Glee returned last night from a seven-week hiatus with “Big Brother,” featuring guest-star Matt Bomer. Check out our recap, written by Glee Chat host Natalie Fisher.
To open, Finchel meander down their trademark hallway, having an expositional conversation to let the viewers know that, due to Quinn’s car accident, they did not go through with their post-Regionals wedding. And in under 60 seconds of airtime, the few people who have remained completely spoiler-free learn that Quinn Fabray is still alive, albeit in a wheelchair. It’s presumably her first day back at McKinley, and since the other option was ending up as a “creepy memorial page in the yearbook,” this is the happiest day of her life. She and her new BFF Artie race to the choir room, ignoring the looks of pity and shock from random students as they perform a cheesy and maniacally smiley rendition of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.” I’m assuming this is Artie’s attempt to teach Quinn wheelchair dancing.
Dianna Agron and Kevin McHale have voices that compliment each other very well, and their chemistry is off the charts, but it seems to be more representative of the close friendship of the actors than of anything that makes sense with the characters of Quinn and Artie. Anyway, most of the club seem to find their routine adorable, but Finn and Rachel both look a little horrified. As they finish the number, Quinn, still all smiles, addresses the group, warning them never to text and drive like she did, and that though she currently can’t move her feet or legs, they are regaining feeling and the prognosis is good for a full recovery. She promises the group that by Nationals, she will be on her feet, dancing with the group. The students rush forward to hug her, but the camera pointedly captures Artie’s worried look.
A somewhat deflated and apparently legitimately pregnant Sue Sylvester sits in Figgins’ office, having received the news that the principal is appointing synchronised swimming coach and Olympic Bronze Medallist Roz Washington as co-coach of the Cheerios. After a bit of disgusting dialogue about bats in va-jay-jays, it’s established that Sue was late to the Cheerios Regionals competition due to a doctor’s appointment, and that Sue’s pregnant condition is compromising the Cheerios’ shot at Nationals. Figgins wants the money and sponsorships a national winning team brings in, so Sue vows to get him one – the Glee Club. She strikes a deal that if she can get New Directions to win Nationals and bring in the $10,000 prize money for the school, she gets to have the Cheerios all to herself again. Figgins agrees, and Sue takes over Booty Camp. She’s angered by the club’s lack of commitment in rehearsals, confiscating and smashing Mercedes’ phone as she texts while dancing. At this, Silent Piano Guy does a joyous fist-pump, which is maybe the best moment in the history of Glee.
Finn strolls in late, excited to have booked the seniors a tour at the Railroad Museum for their Senior Ditch Day. This says… something about his personality. I don’t know what, exactly, but something. His arrival is the last straw for Sue, who serves the club with a harsh, rude, but ultimately truthful dose of reality – the club is lazy, undisciplined and throws away their morals and friendships when it comes to grabbing any personal spotlight. The kids apparently don’t handle this well, as Will confronts Sue in the staff room, citing an email from Kurt: “Mr Schue – save us. Coach Sue is meaner than Tabatha.” (Glee will definitely become a timeless classic with references and jokes understood and accessible to all.) Sue tells Will that she does want to help, but that the club members are unprofessional and don’t stand a chance on a national stage. Talk turns to Sue’s pregnancy when she tells Will not to attempt to rationalise her hormonal behaviour. It’s revealed she has a doctor’s appointment to find out the sex of her baby, and, when Will and Emma find out she’ll be alone, they offer to come with her.
Blaine looks anxious as he walks Kurt to his locker, and when Kurt presses, Blaine admits that his older brother is in town and will be taking him to lunch. Kurt is excited to meet his boyfriend’s big bro, whom he hasn’t heard much about. Kurt says he’s dying to know what the older Anderson looks like, and Blaine, resigned, says “Trust me… you already know what he looks like.” The conversation is halted by the arrival of the man in question, Cooper, played by Matt Bomer. Cooper hugs his little brother and offers his handshake to Kurt, who, starstruck, exclaims that he knows Cooper from a series of free credit rating commercials, which he loves. “The jingle is my ringtone!”
Kurt is apparently not Cooper’s only fan, as Coach Sue interrupts the boys to steal Cooper away and have him sign her breast. He obliges, and she says he’s done her a great honor, and then, in what is probably my favorite Sue line ever and which I must do the honor of reproducing in full here: “If Alan Menken isn’t personally writing you a fairytale musical at this very moment, I will hunt him down and beat him senseless with a cudgel, because you, sir, are a Disney prince.” Cooper appreciates the small-town attitude to his mediocre fame, saying to himself, “God, it is great to be back in the Midwest.” He escorts his brother out, talking about how he’s come home for a while due to his commercial being on ‘hiatus,’ and Kurt totters along behind, whispering such sensitive and loving phrases as “your brother’s the best-looking man in North America” to the uncomfortable Blaine. Blaine tries to excuse the two of them again, but fumbles his words as Sue commandeers Cooper once again and walks away with him. “That’s why I never really talk about my brother,” Blaine tells Kurt, who clearly now thinks he’s gotten the raw deal as far as Anderson brothers go.
Puck is chairing a secret meeting in the library to plan the Senior Ditch Day. Clearly, Finn’s Railroad Museum escapades didn’t quite cut it. These moments of absurd humor are one of Glee’s strengths – with Kurt’s contribution being a Gershwin-Sondheim scavenger hunt, Mercedes’ being a non-alcoholic pub crawl and Mike Chang’s being a Footloose movie marathon – Footloose and Footloose 2011. Brittany, meanwhile, says that since it’s springtime, she would like to see something give birth. Everyone’s having a giggle, and then Rachel ruins the moment by starting to cry about Quinn’s fate, blaming herself as it was her wedding Quinn was driving to, and her text Quinn was answering, and how cold and wrong it is that they’re all talking about having fun when Quinn is sitting in the wheelchair. Quinn tells her, basically, to check herself before she wrecks herself, and that she wasn’t dwelling on it or feeling excluded, so Rachel didn’t have to feel bad on her behalf. She hugs Rachel and tells the group that they should use the Ditch Day to go to Six Flags. The idea excites the group, and after Puck deems the plan acceptable, he adjourns the meeting and calls Finn back.
He shows Finn a series of successful men who weren’t taken seriously in high school, and says that they’ve inspired him to come up with a post-graduation plan – moving to California to expand his pool-cleaning business. He wants Finn to be his business partner. Finn looks genuinely flattered at the offer, but reminds Puck that he has to go to New York with Rachel. Puck takes this in stride, but plants a ‘what if’ seed in Finn’s mind, and Finn agrees to come along to do a repair on a client’s jacuzzi with Puck.
In the choir room, as her own style has been deemed too harsh, Sue has brought ‘Porcelain’s famous brother’ – “Actually, he’s my brother” interjects Blaine – Cooper Anderson, to teach the club some professional performing skills. Cooper strolls in, casually kisses a frozen Sue on the mouth, and starts ‘inspiring’ the club. He announces that he will be hosting a master-class in acting for anyone interested in attending, and Mr Schuester expresses a sickening amount of gratitude. Rachel coyly inquires about what a talented family the Andersons must be, and that they must have grown up singing duets around the piano together. Cooper happily takes the bait, tells the class that the brothers were well-known for their dueling Simon Le Bon impressions, and asks Will if he and Blaine can perform them now. Blaine isn’t quite so keen to show off, putting on a good face but saying “please don’t make me do that.” A different tone might have made that sound bashful, but he’s dead serious. At Kurt’s urging, he reluctantly goes down to the front of the room to sing with his brother, and they perform a mash-up of two Duran Duran songs, “Hungry Like The Wolf” and “Rio.” (Side note – “Rio” is the song Kurt suggested that the Warblers sing at Sectionals back in Special Education, when Blaine tells him to blend in and not make a spectacle of himself. I would have loved to see a throwback to that in some way, even just a “I thought you hated that song”.)
The choreography is great and the track sounds awesome, if a bit overproduced. It’s got very synth-y vocal effects – I’m going to love listening to it on my iPod but it was too unrealistic for them to be singing in the choir room. This isn’t an uncommon thing for Glee, but usually it isn’t as obviously out of place as this. Blaine loses himself in the performance, enjoying the interaction with his brother, looking to him for approval, and they seem to make a great team, but Blaine is disheartened when Cooper compliments his own performance, but not Blaine’s. Things do not improve when Cooper takes Blaine to lunch at Breadstix, pretends to be Irish as ‘acting training’, and criticises his little brother’s performance, inventing some acting techniques to support his point. Blaine calls out Cooper both for being full of nonsense and for telling Blaine what he does wrong every way he turns. A flashback cuts in of a tiny Blaine and young Cooper, where Blaine is dancing happily to “MMMBop” by Hanson and Cooper swoops in to tell him, scornfully, that his balance is all off. “I just learnt to walk three years ago!” baby Blaine says, and in the present day, Cooper apologises for that ever happening, if it did – he doesn’t remember. He says he wants to be closer to Blaine, and get to know him better despite their age difference, which is all Blaine wants, and he softens and agrees to come to Cooper’s master-class.
Quinn and Artie are around the back of the school, where Artie is putting Quinn through her paces on the steepest accessibility ramp in Lima. When Quinn actually pushes herself up the ramp, the laughter and encouragement between the two students is once again adorable, natural and completely uncharacteristic and feels much more like watching Kevin and Dianna. Once they’re inside the school, Quinn admits that it was the hardest thing she’s ever done, and Artie says that going to a theme park in a chair will be a lot harder. Quinn looks dismayed at the idea of missing her only Senior Ditch Day, but agrees to come along to Artie’s alternate idea for the two of them.
Back in the choir room, it’s time for the Cooper Anderson Acting Master-Class. Cooper’s “tall glass of ‘this is how it is’” consists mainly of these points: A) Don’t go to college; B) Don’t go to New York, because theater is lame; C) the key to acting is to point at who you’re talking to and ignore everything and everyone else. In short, Cooper is terrible; he’s classically bad. Blaine knows it and apparently is the only one – everyone else is lapping it up. He even asks an attentive Kurt why he’s bothering to take notes, and calls Cooper out for his bad advice. Cooper shoots his little brother down, and Blaine is no longer even attempting to keep up a positive exterior. After a few more demonstrations of ‘awesome acting choices,’ such as screaming all one’s lines because one has reached Nicolas Cage-like levels of intensity, Cooper has the class perform scenes from an audition for NCIS. Blaine and Rachel play the leads, but when Cooper comes down on Blaine for not pointing, the two Andersons talk over each other to the point of argument, and Blaine snaps at Cooper, begging for his support. When Cooper’s response is to coldly ask if Blaine had been talking to him – “you see, I can’t tell if you don’t point your finger,” – and the class responds positively in Cooper’s favor, Blaine seethes silently.
Finn and Puck are doing a job for one of Puck’s cougar clients, and the lady is supportive of their business plan, offering to become a silent partner. Puck broaches the subject of moving to Los Angeles once again, and Finn insists that it’s not possible. Puck asks to make one last point before he stops pushing, and rather rationally reminds Finn that marriage is a team effort, and it seems like Finn is always the one giving up everything. Given Cooper’s advice, which they all seem to have taken seriously, Puck says going to LA would be a benefit to Rachel’s career, and if he wanted, Finn could try acting as well, or go to college. With these options on the table, Puck asks his friend to take a few seconds to think about himself and what he wants. Finn is left speechless.
Sue visits the doctor with Will and Emma. They’re told the baby is a girl, which thrills Sue, but they’re also told that her amniotic fluid test came back with irregularities. This, viewers should know, is one of the markers of disabilities such as Down’s Syndrome and a point where some mothers choose to terminate. Sue blinks and takes in the news. Later, she’s visited in her office by Becky Jackson, who says she’s heard the news about Sue’s baby – that it will be a girl. Sue confirms this and hugs Becky, saying the baby will be just like her, and this moment seems to imply that whatever may come with the pregnancy, she will accept it. Becky offers some parenting advice, suggesting Sue try to become more patient.
Blaine finds Cooper in the hallways, taking photos with Rory – not that Rory will end up getting the picture, as Brittany is wielding the camera and the lens cap is still on. Cooper tells Blaine he’s got an audition for an untitled Michael Bay movie, which probably means Transformers 4. Blaine sarcastically and distantly tells Cooper that’s it’s great, but Cooper isn’t satisfied with Blaine’s lack of enthusiasm, though he doesn’t seem to pick up that it’s anger. My favorite part of this conversation is that when Cooper tells Blaine it wouldn’t kill him to smile, he also says it wouldn’t kill him to stop letting Kurt pick out Blaine’s clothes, which Blaine unconvincingly denies. I have been waiting so long for someone to say that to Blaine because I’m pretty sure Darren Criss has personally offended someone in the wardrobe department at Glee. Anyway, Cooper tries to hype up his little brother, offering to take him on their own special ditch day… where Blaine can help Cooper run lines. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” Blaine asks, incredulously, and Cooper nods, as if anyone would assume anything different.
Blaine, fed up with Cooper, performs Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter,” in a really awkward and overdramatic scene beginning right there in Cooper’s face and ending on the auditorium stage, screaming and throwing punches in front of a wall of screens showing Cooper’s commercial. It gets there via a fantasy sequence of Blaine singing at Cooper during the master-class, and a montage of Blaine boxing to let off steam, and then singing the bridge while showering. I have no comment to make on this except that I guess the Powers That Be have twigged that the diminutive Darren Criss has more rabid fangirls who want to see him naked than standard hotties like Mark Salling and Chord Overstreet. It just makes me feel mostly awkward. Thanks, Glee.
After he treads on the bare feet of Teen Jesus/Joe Hart, Quinn calls Finn out for texting while walking, saying that’s how she ‘started.’ This odd conversation, in which Quinn comes across somewhat crazy, but Finn takes in stride, segways into Quinn and Artie letting Finn know they won’t be attending Six Flags with the rest of the group. Artie takes Quinn to their special ditch day – which he refers to as ‘crip skip’ – at a skating bowl frequented by wheelchair users and other disabled skaters. He’s greeted warmly by his skating friends, and to version of “Up Up Up” by Givers sung by Quinn and Artie. We see a montage of the two parallel outings – Quinn and Artie dropping into the skating bowls and the rest of the club riding roller-coasters. Quinn thanks Artie for her day, but when he says that he wanted her to meet cool people enjoying life who were in the same situation as her, she firmly reminds him that this is not going to be her permanent life. He tries to explain that many people have false hope, and they part when he says “when are you going to stop pretending that this isn’t really happening to you?” I’m still pretty uncertain as to whether Artie’s concern comes from thinking Quinn is deluding herself, or if it comes from selfish desire to have a friend in the same situation as he is, but I’m vibing a lot of the second.
Later, Quinn has trouble with her top-row locker, and is helped by Joe, who suggests she gets a lower locker. She determinedly rejects this idea, saying this has always been her locker and will be until she walks across the stage at graduation. He tells Quinn that he’s been praying for her – not for her to walk, but for her to accept her path, whatever it may be. She thanks him, but makes a snide comment about his ability to get up and walk away from his prayers, and then chides herself, calling herself a “self-obsessed bitch.” Joe’s chill about it, which pleases Quinn, and she invites him to Glee Club. He’s happily accepted into Booty Camp, where Sue apologises to the club for her harsh treatment in training them, but not without dropping some great lampshading of a few of the club’s (and show’s) implausibilities – such as dropping untold millions on a laser show for themselves so that Sandbags (Santana) could dance with the night school’s Polynesian janitor (Ricky Martin).
She tells them being intense is a part of who she is, but that she’s realised she’s with them for two reasons. “Number one – Mr Schuester needs at least one adult friend.” (YES.) But the second reason is that she hopes that the baby she is carrying will be influenced by the club’s annoying, yet laudable optimism and decency. She promises to be nicer if they promise to give their all, and everyone looks touched.
Now, I know for a fact Glee shoots on five sound stages at Paramount, as opposed to most shows’ two, so why are so many scenes in the same hallway? Blaine’s at his locker when he is startled by Kurt puppeteering a stuffed toy puppy he’s acquired Blaine from Six Flags, since Blaine could not be convinced to join the group (we’ll ignore the fact that – like Tina, Artie, Rory, and possibly Sugar, Blaine is not a senior). Blaine said he would have probably just lowered the mood. Kurt sympathises, sharing his own feelings about supporting a brother he doesn’t always agree with, and encourages Blaine to go and talk to Cooper about how he feels. Allow me to say right here that in an entire year of Kurt and Blaine being together, this is the first conversation the couple have had which has shown Kurt to be selfless and supportive in a way that I believe to be genuine. When Blaine says he has tried and can’t get through, Kurt suggests communicating in the way Blaine knows best – obviously implying via song.
Blaine heads off towards the auditorium with a fixed look, and begins to perform Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” for his brother. Cooper joins in and the brothers talk through song, with Cooper showing confusion and then understanding at Blaine’s raw pain. Matt Bomer, particularly, sounds just phenomenal and pure on this song. They end the number in an interesting shot where they’re separated by the spotlight, neither brother stepping into it, and Cooper, whose voice has lost all affectation or pretence, says it’s the best Blaine has ever sounded. He admits that he’s been tough on Blaine and apologises, but claims it’s because he sees Blaine’s talent and wants him to be as successful as he can possibly be. He says – in what has to be a reference to Darren Criss’ career – that Blaine will “do it all” – movies, concerts, Broadway – and that he wants to be able to say “thats’s my little brother and I helped him.” Blaine thanks him for saying these words, and, keeping a straight face, says he knows Cooper really means it because Cooper isn’t pointing or speaking really loudly to be intense.
Blaine’s mocking of Cooper finally makes the brothers seem natural and loving and they smile at each other. When Blaine says he’s grateful they could sing together before Cooper left to go be a big-shot, Cooper admits that his audition got cancelled and shares his insecurities about the industry and how things aren’t as bright as they seem. Blaine offers his support, saying “screw Optimus Prime” (a line that renowned geek Darren Criss later tweeted was the hardest thing he’s ever had to force himself to say on Glee), and when Cooper asks for confirmation that despite their distance, the two are more than brothers, that they’re friends too, Blaine wells up, saying that’s all he’s ever wanted. The pair leave the stage together, joking around and planning an audition tape for Cooper.
Locker, again. Finn compliments Rachel on her work in Cooper’s master-class, and she shares her nerves over the NYADA scout arriving soon. Finn asks if Rachel has thought about what he will do in New York, and while she doesn’t seem to have considered it, she’s receptive to the fact he needs to figure out what’s next for him – until he mentions California. He starts to talk about the opportunities for him there, and Rachel stops him, upset, when he suggests she could act in Hollywood, saying that it isn’t possible for her to succeed there, that she only has potential for Broadway. They begin to argue about whether Rachel cares about Finn’s ambitions, and she cuts him off, saying that she needs to be in New York, and that she needs his support to be able to get her through it. The episode ends with Finn asking Rachel to be really sure that she is in love with him and not with her ideals for him.
One finale note: this episode, while fine, was the most anti-climatic return ever. The mid-season finale cliffhanger was the most ineffectual one that I have ever witnessed on television, given that it was about not knowing whether Quinn survived the crash and before the “On My Way” episode even aired, there were spoiler pictures released of Quinn in a wheelchair. Since then, in the seven week hiatus, many more spoiler pictures, promos and song releases have killed all anticipation in regards to that cliffhanger, and made the return of Glee feel more like “oh… okay” than burning curiosity and excitement regarding the end of the hiatus. I’m not sure why they handled it like this, what the point of even having that cliffhanger was. But all in all, it was a good, solid episode of Glee with no major flaws or discrepancies, which sometimes is all you can hope for.
You can listen to more in-depth discussion and opinions about last night’s episode over on our Glee Chat podcast.
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