This week’s Glee episode, “The Break Up,” has been highly anticipated – or dreaded. Look, everyone knows the deal here. This has been coming for a while. Finchel. Klaine. Brittana. Wemma. Four power couples enter. Who’ll make it out alive? Read our full Glee recap below:
Somewhat unexpectedly, the episode opens on Jake Puckerman and Marley bonding in the lunch room over how poor they both are. Marley isn’t quick enough to hide her ‘free lunch’ tokens as New Puck joins her, but he commiserates and reveals that his mom lost her ‘solid middle class’ job in the recession and now works as a waitress. He also makes sure to point out that his mom is black, just in case we thought Glee’s attention to detail was so terrible that we were meant to believe New Puck and Old Puck were of the same ethnic origin. Poor New Puck feels super guilty about how much she struggles to pay for his dance lessons. Wait, what? Dance lessons? Marley asks the same question, but Jake ain’t spilling more than that. Is he in fact New Mike Chang?
Neglected Brittany and Neglected Blaine watch the budding romance wistfully from another table, reminiscing about times gone by, when hope was high and life worth living. They dreamed that love would never die… “We’re still young. Shouldn’t we still be experiencing those things?” asks Brittany, though neither she or Blaine has an answer to that question.
In the Bushwick apartment, it appears to be the morning directly following the end of last week’s episode, as Rachel rises at midday and tells Kurt that she and Finn had lain awake half the night, not talking. Finn soon joins the pair in the kitchen area, and after greeting his step-brother, Kurt excuses himself and takes his croque-madame on a date to the park to watch drug deals. Somewhere, 600 miles away, Blaine Anderson has a yearning to become that croque-madame, watching the dealers touting their daily wares while at Kurt’s side. He’d probably put up with being eaten afterwards. He’d probably be grateful for the attention. Anyway, Rachel offers to make Finn breakfast, pretending everything’s fine, but after a few moments cannot retain her composure and demands to know what’s going on. Finn admits that he’s no longer in the army – he was ‘semi-honorably discharged’ after just 16 days, due to accidentally shooting himself in the thigh. Since then, he’s been backpacking around Georgia, too ashamed to face or call anyone – he couldn’t bear the idea of Rachel seeing him as a useless Lima loser again. Rachel seems frustrated by this but puts it all aside, saying that it was no big deal, what matters is that he’s here now, with her, and together they can work to find him a new purpose. She reminds him that before he planned to go to the army, he’d applied to the Actors Studio, and that if he’s still interested, they can look for a new acting school for him. Rachel suggests that Finn come along to all her NYADA classes that week, and if he likes it he can move into the Bushwick apartment and the two of them will spend all year working on his NYADA application. Finn looks dumbstruck and grateful as Rachel tells him that though she loves New York, something had always been missing, and that she will not let Finn leave her again.
Santana has returned to Glee, to our hearts, and to Lima, to do laundry with Brittany. Apparently she’s made a pact to herself to only do laundry at home, so no matter how busy things get, she’ll have an excuse to come back home and spend time with Brittany. After a beautifully phrased rant from Santana about the unrealistic circumstances of Kurt’s employment at Vogue, Brittany tells Santana that she could go to NYC too, should she want to, but Santana’s just annoyed on principle – she likes being in college and loves being a cheerleader. When Britt becomes visibly exhausted, Santana asks what’s wrong and Brittany tells her that she’d been up late reading Left Behind (a post-apocalyptic sci-fi extreme Christian propaganda series) for the new after-school club she’s joined with Kitty, Trouty Mouth, Teen Jesus, and Dottie Kazatori. “Who’s Dottie Kazatori?” asks everyone. “She’s Tina’s assistant.” Oh, her. “Everyone graduated and things got weird.” Understatement, Britt.
Kurt calls Blaine at a very logical time for a phone-date – in the middle of Kurt’s work-day and Blaine’s school-day, and they both seem surprised and disappointed when this doesn’t seem to work out well. Kurt’s job is too busy for him to commit to the call, and when he apologizes and tells Blaine he’s not going to end up having time to talk, Blaine tries to push the issue, saying that he’s not dealing with the situation very well. Kurt is distressed by this, but reminds him that Blaine will be visiting in two weeks – though Blaine wants to know how he’s supposed to cope until then. Kurt cuts the call short when a particularly good gossip source calls on his other line – though what Vogue.com has to do with gossip I’m unsure, which makes me question whether that call was for actual work or just part of his glamorous New York City life. He tells Blaine he’ll try to call him later, and Blaine gets the dial tone as he says “I love you” to dead air.
Finn sits in on one of Rachel’s acting classes – so she does do things at NYADA other than avoiding Cassandra’s whacking stick! – and does an inner monologue about how brilliant Rachel is and how much she’s found her place, but that there is no way he’d be any good there, and that he’d have no purpose or prospects in New York. The experience has disheartened him, much as Blaine is disheartened as he tries to call Kurt at work again and gets no answer. Blaine stalks off and begins to sing “Barely Breathing,” and the number turns into a duet between him and Finn – Finn while he watches Rachel shine in all her NYADA classes, and Blaine in the auditorium, singing to, apparently, an empty chair (okay, Clint Eastwood) while a hallucination of Kurt pops up at one moment. By the end of the number, Blaine’s alone in the choir room, scrolling his phone, and after some deliberation, Facebook ‘pokes’ a guy called Eli who immediately messages him calling him ‘sexy’ and asking if he wants to come over. We don’t see his reply, but his body language implies a resolution and it would seem that the constantly-desperate-for-validation Blaine has been seeking some comfort and attention elsewhere, and he’s about to go off and make what was possibly, so far, only a Chandler-like indiscretion into a full-blown, proper indiscretion. Meanwhile, as Finn’s part of the song ends, Rachel throws herself onto his lap, giggling and oblivious, thrilled to have him there.
Later that night at the apartment, Kurt is trying to upgrade Finn’s outfit from a rugby shirt and dad jeans so they can take him out to the piano bar Callbacks, a major NYADA hangout that the students use for high-quality karaoke. (Rachel’s delivery when telling Finn about Callbacks is so natural and adorable, I swear the Bushwick set always invokes a whole different quality of acting from its residents.) Finn’s not enthused, and Rachel looks worried about his lack of energy. When the door buzzer goes, everyone is surprised to find Blaine, hiding behind a huge bunch of roses. Kurt is genuinely delighted to see him, but reminds him that he wasn’t expecting Blaine for another two weeks – Blaine says that he couldn’t wait that long as he’d missed Kurt too much. They’re all excited to see him, though Blaine is confused to see Finn, and Blaine and Kurt hug and kiss. Rachel may be most excited of them all, about to burst with glee at the four of them being together again.
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.
After that emotional roller coaster, we head back to McKinley, where Kitty invites Marley to her ‘Left Behind’ club, in order to prepare for the Apocalypse. “It’s a fact that the Book of Revelations predicted Twitter,” Kitty insists, citing the other six signs of the Apocalypse as porn, unexplainable weather anomalies, Martian rovers, Barney Frank, and MSNBC. Jake rolls his eyes about Kitty’s cray-cray belief in the End Times, but the pair, along with most of the glee club, Santana, and some other randoms, attend the meeting at Breadstix. Kitty begins to rant about the return of Jesus and the Rapture and when she describes the true believers being lifted up to Heaven, Dottie (yeah, her) asks what will happen to those who are still kind of on the fence about the whole Armageddon thing. Kitty tricks her into leaving the room, and while she is gone, makes the gathered group stage a fake Rapture by laying out abandoned clothes, and then hiding when Dottie returns. Dottie believes that the Rapture has taken place and begins to scream, when Kitty bursts out and reveals the trick, saying that’s why they must all become true believers. Dottie starts to have a panic attack, and everyone says Kitty has gone too far. Marley leaves, though Jake begs her not to, but she tells him that she does not like Kitty and cannot believe that Jake wants to date her.
Santana also disapproves of the antics and tries to take Brittany home, saying that the club is not good for her, but Brittany, distressed, refuses to leave, stating that being left behind sucks. When Santana points out that it was a stupid prank, Brittany very seriously tells Santana she doesn’t get it – that being left behind hurts. “You left me behind, and it hurt,” Brittany tells her girlfriend, showing her the hyperventilating Dottie. “That’s exactly what it felt like.”
Finn has returned to McKinley, and surprises Mr. Schuester in his office. At first, the inappropriate BFFs hug and it’s all smiles, but as Will starts to question Finn about what’s been going on, Finn is at a loss and eventually breaks down in Will’s arms and begins to cry. He hangs around at school and haunts the choir room, and after an awkward interaction with Blaine where Finn weakly asks why Blaine would have done that to Kurt and Blaine just as weakly replies that he doesn’t know, the rest of the club files in and greets Finn ecstatically – including Sam, who according to Chord Overstreet, is still living at Finn’s house. There’s a hysterical background moment of New Puck asking Marley if she knows who that guy is, and Marley shrugging just as confusedly. As the lesson begins and Finn sits by to watch, Mr Schue starts throwing around ideas for a new school musical – one that won’t cause a Rocky Horror-like community outrage. Finn thoughtfully suggests Grease, and gives a list of reasonable points about why it would be appropriate and enjoyed by all. Everyone backs the idea, and both Schue and Finn himself look happily taken aback by Finn’s stroke of genius – he was certainly never this proactive with ideas when actually in New Directions.
In his home, Schue brings Emma some good news – he’s been offered the position on the Blue Ribbon Panel to Improve Arts Education – full name included in case you tuned out last episode, because his plot line is boring. Emma is thrilled for him, but the mood soon turns sour when Schue gets very assumptive about Emma coming with him. When she objects, reminding him of her own job, he points out her tenured position, but she clarifies – she isn’t worried about losing her job, she wants to keep doing her job and not sit alone in a motel room all day while Will blue ribbons or panels or whatever he’s going to be doing. Will doesn’t think what he’s asking is particularly crazy. “So you thought I’d just pop the champagne, follow you around like an obedient little puppy dog?” Yes, Emma. Yes, he did.
At Vogue, Kurt has received another huge bunch of flowers, accompanied by a note begging for forgiveness and a drawing of Blaine literally in a doghouse. He reads it and sighs as a kind male co-worker comments on the flowers, saying someone’s either got a crush or trying to make up for something. When Kurt says it’s the latter, the co-worker offers sympathy and offers to cover for Kurt if he needs to go “binge-shopping.” Kurt gathers his resolve and says no, he’ll be okay. He drops Blaine’s note into the trash.
Santana brings Brittany to the choir room to talk. “Sophomore year, I used to sit in this back row and secretly watch you. I counted the number of times you’d smile at me, and I’d die on days that you didn’t.” Alright, tears kicking in now, thinking about that crazy ball of anger that was this girl in season 1, secretly dealing with all of this. Santana goes on to say how much she misses the place, how it’s where she and Brittany fell in love. She needs to tell Brittany something she doesn’t know how to say. All of her statements have such a weird cadence to them that it sounds like she’s reciting a poem – so much so that I looked the text up to see if she was reciting the intro to a song or something. But no, just a bit of odd, rhythmic delivery. Anyway, she sits Brittany down and sings Taylor Swift’s “Mine,” and apparently I now understand the appeal of Taylor Swift, you just need to turn her into a crying Naya Rivera. Brittany weeps at the end, saying that it had made her sad and she doesn’t want to be sad. Santana matter-of-factly tells Brittany that she hasn’t been a good girlfriend and that she doesn’t want to be like other long distance couples where things get weird and they break up. Both girls swear they would never cheat on each other, but Santana admits that she had noticed another girl noticing her, and enjoyed the ‘energy exchange.’ She says the same may happen to Brittany, and that’s okay, but she implores Brittany to do the mature thing with her and admit that long distance relationships are almost impossible to maintain, because both people are rarely getting what they need. She says it’s not an official break-up, but Brittany says it feels a lot like one. “You know I will always love you the most,” Santana tells her, and my face crumples much like Brittany’s does. This is horrible, this is just horrible, and I know they’re doing it to make room for a Brittany/Sam thing – the worst possible pairing in the history of the show. Glee, I hate you.
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.