Glee season 5, episode 4 “A Katy or a Gaga” aired last night. Read our full recap of Glee’s take on the most ineffectual feud in pop history below.

Nationals is coming up, apparently, and just when you thought that Glee couldn’t come up with stupider names for the competition of New Directions, we are introduced to Throat Explosion – a new show choir super-group that subscribes to Gladwell’s “10,000 hour” rule. Deluded Blaine is one of my favorite Blaines – his assumptive query “you guys have read that Malcolm Gladwell book “Outliers,” right?” is met with blank looks, but he goes on to explain the dedication and training Throat Explosion members put in, and describes them as “mini Lady Gagas” in regards to their edginess and the way they live their art.

Tina has an angry freak-out, saying that the club can’t compete with that because Throat Explosion have not only stolen the “outsider” underdog edge of New Directions, but the club has also lost its Gaga factor due to Kurt’s graduation. She scornfully declares them to be a bunch of Katy Perrys and Schuester steps in. He attempts to make this into a teaching moment by saying the club will beat Throat Explosion by being able to show off their Gaga side and their Katy side, and declares that those who identify as Gaga will perform a Katy Perry number, and the “Katys” will do Gaga. The entire group talks as if this form of identifier is like, a long-standing thing, as opposed to something they just made up, but, you know. They’re really forcing in a plot around the music at the moment.

In New York, Kurt has placed audition advertisements for the band that he “needs” to start – apparently Adam kicked him out of NYADA’S glee club because he found out Kurt was engaged. That seems like a really plausible ending to that kind and gentle character’s plot line, don’t you think? Anyway, he invites Santana, Dani and Rachel to join his “organic,” no-longer-Madonna-cover band, and though Rachel declines, the other two say yes.

Back at McKinley, Sam discovers that Penny may have a “musical dark side” after he discovers her apparent love of Skrillex, and Penny is treated to an impassioned monologue from Sam about his love of Nickelodeon’s True Jackson VP. Blaine helps Sam come up with a plan to woo Penny – a “secret Gaga” – by showing her Sam’s Gaga performance in a conversation where at least 85% of the words involved are Katy and Gaga.

Only one person shows up to the open auditions for Kurt’s band – a dude who goes by “Starchild” – Adam Lambert, a complete Velvet Goldmine cross steampunk vision in top hat, goggles, glitter coat and platform boots. He auditions with Lady Gaga’s “Marry The Night” and it’s sensational because it’s, well, Adam Lambert. Plus, his stage name is an homage to David Bowie, so, you know. I’m here for that.

Kurt… kind of isn’t, either because he feels out-sparkled, or his taste has dulled in his old age, but I showed this scene to my roommate and when Kurt scorns Starchild’s hand-made glam rock outfit, she said out loud “Step down. Kurt. You won’t win.” Which just about sums it up. Adam Lambert knocks this performance out of the park, but Kurt tells him it’s “not a good fit,” and that he needs to tone down his look. Starchild’s incredulous face matches mine pretty closely, because… what? Is this the same Kurt Hummel?

“This practice of referring to oneself as a Katy or a Gaga – the glee club will be doing this the entire week?”
“It’s super annoying, right?”
“It is the most annoying thing that they have ever done.”
A strong truth, Sue, a strong truth. Sue also drops another strong truth in ranting about the futility and pointlessness of choosing between female pop archetypes – why can’t we just be them all? I really hope people take this as the actual lesson of this episode, because it totally is. Bree, clad only in police tape, gives Principal Sue the down low on the whole New Directions Gaga or Katy week and reveals her plan to mess with the glee club by attempting to seduce Jake – a Gaga – away from Marley – an obvious Katy. Just to re-enforce that situation, we then get a scene of Marley and Jake planning their date for the weekend and Jake kindly expressing a bit of boredom with the lack of “edge” in Marley’s plans.

Sam turns into a control freak about making the Katy group’s Gaga performance perfect and spectacular, because he needs it to make Penny love him. He’s in the process of having huge stage props built – we see the construction which is costing our former teen stripper thousands of dollars – and takes charge of the group, announcing that they will be performing in front of the whole school. After a jump-cut and a conversation that made me genuinely uncomfortable, Sam convinces Becky to help promote the Gaga performance to the school.

Rachel chides Kurt about his rejection of Starchild, and Kurt reveals his beef: the issue isn’t that he is worried about being upstaged – he said he wouldn’t be forming a band otherwise – but it’s that he wants to do something that might have a chance of mainstream, commercial success – that the over the top, out there thing hasn’t really paid off for him so far. The pair share a beautiful conversation addressing the insecurities that have lead Kurt to this place, and Rachel convinces Kurt that he’s strongest when forging his own path. She suggests trying to get in touch with Starchild, but Kurt wistfully admits that he does not have the guy’s number – or his real name.

Bree puts her plan into practice by asking Jake to help choreograph a Cheerios number, right in front of Marley, who innocently encourages him. Sam somehow hijacks the personal computers and iPads of everyone at McKinley and sends around a trippy viral video advertising his Gaga performance. He catches Penny watches it and convinces her to miss her appointment for a new piercing – a valid reason to be leaving your place of work at 3.30pm, I’m sure – and come watch.

The Gaga people are doing a bad job of toning themselves down into Katy-style performers – their plans involve stealing lions and tigers from the zoo. Though am I the only person a bit confused by this entire “tone-down” scenario, because Katy Perry isn’t exactly demure… anyway, Jake becomes bored with the indecision and attempts to leave and go to his Cheerio choreography session. When Kitty pushes him about this and discovers Bree is behind it, the girls call Marley and Unique leads her on a reconnaissance mission to check out the situation. The situation is Bree grinding her ass all over Jake, so that’s not ideal. Although Marley looks horrified and says she can’t be all forward like Bree, she says she’s not going to get paranoid about Jake and that if he doesn’t like the real her, he can jog on.

A small audience gathers in the auditorium to watch the Katy people perform Lady Gaga’s Applause. It opens with a rather beautiful and shirtless Sam in a wing structure. Everyone else – Artie, Ryder and Blaine – all look pretty insane, but none more so than Marley, who comes on stage in full Katy Perry regalia, pink wig, candy dress and all, and skips around to the song. Schuester and the rest of the club spend the performance shooting confused and displeased song, and at the end, Sam rounds on Marley, asking her what the hell happened, and when she says she wasn’t comfortable, the others all tell her that they weren’t comfortable either, but that it was part of the assignment.

She explodes at everyone, saying she’s not going to change who she is, for any musical number or any guy – so it seems like she’s done this purely to make Jake like the “real her.” Schuester suspends her from glee club for the rest of the week for putting her personal agenda above the team performance in the context of an assignment, which, in some circumstances is a fair criticism, but I find it hard to take sides when eating-disorder Marley’s costume was Gaga’s seashell bikini. It’s a screwed up situation all around.

The Gaga-to-Katy group have a furious shouting match in the wake of the Katy-to-Gaga performance, because it’s the day of and they still don’t have a plan. This scene features the best line of the episode, from Unique: “Let me autocorrect that for you. I tried breaking into the zoo to get us live tigers: plot twist, Lima doesn’t have a zoo! Why’d we think it did?” She then presents her alternate plan – Jake in some beautiful lion make-up, looking very uncomfortable, and like, in his words, a gay Thundercat.

Tina says they have to strip things down to the essence of Katy’s music – that it’s fun and kind and girl-next-door which.. isn’t really accurate in my opinion.. but they decide to do their thing with no costumes or fanfare – letting the music do the talking. I’m a regular subscriber to a certain radio show, and “why don’t we let the music do the talking today” is a common phrase that the hosts use when they’re out of good ideas. So I’m just gonna leave that there.

At the Spotlight Diner, Kurt finally encounters Starchild again. He sits down with the dude – while on shift, I swear, they’re all getting fired – who introduces himself properly as Elliott Gilbert. He’s rocking a chill indie hipster look and asks Kurt – earnestly, not sarcastically – if this is toned down enough for Kurt’s liking. I start shipping them the moment Elliott removes his glasses and beams up at Kurt – the chemistry is instant. The two talk and Kurt learns Elliott’s story – that he’s at NYU (lol, adore you and think you’re gorgeous, Glambert, but playing college-age is a stretch) and that he felt that same NYC pull that Kurt and the others had.

He apparently failed to get into NYADA, which shocks Kurt, but he does various art-based things all over the city and one of his bucket-list things is being in an indie band. He says that he had wanted to make an impression, but if Starchild is too much, he can be whoever Kurt wants. Saucy. Kurt humbly admits that he knows that he has a great chance of success with Elliott’s talent on board, and invites him into the band – as himself, as Starchild, or as something in between – anything Elliott likes. That’s more like the Kurt Hummel we know, glad that’s sorted out. Elliott looks bashfully delighted and accepts the offer.

Penny admits to Sam that she hated the Gaga performance and that it was too dark for her. Her musical dark side was a lie – she has a history of rebelling against her vanilla image by dating “bad boys,” but she never genuinely liked the stuff they were into and says that she’s done with it. She reveals her mainstream pop favorites and Sam does the same, very relieved and delighted. Penny admits that she even still likes the Jonas Brothers, and Sam responds with “I still like the Biebs!” to which Penny draws the line and says “No.” I respect that choice, gurl. Penny agrees to go with Sam to watch the Katy Perry glee club performance, and the oddball pair take turns awkwardly and desperately kissing each other.

Team Gaga-to-Katy performs Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake” just… sitting there… on stools. Creative. It sounds nice and whatever, though. Afterwards, Marley’s all sad about getting in trouble and not being allowed in to watch the performance. Jake finds her and assures her that it’s not that big a deal. He invites her over to hang out and she responds assertively to his innuendo and his attraction to her Katy garb. Cut to them making out in Jake’s room – he has a pretty nice bedroom for a teenage dude actually – and Marley freaking out when Jake starts to touch her in a way she’s not comfortable with.

Jake tries to start a conversation about why she’s still uncomfortable with such things and though he tries to be patient, he upsets her and makes her feel pressured. She starts to cry and get angry at him when he says that he used to stop calling a girl if he didn’t get into her pants after 6 hours, and after Marley yells for him to go be with one of those girls and have fun, there’s a rather weird cut from him leaning forward to comfort her to him angrily striding up to Bree at school the next day and asking her to go hook up with him. That escalated quickly.

In the loft, the new band – Kurt, Santana, Dani and Elliott – are still trying to name themselves, Kurt being extremely controlling on the subject. When Rachel comes home and hears their prediction, she jokingly suggests “Pamela Lansbury,” – as in Pamela Anderson/Angela Lansbury – but the entire group look thunderstruck and love it immediately. Kurt insists that Rachel now has to join, and manages to talk her around. In the choir room, panic rules once again when the club – the Katy people all dressed up now too, for no reason whatsoever – discover that Throat Explosion is also doing Applause for Nationals. I see we’re back to that old standard where every group number that the club performs is their competition setlist but on the day of Nationals we will have never heard any of the numbers before.

Schuester gives a crappy inspirational speech about their potential and how other people’s greatness makes you greater and that’s what the Katy vs Gaga music “war” is all about and to be honest I wasn’t really listening. Jake asks Ryder, cynically, if Schue had had that lesson in mind all week or if he’d made it up on the spot. Ryder asks what Jake is talking about, that Mr Schue is a genius! Ryder is immediately demoted in my ranking of favorite Glee characters to somewhere between Tina and Jacob Ben-Israel. Sue then comes in, suspends the entire glee club for dress code violation, because she has that power as principal now and because the show can’t think of a better conflict, and the club start to defiantly sing “Roar” in her face, which will certainly solve all the problems.

This closing performance cuts to the club, in very revealing Tarzan outfits, re-creating Katy Perry’s “Roar” video onstage in the auditorium, watched approvingly by resident pederasts Mr Schuester and Penny. The boys, in particular, are like… really naked. Pamela Lansbury also get a part in the song, performing it in rehearsal at the loft – this band has five lead singers and a back-up of unnamed instrumentalists that Kurt grew in pods, apparently, but they sound amazing. Marley comes in to sadly lurk the semi-nudity that she would have apparently been comfortable with, that she’s missing out on because of being uncomfortable with some other semi-nudity, and waves to Jake, seeming to forgive him. He waves back, looking surprised and guilty, because oops, he did it again. By it I mean Bree, who comes in right behind Marley, all ready to ruin some lives.

Next week, Glee takes on several 2013 controversies in “The End of Twerk.” Can this be the official, actual end of twerk? For the planet? If so, I will never say a sarcastic word about Glee ever again. Watch the trailer below:

Glee season 5, episode 5 “The End of Twerk” will air on November 14 at 9pm ET.