{greener}

Mr. Schu is preparing for sectionals.  Naturally, he goes to Emma for help because they’re he’s co-dependent.  She doesn’t remember what a train wreck it was the last four times he asked for her help, so she’s thrilled to be glee’s “good luck charm” at the event.  She also points out that she won’t actually have any bearing on the competition, as Schu’s plans are practically set in stone: Rachel/Finn love ballad, Mercedes belting a lot.

Now this show Mr. Schu may be predictable, but it’s he’s predictably impulsive.  So Schu orders a complete change, effective immediately.  Quinn and Sam will be the featured singers, and Mike and Brittany will be featured dancers.  Rachel objects—her skin grows sickly if it’s not exposed to spotlight on a regular basis—and an argument breaks out.  Santana decides this is the perfect time and place to tell Rachel that she banged her boyfriend last year.

Rachel can only take so much upstaging, plus there’s the whole boyfriend-lying-by-omission thing, so she marches into the counseling office with Finn for couples’ therapy.  They receive some crappy advice.

Emma: You’re both in “Glee.” Why don’t you sing about it?

WRONG.  But the brilliance of Emma’s stupid suggestion is that it highlights the failure of the show: you can’t actually work out real issues—and the show treats a lot like real issues—with songs.

Kurt joins the Warblers at his new school, and Darren Criss is super, super cute and charming as per usual.

Puck is busy searching a new glee member to replace Kurt, but the cool kids throw him in a port-o-potty when he suggests it.  At least he pulls a George Bluth and has a religious experience while he’s trapped inside.  And as luck would have it, his rescuer, a hefty girl my namesake agrees to join glee for sectionals.  This should work out perfectly if we can ignore the fact that her voice is at least two octaves deeper than Kurt’s, the role she’s allegedly filling.  Things look up when Rachel walks into practice with duct tape over her mouth, but it turns out to be the flimsiest duct tape on Earth, and even her protest of silence isn’t pretentious enough to stop her from spitting out her endless grievances.

Then Mr. Schu does the best thing he’s ever done, and yells at her for being such a bad sport and generally awful person.

The Asian girl whose name escapes me this moment approaches Artie afterward.  He tells her she looks like a zombie cheerleader, but what choice does she have?  Mike Chang, her boyfriend, likes cheerleaders, or at least she believes he does, as she believes he’s cheating with Brittany.  WHAT CHOICE DOES SHE HAVE???

For some reason, Kurt and Rachel, both disenfranchised and on opposite teams meet to rehearse…for something.

Okay, so it ends up being fruitful for Kurt, who uses “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” to audition for a solo at sectionals with the Warblers.  Rachel sings it as an excuse to cry.  In unrelated news, I kind of like her dress, and it doesn’t look like something manufactured with 10 year olds in mind.  Progress.

Kurt doesn’t get the solo, and Darren Criss tells him not to try so hard next time.  Read: We may be gayer here, but that doesn’t mean we fall for second-rate, grasping, Evita Madonna.

Cut to sectionals, where Kurt and Rachel meet up before the musical stuff starts.

Kurt: Being in the Warblers has really made me question everything I thought about myself.

WHAT?

It took you ONE failed highly competitive audition in a school where you just showed up to question everything you thought about yourself?  That’s it.  I’m never trusting Glee’s messages about being yourself again.

Some old people sing something that sounds like a Christmas song.  Then the Warblers, aka Darren Criss and his back-up dancers Kurt and Corbin Bleu and some other guys, take the stage with a song from Train.  I have no comment on this except that I’m constantly bemused at the fact that band is still around.

Our Glee kids start feeling the anxiety.  Artie’s pissed at Brittany because she cheated with Mike.  Rachel’s pissed at Santana, because she won’t shut up about Sinn.  Finn’s pissed at Rachel because she won’t let it go.  The new girl eats it up—snacks and drama—because that’s her only quality.  Before they go on, we find out Brittany didn’t actually cheat on Artie, she just lost his “magic comb.”  We also learn she rides motocross.  Rad.

Sam and Quinn’s featured role isn’t actually that revolutionary, because they just eye each other while walking at varied pace across the auditorium while singing an 80s ballad.  So you know, exactly what Rachel and Finn used to do.   It also isn’t that revolutionary in terms of expressing the individualism Kurt apparently misses so much, because everyone is wearing the same ugly dress or maroon button-up, doing dance moves in unison.  Until Brittany and Mike start doing some impressive acrobatic swing moves mid-second song, that is.

They win sectionals in a tie.  Schu is stoked to tell Emma, but she crushes his soul by revealing a new wedding ring, fresh from a trip to Vegas.  Rachel and Finn are also tearing each other’s hearts out in the school hallway.  Rachel reveals she tried to revenge-bone Puck after learning about Santana.

Finn: I never thought you were mean.

Oh, Finn.  Your poor brain.  Thank god he grows an ounce of self-respect and leaves Rachel, who flounders pathetically in the hallway, yelling “You said you’d never break up with me!”  The only way to redeem this relationship is to destroy it.

So as far as I’m concerned, this show is making great strides.

It drives the slightly-better-than-usual trend home with a Florence + the Machine song, sung by two kids (Mercedes, Tina–that’s her name!) whose voices are actually meaty enough to carry it.  The dog days are over indeed.

Ha.