So Glee returned after a few weeks off and it was … underwhelming. The episode had some good ideas at the start, but nothing really panned out.
First we got the long-awaited return of Sunshine Corazon, who popped up out of nowhere to beg for a part in the glee club’s fundraiser, A Night of Neglect. Both the glee club and the academic club needed money to travel to their respective competitions, and Mr. Schue’s plan to sell saltwater taffy just wasn’t cutting it. Luckily, Holly suggested the benefit and next thing you know, there’s Sunshine. Naturally Rachel was against giving her a shot, but Sunshine promised that her 600 Twitter followers would all buy tickets. What could the gleeks do but give her an audition? She tore the roof off the auditorium with All By Myself and the deal was set … until her coach, Dustin Goolsby, got wind of it and pulled her from the benefit. Hello Sunshine, goodbye Sunshine, stay a little longer next time.
Meanwhile, Sue decided to gather a group of Will’s enemies and formed the League of Doom. Yes, Sue is still the Coyote to Will’s Road Runner. This time she enlisted Goolsby, former vocal coach Sandy Ryerson and Will’s ex, Terri, to help carry out her plan. Goolsby was code-named Sgt. Handsome, and his job was to break up Will and Holly. Except Holly saw Will consoling Emma after hearing Carl had left her and pretty much ended things before Will even knew about it. Sandy was code-named The Pink Dagger for obvious reasons, and it was his job to put together a Heckling Club to disrupt the benefit. It turns out that they were just about the only people at the benefit and after a talking to from Holly, the three kids ditched the benefit at intermission and Sandy fell under the spell of an Aretha Franklin song. Terri was never used but she had the best code name: Honey Badger. Follow Sue’s advice and YouTube it!
So, two pretty major parts of the story never really panned out. There could have been more drama and fireworks between Rachel and Sunshine, had she not been shipped off so quickly and the League of Doom was a massive failure. And it seemed that Kurt and Blaine were just shoe-horned into the plot to have a brief moment facing off with Karofsky, but at least they didn’t jump on stage during the benefit. I really expected them to add their own number to help out. I was just really disappointed that some potentially great comedic moments never materialized.
And then there was the Mercedes part of the story. A lot of people have complained that Mercedes has never been given the spotlight in any episode, so what do they do but give her the spotlight and turn her into a another Rachel. Worse than Rachel! Mercedes, under the management of Lauren, became a demanding diva who based herself on what she thought Aretha Franklin was like (guess she saw that Snickers commercial and didn’t really get it). Mercedes became a monster with outlandish demands — a bank of humidifiers, a fluffy puppy to dry her hands on — and even stormed out of the benefit because she didn’t get the closing number. By the way, where did they get the money to buy all of those humidifiers?
The one bright, shining moment of the episode (besides seeing Brittany whip through the category Cat Diseases on the Smarty Pants show) came when Rachel found Mercedes sitting in her car and they had a talk about diva behavior that really shed some light on who Rachel is and why, as well as who Mercedes is. Rachel told Mercedes that Aretha earned her respect with her talent, not by making demands, but Mercedes wanted to know why she was never the star when Rachel always was, especially because the rest of the kids like her. That one line hit the nail on the head for these characters. Rachel wants stardom so badly that she will do anything to get it, and it doesn’t matter that no one likes her. Mercedes is too worried about being liked, but Rachel told her to come back and take that closing number from her. She did and she brought down the house, but even with all the glory she still went to Rachel and told her to go out and finish the show. I loved that Rachel totally supported her and said there was no way anyone could follow that number. That entire scene was just lovely and really gave us so much more insight to Rachel’s character. With this information, I guess I’m not going to go so hard on her now because I finally understand who Rachel is.
Music featured on this episode, available on iTunes, included:
“I’m handsome, I’m good looking and I’m easy on the eyes. Also I’m gorgeous.” – Dustin trying to woo Holly
“See, here’s what’s going to go down. Two choices: you stay here and I crack one of your nuts, right or left, that’s your choice, or you walk away and live to be a douchebag another day. And also I have razor blades hidden in my hair.” – Santana defending Kurt and Blaine against Karofsky
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on Apr 20, 2011 @ 14:32 EST5EDT
Gweneth Paltrow is starting to grow on me, so of course, now she’s leaving. That performance of “Turning Tables” was excellent. Really good.
*POST AUTHOR*
I really liked her on the first episode she did – and I’m no big fan – but the last episode she did I found her to be really annoying. She almost won me over this week, especially with her Dame Man Hands performance in history class. The song was great though and her final moments were really touching. But she’s a movie star so she wasn’t going to hang around forever – and Emma had to come back into Will’s life at some point. Who knows, she may turn up as a rival vocal coach sometime in the future.
GLEE used to be one of my favorite shows – now I cannot watch it. My God, am I the only person who is sick of Sue! She ruins the show for me and everybody and his uncle wants to be a guest star which means they have to write special episodes to work them into the storyline.
M.P. every good show needs a villain. And no, I’m not even close to getting tired of Sue. Her dialogue is grippingly, drippingly wicked. And the writers do balance her character, with the occasional show of her soft side (re: her sister or coming to grips with her mother). In the “God” episode, she revealed more of why she is the way she is.
With regard to the guest stars…to me it’s like a return of the variety show in a way. Carol Burnett tailored her skits to her guest stars. I think it’s fun to see how musically talented some of these actors are.
*POST AUTHOR*
I’m really on the fence now with Sue. I loved her season one, but they’ve really just gone way too far over into cartoon villain territory with her, from her violent outbreaks (she punched the mayor’s wife in the face!) to wanting to shoot Brittany from a cannon. She will always be the villain, but she’s a much better villain when she’s subtle about it like this week when she had other people do her dirty work. It just makes the moments when she is showing compassion to someone like Kurt more real. They really need to rein her in because you can’t even sympathize with her anymore.
I didn’t even think about the money for the humidifiers. I was too busy wondering where Mr. Schu got all the money to buy the taffy (why not just just use that money for the trip? And if the taffy was some sort of spec deal, where they get it for free but have to sell it, how could they just waste it on the hecklers?). As well as wondering why Figgins let them use the auditorium for free (I remember him charging for the space for rehearsals).
And finally, why weren’t at least some of the Glee parents at the fundraiser? Were they all conveniently out of town? Like Rachel’s 2 dads wouldn’t have been there, or Kurt’s father.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.