there’s a Mr. Schu “Make ‘Em Laugh” rendition for no reason, which falls flat only because I’ve seen Joseph Gordon Levitt host Saturday Night Live. It turns out to be a delusion fantasy, so I guess the writer’s only thought one “Because I’m bored” would fly in this episode.  Terri’s still there, showing us how illness and baby-talk can get sexy: WITH VAPOR RUB!  True story: Will does look better with stubble and plaid.  Terri “coerces” Will to take off his shirt so she can help break up the phlegm in his chest/feel him up.  Will “protests,” but she wants his sickness, and they do it.

Holly and Sue do some of their own connecting, over “Hoarders” and red wine, both of which get Holly “buzzzzed.”  They also indulge in a little extracurricular highlighting, which I can only assume is the reason for Gwyneth’s perpetually frizzy hairline this episode.  Gotta let your roots grow in first, honey.  But “Glee,” never one for the subtle approach, wants to make sure we know these ladies are getting on.  Alcohol, trash TV, foils in the hair.  Lady-bonding 101, right?  Holly Holiday has now won over everyone except Rachel, who can hardly be blamed, on account of having no soul.  Rachel’s also butt-hurt because of some hip-hop musical chairs and because she took the buttered-floor fall intended for the new teacher.  She comes around when Holly tells her the cure for stickupyourassiness is a punch to the face.  Yay abuse!  Then they go to the mall to pick up some sequined robes that could only be found at Fredericks of Hollywood and do a Chicago number.  Half of it is tap-dancing, so there’s less singing than usual…but it’s half tap-dancing…and they really should leave that to the Asian guy or the girl who danced with Beyonce.

Kurt starts spending a lot of time with private school cutie Blaine, which makes his BFF Mercedes jealous.  In an effort to distract her from neediness, he suggests she date one of the school’s six black kids.  She’s offended, and I’m almost with her except A) the guy Kurt picked out is cute, and TV attraction is vain and B) she undermined the race thing by being all “Does he do any not-black things?” in response to “He plays football.”  The stereotype train continues with a meal at Olive Garden Breadsticks, where Mercedes plays the third wheel to a gay-fest across the table.  Kurt and Blaine go all blah blah Vogue covers, and Mercedes orders some tater tots.  But, you know, Blaine likes football, too.  Jock is like the new enlightened.  Mercedes has some unwarranted outbursts about the deep-fried processed potatoes she can no longer get in the cafeteria, but that’s only because she’s substituting food for love.  You’ll see what I mean later.  Kurt explains it all.

When Will returns to school he finds that Sue has been permanently installed as principal due to her work in supporting student nutrition.  Obviously, she fires him immediately.  Because, remember, we heard at the beginning of this episode that they’re no longer friends.  Because she’s bored.  Before going home, he verbally duels with Holly Holiday, the new permanent glee club teacher, before going home because he has no dignity left post-Britney Spears storyline.  He’s all “Why’d you take my class from me?”  And she’s all, “Because you don’t know how to relate to young people!  You got to Tweet them!”  And he’s all, “You be warned about the HANGOVERS OF FUN.”  She reiterates her firm stance for social networking, but thank god that’s just a smokescreen.  She doesn’t actually have principals, admitting she took the job because the economy’s bad.  Truth.

Mercedes has gets in trouble with the principal for some tot sabotage, and Sue realizes that Gwyneth Paltrow may indeed only be qualified to teach Spanish.  Holly Holiday stares into space, conceding she has no idea what she’s doing with all the zany teaching tactics and encouragement and bad slang.  But it turns out that expensive beer is great for a fun hangover, which she finds at Will’s house.  She also finds Will’s house, somehow.

They sit on his couch, and she tells him about her non-committal “life with no consequences” and how she lives on one-night stands and paper plates.  She cries, which, if every past episode is any indication, means he’s probably about to force his mouth on her face.  True to his class act nature, he dumps Terri in front of Holly when she brings him some soup.  It’s pretty brutal.

So brutal that we need an Election-esque sequence of students telling us how great Mr. Schu is to explain why Sue re-hires him.  She reinstates Schu as the head of show choir with a line about rubbing poison on her breasts and a usage of “gash” that I hope goes over the heads of the show’s tween audience.  Kurt tells Mercedes to calm down about the tater tots.  He also says something ridiculous about how she’s substituting food for a boyfriend, as if the two are mutually exclusive and equally necessary.  Hey Kurt-wisdom, that’s not even like apples and oranges.  That’s like apples and a good old emotional mind-screwing.  But Mercedes gets him, and goes to talk to the One of Six Black Kids at school.  Holly goes back to theatrically filling in for absent history teachers in full Mary Todd Lincoln garb, but agrees to help will sell the glee club on Singin’ in the Rain music because it’s so OLD.  Ew, gross.

To make it hip and current, they mash up “Singin’ in the Rain” with “Umbrella,” Rihanna’s nearly 4-year-old hit.  They learned nothing from the floor buttering, because the glee club opts to perform onstage with a giant waterfall cascading and sloshing about their feet.  They wear fedoras and vests, so you know they’re being really theatrical, too.  And modern.

Confused?  That sounds about right.  You can read my overview of “Glee” thus far here.  It may or may not confuse you even more.