Back in the choir room, Finn is trying to teach again. “I get it. My first idea was pretty bad.” “Worse than Funk,” Tina states. “Worse than ‘A Night of Neglect,’” Artie agrees, and Glee, I do love your lamp-shading but one day we will have to address the fact that pointing out your flaws as a joke doesn’t actually redeem you for them. He’s created a superhero identity for himself – the almighty Treble Clef, Uniter of Glee Clubs, and his new theme is Dynamic Duets: hero-themed performances. He explains the concept of The Avengers to the group, in case any of them missed the biggest movie of all time, and says that New Directions need to work to become a team.
He assigns those of the club with “mortal enemies in this very room” – Kitty and Marley, and Jake and Ryder – to work out their differences by doing duets together. Ryder and Kitty are in the glee club now, because of Grease or convenience or something. “The rest of you will start preparing to fight an epic battle against the forces of evil at Sectionals.” The club mostly approves of this plan. After the lesson, Kitty presents Marley with the sheet music for their number, dismissing Marley’s objections to the idea of picking the song together or talking about costumes. Meanwhile, Jake and Ryder once again state how much they hate each other, and when they argue over who gets to claim the alter-ego “Mega-Stud,” they begin their performance of REM’s “Superman” for the club.
It sounds pretty good, but the performance is questionable – they aggressively circle and posture in front of Marley while stripping off from Clark Kent-ish suits and hats to their mirror-image colored Mega-Stud costumes. Marley, instead of telling both of them to stick their peacocking somewhere the sun don’t shine, smiles and bats her eyes at both boys.
Finn and Artie watch the performance critically, and are a little thrown by the Mega-Stud identity – “Isn’t MS a degenerative disease?” “I thought it was a girl’s magazine.” When Jake pulls a coy, giggling and blushing Joey Potter – I mean Bella Swan – I mean Marley Rose – to her feet and puts his arm around her in the song, Ryder pushes him out of the way. Jake punches him, and the performance comes to abrupt end when the boys start beating each other up on the floor. Once again, they seem more concerned with getting up on each other than how this whole thing affects Marley. Finn and Sam drag them apart. Marley just stands there, throwing her hands out, eyes wide. Marley, I liked you, that is rapidly fading. Grow a spine, and either pick one dude and tell the other to back off, or tell them both to back off. Their behaviour is bad, but yours is not much better.
Finn gives the boys a telling-off. I’m actually pretty impressed with how he handles them. As they sit there and sulk, he’s got the right mix of adult authority and the “dude, no” of a peer. The guys start to bicker again about what Marley wants or deserves – not that they’ve asked her what she wants – and Finn cuts them off. Since they didn’t take anything from his last assignment, he gives them a new one.
“Will it also be lame?” Jake challenges. “Ignoring you,” Finn dismisses with a superior grimace, and the delivery of those two words is one of Cory Monteith’s finest moments in four seasons, it’s that good. The task he sets them is a Kryptonite lesson – to get together and tell each other their inner fears, as “only by admitting your weaknesses can you realise your strengths.” “You sound like Yoda, dude.” Ryder sighs. “Deal do we have?” Finn shoots back sardonically, and I kind of love him. He’s a way better Schuester than actual Schuester.
The next day, Blaine cautiously approaches Finn – who’s arranging poseable dolls with the club’s faces stuck on the – and admits that when he went back to Dalton, he felt at home and that it may be best for everyone – for himself and for New Directions – if he returned there. Finn, clearly panicked that he will lose his star, tells him that he belongs there, in New Directions. I bet, if pressed, he couldn’t give a coherent reason for it. When Finn asks if this decision has to do with Kurt, Blaine snaps, exclaiming that everything there reminds him of Kurt, that Kurt was his anchor and without him, Blaine’s floating. “You need a team that’s gonna gel,” he tells Finn. “Yes, absolutely, we need a team with a lot of gel, and you’re like, the biggest part of that,” Finn offers, well-meaning, but Blaine seems to have made his mind up about going back to Dalton.
Marley tells Kitty that she cannot do their assigned duet, due to her body image issues and wearing the Lycra costume. Kitty asks if Marley is still making herself throw up, and Marley admits that she’s done it every day this week. Kitty encourages her to keep it up and that, when they try on their costumes, Kitty will tell Marley honestly how she looks. They hug as Kitty shoots an evil glare down at the camera, but I am still really unsure as to what Kitty gains by causing another girl to develop an eating disorder. Maybe she just thinks it’s funny.
In the locker room, Sam Evans – the Blond Chameleon, whose superpower is impersonating anyone – is doing an impression of the Batman villain Bane by slinging a jockstrap over his face as a mask. He does this while not wearing a shirt. It’s the clear highlight of the episode.
He wanders off, and Jake wanders on, slipping Ryder a note. It reads: Sorry I punched you, I just wanted to touch your bod. Do you like me? Check yes or no. No, unfortunately it does not say that, it’s Jake’s Kryptonite. Ryder unfolds it, stares at it, and then tells Jake to be a man and talk to him about it face to face, so Jake does. He is insecure in his ethnicity, being half black and half white, as well as half-Jewish. He never fits in and has been actively mocked or ostracised by members of all three communities because of it. We see some flashbacks of this happening in a way I find difficult to believe is realistic in 2012, but it seems to hit Jake pretty hard. When he finishes, he asks Ryder what his Kryptonite is, and Ryder tells him to forget it, calling the whole exercise stupid, and walking away from Jake. This doesn’t seem fair, and Jake calls him out on it, quoting Ryder’s own words about being a man back at him. Ryder, tense and bracing himself on his locker, grits out “I made you tell me what your note said because I couldn’t read it.”
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