In the newbie side plot that, let’s face it, no one cares about in this episode, Jake apologises to Marley for the Left Behind club mess. Marley once again expresses her annoyance that someone like Jake is with someone like Kitty, and when she says that, though he pretends to not care what people think, he must be really desperate to fit in if he’d date someone like her. Jake says that Marley doesn’t understand being a true outsider – his racial issues are brought up again when we have seen no evidence of this outcasting – but that Kitty, though kind of crazy, is funny and hot and when Jake stands next to her, no one makes fun of him. Kitty chooses this moment to approach the pair and interrogate them, and, despite his defence of the relationship a moment ago, when Kitty continues to insult Marley after Jake asks her to stop, he dumps her on the spot. Kitty threatens revenge, telling the pair to watch themselves because “Obama’s gonna lose.” Marley thanks him and he looks coy, but when she goes a step further and asks if he wants to go through the Grease music with her, he awkwardly excuses himself, saying he’ll see her later.
Rachel has come back to Ohio to track down Finn, and finds him on the auditorium stage. “This is where you proposed to me. When you did, you reminded me that it was where we had our first date. It’s also where we first met. Do you remember that?” “Yeah. Glee rehearsal, you really freaked me out.” Our leading man and lady both sound broken down, tired, and past help. They’re both dressed in all black, and Rachel wears dramatic makeup – they both feel so adult in this space now, so far from what they were. This vibe continues when Rachel starts to confront Finn about his behaviour. This woman, though clearly traumatised, speaks evenly and calmly, and when she does lose her composure, gone are the days of Childish Diva Rachel Berry histrionics. She is sharp, reasonable, and in control of her anger as she tells him off about how he’d disappeared and how she’d had to get on a plane and drive around town looking for him.
She finally expresses her feelings about Finn putting her on the train last summer, her hatred of what he’d done and her acceptance of how hard it must have been for him, loving her enough to let her go and help her find her true path. “This is what a man looks like. This is how a man loves,” Rachel tells him, in regards to her finding peace with that. But how he’s acting now, not contacting her for four months, and sneaking off in the night? Not manly. Finn, after some serious berating, loses his own cool and yells that he was trying to give Rachel her freedom, and she tells him that she doesn’t need that – that she’s a grown woman – that she doesn’t need Finn to hide from her in order to keep her from doing what’s right for her. “Like that Brody guy?” Finn asks, stung, and Rachel emphasises that she did not ‘do’ Brody, and doesn’t Finn realise that she wanted to be with him? Finn hangs on to the Brody point, comparing his successes to Finn’s own failures, and Rachel, overcome, asks Finn to please understand that no matter how rich, famous or successful she may become, that when it comes to Finn, Rachel will always be the crazy wide-eyed girl who freaked him out in their first glee rehearsal. He is always going to be her weakness, because he was the first person to ever make her feel loved. “You are my first love,” Rachel tells him, starting to properly cry now, “and I want, more than anything, for you to be my last.” But she can’t deal with this any more, not at the moment. She calls off their relationship. When Finn asks what he’s meant to do now – without her, without a job, without a place in the world – she proves that she still loves him by saying, “You have you, and that’s better than anyone else on the planet as far as I’m concerned.” The pair hold each other desperately, kissing goodbye.
The episode ends with Finn beginning a final number, Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” where each of the four couples appears on the McKinley stage and joins in the song. They stand in pairs, very still, not touching, in dark, mourning colors, as they sing their tragedy. Around half way through, as we pass over each couple, we get a flashback to their beginnings – Finn and Rachel’s first kiss, in “Showmance,” Brittany and Santana snuggling in the choir room, Kurt and Blaine’s ‘short-cut’ hallway moment, and Will and Emma’s first kiss at the end of season 1’s first block of 13 episodes. The song ends, the fantasy sequence ends, and the camera pans out to focus on Finn, alone on the stage, in the darkness.
Hey, remember when Glee was a comedy? Sike!
How did you feel about this week’s Glee? Which break-up did you find the hardest? We vote Brittana, though Rachel addressing Finn at the end was an amazing show of character growth and very hard to cope with. How do you think everything was handled, and how do you feel about the songs? And who do you think will get back together? Come talk about it with us – comment below, or if you want to hear more from us, we’ve released a HUGE episode of Glee Chat discussing all this and more.
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