This week’s Glee, which aired on Thanksgiving, is not the show’s actual Thanksgiving episode. No, that’s next week, because it’s Glee. If you are concerned about erratic air dates, this is not the show for you. In this episode, “Dynamic Duets,” it’s Finn’s first day on the job as a superhero craze sweeps McKinley, the Jake/Marley/Ryder love triangle gets more annoyingly triangular, and Blaine receives a tempting offer wrapped in navy and red. Read our full recap below:

The Secret Society of Superheroes convenes in an abandoned classroom. Their leader: Blaine Anderson. His super-power: hiding control-freak tendencies within a tensely pleasant exterior. Actually, Nightbird, the Nocturnal Avenger, would have had me excommunicated for revealing his civilian identity just then. As the club inducts new members – Brittany “Human Brain” Pierce, Becky “Queen Bee” Jackson, and Artie “I really hope you’re not trying to pass yourself off as a certain telepathic leader of a certain group of superhuman mutants because that would be a copyright violation.” “Er, I’m… Doctor Y?” Abrams – they’re interrupted by Histrionic Freshman Dottie “Chai Tea” Kazatori, who sounds the alarm. After some dramatic shots of our heroes running down hallways and twirling capes, they discover that New Directions’ Nationals trophy has been stolen. On the laptop left in its place, a video of a mysterious figure with face blurred and voice distorted plays. He’s wearing a very familiar blazer – a member of the Dalton Academy Warblers. Nightbird narrows his eyes.

The new kids are too cool to play at superheroes – well, Jake’s too cool, Marley thinks she’s too fat. Since neither of them have to stop the Joker from poisoning Lima’s water supply this Friday, he tries to ask her out. She squirms awkwardly as Ryder struts up to announce that Marley has plans – he’s asked her to come to an away game with him. Jake and Ryder hurl insults at each other, and when Ryder challenges Jake’s badassery, things get physical. Marley stands there ineffectually chirping “Oh guys. Stop!” as they start hitting each other right in her face. Finn catches them and pulls them apart, exuding authority in his new sweater-vest.

Finn’s teacherly confidence fades fast when he tries to start his first glee rehearsal. The kids – especially the ones who started glee with him – don’t respect him as their teacher, he can’t operate the whiteboard, and his Sectionals idea sucks. Nightbird, Nocturnal Perfectionist, cannot handle Finn’s lack of professionalism and he swoops out, off to go rescue their trophy from Dalton. “The one you haven’t even noticed is missing?” he snarks at Finn, mouth all soft and sneery the way it always does when Blaine is at his most condescending and bitchy. “Oh, crap,” Finn exclaims, registering the space where their trophy used to be.

Finn asks his old friend Coach Beiste for some teaching advice. She’s dressed in superhero garb, too – “I’m the Beiste-Master. I’m from the planet Testoestrogen.” Why? “Blaine said I couldn’t be faculty advisor unless I dressed up once a week.” I cannot even, with that statement, I’m dead from the adorableness of Blaine being so persistently anal-retentive and Beiste wanting to be their advisor enough to go along with him. Finn finds McKinley’s new cosplay craze bizarre, and Beiste explains the appeal – that it gives people the same freedom and escape as being on stage.

They address Finn’s problem – that the glee club doesn’t see him as an adult. “Ugh, God, is that what coffee tastes like? How do people drink people drink that?” he splutters, dribbling into his cup in the teacher’s lounge. Coach Beiste suggests that he get in on the costume craze, and use a superhero identity to inspire the group.

Blaine – for the first time in so very long – walks down the mirrored spiral staircase at Dalton. A hundred thousand Warbler fangirls immediately burst into tears. Lingering at the foot of the stairs is everyone’s favorite smarmy meerkat-faced teen gay, Sebastian Smythe. “Of course it was you,” Blaine sighs. “No, it wasn’t,” Sebastian smiles like a ray of sunshine, and reminds Blaine that he’s changed for the better. “That must be boring for you,” Blaine says dryly. “Yeah, it is. Being nice sucks.” I think I might actually finally ship these two, because this was hysterical. They stride through the beautiful halls together as Sebastian sedately tells Blaine that the person he’s there to see – the captain of the Warblers – awaits him. “I thought you were the captain of the Warblers?” asks Blaine, confused. “I thought the Warblers had an elected council, a group of three upperclassmen voted to lead the group?” asks everyone who saw season 2, confused.

Hunter Clarington is the new head Warbler, and he was such a brilliant glee captain at his old military academy that Dalton poached him from them on a full scholarship. He’s “not even remotely bi-curious” and is identifiable as a bad guy because he has a Bond villain cat. The trophy-theft, it seems, was a ruse to get Blaine back on Dalton grounds. Hunter’s heard about the legend that was Blaine Anderson, and since he is determined to lead the Warblers to victory, he attempts to lure Blaine back to his old school. “Why would I ever leave McKinley?” Blaine asks. “Why would you stay?” Hunter replies, which is a valid point, and he goes on to make some more extremely valid points about Blaine’s transfer. “In fact, I hear they even call you ‘Blaine Warbler.’ They know you don’t belong there, so why don’t you?” This is so over-dramatically done, a classic cheesy face-off, but oh, my feels, because it’s true, it’s so very true.

The other Warblers file in as Sebastian claims that they know the real Blaine, that he’s ambitious, driven – a Dalton boy. They present him with a new blazer. “That’s not going to work on me,” he tells them, and Hunter says, if that’s the case, he shouldn’t be afraid to try it on. Blaine does, the fireplace explodes in flames, the cat screeches, and yet another hundred thousand fangirls burst into tears seeing Blaine clad in uniform again, that face above the sharp line of the shoulders of the jacket.

Hunter takes him on a little walk-and-talk, and taps into some of Blaine’s current insecurities about New Directions – that their last Nationals win was a fluke, and that the Warblers will beat them at Sectionals. Hunter doesn’t want to see a Dalton legend like Blaine sidelined in his senior year. The Warbers want him back with them, back on the winning side. Blaine remains impassive, but Sebastian was right – he is driven, in such a structured way, and that’s exactly why he’s so frustrated with Finn. As Blaine mulls this over, Sebastian quips – and I swear this is word for word – “Hey, you know what goes great with a new Dalton blazer? An impromptu song.”

Blaine tries to brush them off, but as they start up their a capella harmonies, he gets caught up and starts to sing. The song is Kelly Clarkson’s “Dark Side,” and as he crosses his arms, looking at his old friends with a nervous smile, you can tell that he’s forgotten what it feels like to be so accepted and encouraged. At McKinley, he’s idolised and used, in the harshest sense of the word, for his talent, yet ridiculed or dismissed for his personality – they treat him as something both more and less than human. Hunter’s motives may be ambitious, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is one of them. The lyrics of the song are very telling, and when he finally gets excited and buttons the blazer hurriedly, I cry. When he jumps on a table, I cry. I pause the TV and I cry and cry.

I miss this so much – not just Warblers numbers, but Blaine’s personality – all his confidence, traditionalism, and silliness. Everything about him that works for Dalton makes life difficult for him at McKinley, and the result is an uptight, depressed young man who fakes polite until his fuse blows. His transfer to McKinley never made sense, for the character. I still do not believe, to this day, that this was a smart move, either plot-wise or business-wise. Glee‘s ratings have never been on such a consistent high as they were during mid season 2.

I am not saying the show should focus on Dalton as an A-plot, because Glee tends to ruin things by over-kill, but I think that the Warblers, including Blaine and his story, would have been more powerful as a treat to pull out every few episodes. The transfer was stupid. Blaine being at McKinley is stupid. And this performance reminded me, once again, of all of that. Blaine looks and feels right here, down to the way he holds himself. This is who this character is, and who he should have always stayed. They finish the number and Blaine hands back the blazer, but Hunter instructs him to keep it, and think about it.

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.”

Kitty and Marley try on their costumes in the girls bathroom. Kitty is confident in her black latex “Femme Fatale” bodysuit, and when Marley comes out in her gold and floral Wonder Woman-esque outfit, Kitty peels back Marley’s arms from hiding her body and declares her to look “H-O-T-T” hot. When Marley explains the WF logo is meant to stand for Wallflower, because that’s what she sees herself as, Kitty renames her Woman Fierce, says that she will be buying Marley a new wardrobe to show off her body, and that together they’re going to kill their heroine performance. This would be a really touching girl power moment if it didn’t come with a side-serving of encouraged bulimia. They perform Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero” with more lesbian sexual tension than anything in the entire Brittana plot line. Kitty’s got a whip, Kitty’s wrapping Marley up in her whip, and Kitty’s using her whip as a rotating fan to create a wind machine effect on Marley’s hair.

I kept expecting there to be some big practical joke moment, like for Kitty to shame Marley in some way, because of the set-up earlier in the episode, but nope. Everyone cheers for them, Finn praises them, and they hug genuinely. After the performance, Brittany points out that she can’t smell raspberry hair gel (Raspberry. Hair. Gel.) – “Does anybody know where Blaine Warbler is?” Finn reminds them that Blaine has been going through a rough time – Tina rolls her eyes and calls Blaine’s behaviour “like a bad Lifetime movie,” which is harsh but fair – and that he’s decided to finish his senior year at Dalton Academy. The rest of the seniors stare incredulously at Finn, except Sam, who looks troubled.

After Jake pulls Finn aside to discuss what Ryder revealed to him in the locker room, Finn takes Ryder to a meeting he’s set up with the district’s special education director. Ryder looks confused by the situation, and becomes defiant about needing any help. The teacher, Mrs. Penkala, is kind to Ryder and has him participate in various tests in regards to the way he reads and learns. Ryder doesn’t seem to be able to process individual letters, only recognising words he already knows as entire images, and is diagnosed with dyslexia.

I’m going to take a second to point out that in his very first episode, Sam was stated as being dyslexic and the plot line went absolutely nowhere except to make him act kind of dumb and vague. I’m also going to point out that apparently Schuester never thought to help Brittany – with her 0.0 grade point average – in the same way that Finn is helping Ryder. Discrepancies aside, this is handled very nicely, and when Finn meets Ryder after his testing, Ryder weeps angrily about having carried this secret his whole life – people telling him he needed to apply himself or focus, when he believed inside that he was truly not intelligent, that no matter how hard he tried he would always be stupid. He’d tried to hide that “inner truth” from the world, fearing his secret “stupidity” since childhood. “Now you can put it down,” Finn tells him. “’Cause the only secret is that your brain works a little differently than everyone else’s.” Ryder smiles through his tears as he explains the new education program he will be working within, and thanks Finn for helping him. “I owe you,” he says, and Finn says no, actually, he owes Jake for this one.

The man in question is getting his lunch from Mrs. Rose, charming her as she talks about her recent weight loss. She tells Jake that Marley talks about him all the time, and he admits that he knows he’s blown his chance. She gives him a wink and tells him it’s never too late to change, and the two jocks who harassed her before start insulting both her and Jake while ordering her to get back to work.

Jake is about to take them on again when they’re joined by about five others who surround him. Ryder – with the back-up of Artie, Joe and Becky – enters the cafeteria and makes his fellow football players back off, ordering them not to go near Jake again. The two Mega-Studs announce their got-each-others-backitude, and a beautiful bromance is born.

We then cut to a shot of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and for a second I legitimately thought we’d gone to commercial, but I am soon thrilled to realise that it’s actually an on-location shot of Puck’s life in LA, where he’s earning some extra cash as a costume character on Hollywood Boulevard. After offering to prostitute himself to a couple of European tourists, he gets a call from his “half-bro with the afro,” who’s needing some brotherly advice. Jake asks Puck what to do about pursuing Marley now that he and Ryder are BFFs. Jake’s “what do you do when” explanation is so similar to the Finn/Quinn/Puck storyline that I thought Puck’s answer was going to be “well, I slept with her and got her pregnant,” but Puck advises his little brother that he has the advantage simply by having Puckerman DNA, and that if he sits back and plays nice, Marley will come to him. “Don’t be a dick…” Puck advises, “But don’t give up. Thanks, bro.” Jake clarifies, and ends the call.

A) Puck may still be my favorite character on the show – he’s certainly the one with the best and most consistent character development, and B) this “Puckerman brothers” storyline is actually turning out a lot better than I thought it would when we first got the spoilers of New Puck over the summer.

Blaine Warbler is on his way to becoming Actual Blaine Warbler again, and Sam accosts him as he clears out his locker. He thinks Blaine is exiling himself to Dalton to further punish himself for cheating on Kurt. Sam, I love you, but shut up. Who in their right mind would consider leaving McKinley a punishment? Anyway, they go on to talk about what actually happened when Blaine cheated, and we get a flashback of Blaine pulling his shirt back on, looking distraught as his hook-up guy, Eli, comes back into the room. Blaine claims that it all happened because he felt like Kurt was moving on with his life without Blaine, and it made him think that maybe he and Kurt weren’t meant to spend the rest of their lives with each other – but that as soon as he did the deed, he realized that they were, and he’d just potentially ruined that.

Sam tells Blaine that he must tell Kurt that, and Blaine starts to lose control, getting upset about how Kurt will never trust him or forgive him. Sam does say something that I love him for, which is that even if Kurt doesn’t forgive Blaine, Blaine has to forgive himself, but I’m not speaking to Sam at the moment because, after begging Blaine to stay one more day in order to convince him not to leave, and to prove that people don’t think he’s a bad person, Blaine agrees to stay at McKinley and I hate life. It would make perfect, utter sense for him to transfer back, not as a punishment but as a sensible choice that made sense for the character.

I’m still too bitter to appreciate that the montage of Sam convincing Blaine to stay takes place while the pair sing David Bowie’s “Heroes.” If I was in a better mood I’d point out that it’s the first time Glee has touched Bowie, and if it hadn’t been given to one or both of my boys I’d have set fire to Paramount Studios. I’d point out that the song was written by Brian Eno, and create meta about it being a nod to Blaine’s Roxy Music fanboyism. I’d talk about how cute the club is when painting over the graffiti wall together and end up painting each other.

I’d talk about how much I genuinely do love Sam and Blaine’s friendship, how I think they deserve one another, and how, if I wasn’t so annoyed, I would die a little inside and them shoving each other’s faces at the end of the song. But no. I had a dream in my heart, Sam Evans, a dream of a content Blaine Warbler, and you killed it. I sincerely hope you work VERY hard to make him happy, now. Hey, does anyone remember that for about five minutes in season 2, when Sam told Quinn he used to go to an all-boys boarding school, how fandom made this epic conclusion that Sam had been at Dalton and that he and Blaine were roommates there? Remember that? That would have been awesome.

Anyway, Sam and Blaine go on a secret mission together to steal back their trophy from the Warblers, breaking into the security cabinet and leaving Blaine’s blazer in its place, with a note attached saying “no thanks.” Ergh. The be-masked Nightbird and Blond Chameleon run across the Dalton lawn, and as they leap into the air, we get comic-book pop-art freeze frames exclaiming “Blam!” “Slaine!” I will begrudgingly admit that I am glad that Blaine has one real actual friend, but I wish the idea of returning to Dalton hadn’t been painted as such a villainous one in this superhero-themed episode, because if this had been done as a legitimate plot line it just would have made sense for Blaine.

It would have made sense at the start of the season, too, after spending season 3 at McKinley making friends with no one and following Kurt around. But no. Darren Criss is Glee‘s hottest property, so they were never, ever going to allow his role to recede, even when it made the most sense for the character. They have no problem letting Schuester’s role recede, and this is the second episode this season not to feature Kurt and Rachel in New York – but Blaine and his misery must stay front and center, so the Warblers must become villains and not a viable option. Sigh.

Back at McKinley, Ryder has to cancel his date with Marley, due to a 7 a.m. appointment with the best dyslexia specialist in Ohio the morning after his football game. Marley says “oh of course, I totally understand, this is really important, thank you for telling me,” PSYCH! No she doesn’t, she whines and wheedles that she’d really been looking forward to it, even after he explains his reasoning, though she accepts his offer to reschedule to next Friday. Then, after Kitty convinces her that Ryder probably isn’t that into her, she goes and asks Jake out for this Friday. Kitty stares in horror – this clearly wasn’t what she planned, she just wanted to make Marley a bit more paranoid about her body.

Sam and Blaine present the trophy back to Finn and the club, Blaine says some sickening lies about how McKinley and New Directions were truly his home, and how Finn’s a great leader – well, that’s not a too much of a lie, he’s doing better than Will – and the club presents Finn with a supply kit to help him out with basic teacher equipment. You know, markers, antacid, a severed doll’s head. Normal stuff. They do a group huddle – everyone except Unique, apparently they didn’t feel like paying Alex Newell this week. Unique was not in this episode at all. Remember in season 1 when they used to make actual excuses for when a student was absent, and it became part of the plot? Anyway, they all cheer each other on, finally a united team, and perform “Some Nights” by fun. on the auditorium stage. It’s been a while since we had an episode close with a big, traditional group number performed in the good old jeans and matching coloured t-shirts. Everybody gets a solo line, and the shirts are red. It’s so season 1 that it hurts. We finally have our cohesive New Directions 2.0.