At Callbacks, Kurt questions why Blaine seems a little down, and Blaine makes excuses about the flight out being rough. Kurt encourages him to cheer up, saying their first night out in New York would be one they wouldn’t want to forget. Over at the bar, Finn and Rachel order drinks – his Coke to her ‘Amaretto sour, virgin,’ ordered like it’s no big deal, really show how they’re in different worlds now – and are greeted by Brody, who is his usual calm and confident self, asking the couple about their visit together. When Rachel describes how Finn’s been coming into NYADA, Brody says he hopes that means Finn will sing tonight, as it’s NYADA tradition. Rachel joins in, pleading for Finn to sing “Give Your Heart a Break” with her. Finn, somewhat aggressively, suggests that Brody sing it with her instead, and Rachel chides him. Brody is not oblivious to the challenge in Finn’s voice, but chooses to act like nothing’s wrong, and agrees to sing with Rachel. The pair go to the stage to prepare, and begin the song as Finn watches on. The performance is not particularly romantic, but Rachel and Brody have undeniable chemistry, which Finn notices. Rachel flees back to the group after her applause, asking if she was good, and Finn, trying to be happy for her, tells her that she was. She insists that the others have a turn, which Kurt – with slightly lofty ideas above his station – turns down, not wanting to risk a page 6 spread – “Vogue intern sings without warming up.” Blaine, looking suddenly thoughtful, says he wants to sing something, and Brody directs him to the pianist.
Blaine takes the stage, sitting at the piano himself, and, after introducing himself – “I want to sing a song that’s very special to me, this is a song that I sang the first time I met the love of my life,” begins a piano/acoustic version of “Teenage Dream” and proceeds to have some sort of breakdown while doing so. I won’t discuss the back-story of how Darren Criss has developed this piano rendition of Teenage Dream over the past two years and what it means to his fans – you can catch that on this week’s episode of Glee Chat – but I will say that this performance, unlike most on Glee, was a live take – it’s meant to be raw, a moment of reality, a moment of plot, not a ‘number,’ and while Blaine proceeds to start crying while singing, you can hear every hitch of breath, every quaver, every note that’s off pitch, and every sob caught in the throat. I’ve already used the word raw but I can’t find a better one for this performance, it is tragic and as Blaine begins to shatter, the others shoot glances at Kurt while his boyfriend loses his composure in front of the whole audience. When Blaine finishes, Kurt is stricken and frozen, until the room’s uncertain applause snaps him out of it, and he begins to clap with tears in his eyes.
Later that evening, as they leave Callbacks, the two couples walk through a park slightly apart from one another, airing their grievances. When Rachel tells Finn that she wishes that he’d gotten up and sang with her, he tells her that he’s not going to fit in in NYC – “this place is too big, it moves too fast, people are too talented.” When Rachel says she’d felt the same way, he says that it’s different for her – that even in Ohio, he knew she was meant for this, but that he’s not. Finn inquires once again about whether Rachel and Brody are just friends, and when she tries to assure him, he asks her not to lie. Rachel admits that she kissed Brody and reminds Finn that she hadn’t been able to contact him and that she’d only done it because Finn had ended it and said he wanted her to be free. Finn expresses regret at having done that, calling himself stupid.
Kurt gently calls Blaine’s performance ‘moving,’ but inquires just precisely what the whole thing had been about. Blaine claims that he just really missed Kurt. “I missed you too, and I’m really glad you’re here, but you’ve been so emotional and weirdly sad. Please stop pretending that there’s nothing wrong,” Kurt tells his boyfriend, so Blaine tells Kurt the truth – that he was “with someone.” The emotion of the performance of “Teenage Dream” instantly changes from the desperation and longing of simply being left behind by Kurt, into something more – Blaine punishing himself, penance. It was an act of self-flagellation. Kurt immediately suspects that Blaine’s new partner was Sebastian, which he denies, and when Kurt demands to know who it was, Blaine says it doesn’t matter – it was a meaningless hook-up. He makes the somewhat ill-advised move of trying to share the blame, saying what matters is that he is the neediest person put on God’s green earth and that Kurt wasn’t there to take care of his neediness. Kurt certainly hasn’t been taking care of Blaine’s emotional problems, but makes the valid point that he’d been lonely too, he’d had temptations too (He has? Why have we not seen this?) but that he has not acted on them because he knew what it meant – that it meant something awful and inexcusable, and he breaks down crying as Blaine desperately apologises. (Um, I’m going to go ahead and point out the thing that Chandler happened when Blaine was still in the same damn town as Kurt, but I’m not saying that this isn’t way worse. I just don’t know when Kurt got this moral compass or how, if this is his opinion, he didn’t realize the stuff with Chandler was bad.)
As the two couples fight and separate, their conversations draw to a close and they begin to sing “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt. The staging and cinematography of this is truly bizarre, with plenty of split screens and synced movements, as the couples wander in the park, return home, and prepare for bed. The in-sync rolling over in bed struck me as the strangest, or possibly the split-screen with some people in vertical and some people in horizontal. The song sounded fantastic, however, with individuals taking the verse lines and a four part harmony chorus. The next morning, Kurt catches Finn leaving the apartment before Rachel wakes up. The two brothers comfort each other, both shell-shocked by their respective partners, as Finn leaves.
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