This week on Glee, we saw a ton of nipples, a ton of feelings, and an unusually disproportionate amount of throwbacks to past episodes. Also, our favourite ladies are back. You can read a full recap of Glee‘s “Naked” below.

Our favourite anchors down at WOHN report that that New Directions are back in the show choir competition circuit after court-administered blood tests proved that Hunter Clarington and the Warblers had used steroids. As the camera stops rolling, at around the same moment I am about to yell, “Seriously? This is on the news?!” Sue’s old rival Andrea shrieks “I can’t believe it. This is what they think news is, now?” as she rips out her microphone and hysterically departs the station. Rod Remington remains unfazed, awaiting his younger, hotter co-anchor. Over at McKinley, the glee club members are back in the choir room, applauding themselves and especially praising dream-team Sam and Blaine for their sleuthing. Finn quickly reminds the club that they’re three weeks behind in preparation, and also that they need to raise $400 to pay for their transport to Regionals. When he suggests a bake sale to raise money, the department of backstory reminds him that this only worked last time because Puck put weed in the cupcakes. “I could sell more of my semen,” Sam offers determinedly, and the implications of that stand-alone sentence sure are something.

Tina quickly comes up with a new way to creep on Blaine under the pretense of it being for the greater good, and suggests that the glee guys do a Men of McKinley calender to sell. She makes sure to point out how she thinks Blaine should dress, and stares at him like he’s a slice of pie. Artie, when he realises that he’s one of the six guys expected to pose, looks a little nervous and asks why the girls can’t be involved and objectified as well, and Kitty gives a pretty reasonable answer – which is that teen girls are the demographic that buys the most, so pandering to them is going to be the most lucrative option. “This could actually work,” ponders Finn, impressed, and puts Tina in charge of setting up the project.

It seems that this week is the week for Glee to roll out a few old staples that we haven’t seen for a while – WOHN, continuity, and now, Fondue For Two. Brittany grabs Marley after glee rehearsal and brings her on the show. It’s as absurd as can be expected, really, with Brittany callously or thoughtlessly referencing Marley’s bulimia, and plenty of Lord Tubbington. But when Brittany tries to get Marley to admit to being in love with Jake, Marley chokes on a bit of bread and gets all startled rabbit. Brittany chides her, saying that if Jake is willing to take off his clothes for the good of the glee club, then Marley should get naked too – emotionally – and be willing to bare all, telling him how she really feels. They’ve been dating for one week. But okay.

The next day, Brittany and Sam – or “sexy teen imbeciles” as Figgins calls them – are told by the principal that they have achieved both the highest (Brittany) and lowest (Sam) SAT scores that the school has ever seen. Brittany’s seems to have been achieved by a random system of colouring in the multiple choice; however, Sam’s score, Figgins tells him, is one that is routinely bested by monkeys in clinical trials. Sam looks disheartened. I feel disheartened, because I hate this Sam-is-dumb storyline. It came out of nowhere, seemingly just so they could pair him up with Brittany. In his first ever episode, he mentioned being dyslexic and having to work at his grades, and that storyline disappeared and re-appeared with Ryder, and now Sam is the “dumb kid”? I really hate it. I forgive Glee for a lot of its errors or back-pedalling – I may snark about it, but I do forgive it – but the dumbing-down of Sammy Evans is not one I am willing to let go of, especially when the show has gone out of its way to include another, beautifully done and sensitive story about dyslexia. Brittany tries to reassure him by telling him how great his body is, and how it means he won’t need to go to college. Sam looks thrilled at this prospect, just thrilled.

At NYADA, Rachel successfully lands a part in a student film, the senior thesis of an older student. It sounds like a load of complete hipster wank, but Rachel is impressed and a little awed by the student director. When the girl mentions that in a certain scene, Rachel will need to go topless, Rachel keeps it together externally but becomes nervous. She takes a moment to talk to herself, assuring herself that she’s strong and confidant enough to do this. “I’m the one who asked Brody to move in. I’m the one who almost made it out of Agent Provocateur without giggling.” “You also made it out, but you didn’t,” says another, identical voice and Rachel turns, startled, to find the old version of herself – straight parted hair, prim skirt and blouse, loafers and knee socks.

The Old Rachel hallucination follows Rachel around the school, playing the part of one extreme of her conscience, trying to talk her current self out of doing the nude scene. She tells New Rachel that she could use a little shame, saying that her current hair and make-up looks like a porn star. Because they’re Rachel, they soon decide that the only way to resolve the issue is to sing about it, so Rachel sings a duet with herself to “Torn,” which has nothing to do with the situation at hand whatsoever, except that it includes the word “torn” and the word “naked,” I guess. As the song ends and her old and new self consider each other, weigh up, the film’s director corners Rachel and asks for her answer – and Rachel accepts the part in the film.

The Tina loves Blaine loves Sam saga unfortunately continues when Tina begs Blaine to come clothes shopping with her after school. Every word she says to him is riddled with coyness and intensity, but he naturally accepts her innocent offer. A moment later, though, his jaw is on the floor as Sam enters the school wearing nothing but some board shorts, Ugg boots and sunglasses – in January. “Oh, sweet merciful Lord,” Blaine mutters, but composes himself, switching off his crush and approaching his friend, asking what the hell Sam thinks he’s doing. Blaine asks if Sam might be overcompensating a little, and tries to comfort him about his SAT scores, reminding him that he could take the test.

Sam, who is definitely overcompensating and is somewhat manic and wild-eyed once he removes the glasses, stutters out that if Blaine is jealous of Sam’s perfect form, then that’s Blaine’s problem. “For the record, Blaine has an awesome body and a perky and delicious behind that looks like it got baked to perfection by some sort of master chef,” Tina informs Sam, who looks incredibly disturbed by this description, as does Blaine himself. I think it’s best that we all move on as quickly as possible from that one. Sam says that if Blaine’s not speaking out of jealousy, that he should come along to the seminar he’s hosting in order to teach the other guys how to make the most of their bodies in preparation for the calendar. “Modern Centrefold: techniques that work for today’s hot young posers. Three-thirty, locker room, no chicks.” Tina and Blaine both look at Sam like he’s gone a little crazy as he pushes through them and struts off, but Tina, I am pretty sure your shopping date has just been cancelled.

At Sam’s seminar, he leads the guys through some fitness and appearance pointers, calling upon his past experience as a stripper. Artie is uncomfortable as he watches the other boys doing broga (yoga for bros) and learning how to man-scape. Sam dismisses his concern and the session breaks into the “Hot In Herre/Centrefold” mash-up. The guys strut through the locker room, and are joined by admiring Cheerios, who provide the song’s breathy oohs and ahhs, and help spray the boys with fake tan (the best moment here is Jake, with his mixed-race colouring, shaking his head in a “what the hell are you doing?” manner to the Cheerio that approaches him with the tanning spray). The performance switches to the choir room, where the Cheerios – acting as human barbells and other gym equipment – help the guys work out in front of the rest of the glee club, and then over a montage of Sam monitoring the fitness and weight of the rest of the boys, and finally pushing himself to keep working out even when the others depart. New Directions, apart from Artie, are very impressed with the classroom performance, and are hopeful about making lots of money off of their boys’ bodies.

One person who’s not too excited is Sue Sylvester. Looking to undermine Finn at every turn, she’s out to take him down for the “under-age pornography” that she claims he is producing, but he calmly walks away from her, unbothered. He calls her a hypocrite, reminding her of the rumours that she herself posed for Penthouse. Based on Sue’s reaction, it’s clearly true – I don’t really want to repeat the her ‘hypothetical’ description of her centrefold – but when Finn smirks and threatens to dig up the Penthouse and sell copies of that for his fund-raiser instead, she seems confident that he won’t be able to find it. It may be bravado, however, as she looks troubled as he leaves.

In the Bushwick apartment, Kurt is startled and disgusted when his new roommate Brody comes out of Rachel’s bedroom and plants his buck-naked ass down at the dining table. Brody tells Kurt that he’s trying to show Rachel that he supports her, and Rachel tells Kurt about the student film and the topless scene. Kurt is horrified, and both young men express some pretty extreme and ridiculous viewpoints about the issue at hand. Kurt claims that serious actresses don’t do nudity, and Brody states that if a woman wants to win an Oscar, she has to show her boobs. Kurt mourns the loss of Old Rachel, and her plaid skirts and insecurity, going as far as to call her “Slutty Barbie,” which is a bit rich when you consider that Kurt was the one to give her the New York Makeover in the first place.

Marley, attempting to take Brittany’s advice, calls Jake to the auditorium to “practice songs for Regionals.” She asks him to sing “A Thousand Years” with her and they sing about being in love, really intensely, into each other’s faces. They kiss, and Jake can tell Marley wants to say something… but she wimps out halfway through and runs away. “I love… this song but it’s not right for Regionals!” Meanwhile, Finn asks Artie to track down Sue’s Penthouse shoot, and after Artie agrees, he goes on to tell Finn about his insecurity in regards to participating in the calendar. At first, Finn tries to encourage him, but when Artie explains further, he advises his friend not to take part if he doesn’t want to, and calls him brave for being honest in regards to his feelings on the matter.

Jake and Ryder are very heterosexually showing off their bodies to one another when Tina and Kitty invade the boys’ locker room to let the pair know what their calendar months will be. Kitty gets all up on Jake when telling him about his Halloween theme, and when the girls leave, Ryder tells his friend that he thought Kitty was going to jump Jake right there. Jake admits that since dating Marley, he does not even register other girls, and he then apologises for bringing up his relationship with Marley to Ryder, who is still a little sore about Marley dating him and then dumping him for Jake. Ryder says that he can tell it’s the real deal for Jake, and Jake tells Ryder about singing “A Thousand Years,” how he’d thought Marley was going to say “I love you” and how he would have said it back. Ryder advises Jake that he has to “get naked emotionally” and tell Marley how he feels. Jake performs a slow rendition of “Let Me Love You” in glee rehearsal, dedicating the song to her. Marley gets tears, but when Ryder again encourages Jake to actually say words, not sing them, Jake is attacked with nerves and claims the song speaks for itself.

“Kurt, the hipster from downstairs with the curlicue moustache wants to borrow your Russian hat,” Rachel calls out as she wrenches the door to the Bushwick apartment open. Instead of Kurt, she finds Quinn and Santana, who have been called up to New York by Kurt to give Rachel a nudity intervention. After the pair snark at each other, they get down to business helping Rachel out, both girls offering advice that’s a little more reasonable than Kurt and Brody’s. Quinn asks Rachel to consider the 2-2-2 rule: how will Rachel feel about this in two weeks, two months, two years? Santana shows Rachel the utter permanence of the situation, citing her own experience with her sex tape being leaked online. Rachel claims that some women find it empowering to be naked on film. “Yes,” Santana admits, “but not in a student film that is probably about someone’s grandma with Alzheimer’s.” Given that this is literally the exact subject of the film Rachel is partaking in, Rachel glares at her. Quinn gently explains that they care about her and begs her not to do the film, but Rachel still looks determined.

At McKinley, it’s time for the big photo shoot and we see Tina directing the various months – Blaine as January, popping some champagne, Ryder as Uncle Sam for July, and when Sam jumps in to do August, Tina tries to include Blaine in Sam’s pictures as well, because he’s “looking particularly cute today.” Tina is creepily unsubtle. When Joe offers to be involved in the group shot as well, Sam shoots him down, dismissing the other boy’s body compared to his own, and goes on to say that the whole calendar should have been just him. Artie snarks at him about his arrogance, but Sam doesn’t hear it – he rushes off the photo shoot set because his muscles lost the necessary “pump” for the shot, and he feels the need to do a few more repetitions.

Blaine looks quite worried and follows him. He finds Sam lifting weights and talking to himself, and calls him out about his behaviour, saying this isn’t who Sam is. Sam, upset, says that Blaine doesn’t understand – that he’s such a talented all-rounder that he doesn’t understand what it’s like for Sam, to only be noticed and valued for his looks and body. He claims that people only laugh at his impressions because they’re already hooked by his looks. Blaine looks at his friend and crush sadly, asking if Sam really believes that, and Sam sits, defeated, saying “If you want to make it in this world, you have to be special.” Blaine tells Sam that he is special, even without his body, but Sam doesn’t believe him, breaking down about how hard he works on himself. Blaine, all kindness, tells him to let it go a little – to eat a burger now and then, to skip one of his twice-daily workouts, to stop being so strict and manic, because everyone is still going to love him. Blaine then sets Sam up in a meeting with Emma, who provides him with information about colleges who accept candidates based on things other than SAT scores, and Blaine and Emma together encourage him to apply for some of these schools, and for some scholarships as well.

Finn, full of sass, slaps a sealed envelope down on the table in the teachers lounge, telling Sue that the Penthouse hadn’t been too hard to find. Impressed and seemingly accepting, she tells Finn that she’s not ashamed of her past and opens the envelope to check out her old photo shoot. Instead, she finds a copy of the Highlights children’s magazine. “You idiot,” she tells Finn, “why would you let me open that?” However, Finn is one step ahead of her, and was recording the conversation on his phone. So, coerced with false evidence or not, he has Sue’s confession about doing the Penthouse shoot in the first place, and with this, it seems that she’s forced into leaving the glee club’s calendar alone. “Checkmate.”

Despite Kurt’s outright slut-shaming and Quinn and Santana’s more reasonable approach, Rachel has stuck with the film project, and is on set filming what looks to be a truly terrible piece of art. Electra, the hipster director, is guiding Rachel through the scene in which she will go topless, but Rachel is suddenly unable to go through with it. She explains her anxiety about all the people around, and asks, in a way that’s actually not that diva-ish and seems kind of reasonable, if the crew could get naked too so that she can feel more normal and less spotlighted. The director is frustrated, but the crew agrees like it’s no big thing, and they all take their shirts off.

Rachel begins shooting the scene again, but is once again unable to follow through when Electra tells her to get naked. Rachel apologises, saying that she has total respect for the project but that she herself is not ready to go naked on film. “I think it’s okay for actresses to be naked and maybe someday I’ll be ready but I just realised that I’m not ready to be naked now.” Electra throws Rachel off the set and Rachel blinks in a little way that kind of acknowledges that she’s realised how ridiculous the project was and how confident she felt in her decision, as the naked piano player begins to play Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song,” which Rachel sings to herself while walking through NYADA’s halls in her bathrobe, before joining Quinn and Santana in one of NYADA’s small auditoriums and finishing the song as a gorgeous trio. Rachel squeals and hugs the girls, begging them to stay in New York a little longer, and Santana drops some heavy foreshadowing as she says that she’s in no rush to get back to her college in Kentucky, and that NYC is more her speed.

Blaine finds Sam struggling with the personal essay for his college scholarship, because, as previously stated, Sam thinks that there is nothing of value to himself besides impressing people with his abs. Blaine seemed to know something like this may happen, as he’s compiled a bit of a gift for Sam – he’s gone around and spoken to glee members past and present, interviewing them about how they felt about Sam and what he’s done for them. The collection of videos makes us remember Sam returning to McKinley to save their previous Sectionals competition, rescuing their Nationals trophy, and his success at saving their Sectionals this year as well by cracking the Warblers case. Santana’s sent in a clip reminding Sam that he was the person who inspired her to try songwriting, and sings a bit of the always-welcome “Trouty Mouth,” and Mercedes, more seriously, reminds Sam that he was the one who got her noticed as a singer and was the reason she moved to LA. Finn, perhaps most importantly, recounts how Sam supported his whole family when his father lost his job and the Evanses became homeless. Sam sits there, watching the videos with silent tears dripping down his face, and Blaine tells him that this is what should be going into his essay. He turns to leave, and Sam grabs him in a hug, still crying as Blaine comforts him.

Having had a change of heart, and feeling more his normal self again, Sam then approaches Artie to apologise for the way he’d acted and to ask him to please be in the calendar, as they still have two spare months. He says that Artie can totally not be shirtless, and Artie accepts this with a smile but explains that it is still going to feel awkward that he is the only one wearing clothes, that this will highlight his insecurities about his body and wheelchair even more. Sam assures Artie that he won’t, in fact, be the only one in clothes, and we then see the finished product of the calendar and while most of the guys are shirtless, both Artie – for March and November, and Sam, for August and September, are in full (yet still cute) thematic costumes.

The calendar is a hit and all the girls in the school line up to buy one and to get the glee club guys to sign their copy. Jake spots Marley waiting in line and pulls her aside, telling her that he’s already made out a calender to her. He hands it over and she opens it. On his Halloween picture, it says, “I LOVE YOU.” She quickly and happily tells him that she loves him back, after they have been officially dating for approximately two weeks. But all is well, they kiss, and Artie and Sam affirm that they feel good about the new start to the year. The episode ends with a final musical number, “This is the New Year,” which starts off in an odd, breaking-the-fourth-wall music video, as the glee club sings and jumps around against a white studio background, acknowledging the camera, before turning into a traditional on-stage-in-the-auditorium ending.