Glee- The New Rachel

By vagueonthehow from Tadcaster, York, England (Chris Colfer & Lea Michele) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Glee eschews the crazy in favor of the sweet. We approve! Even though Rachel is in the school of her dreams with beauty, talent, a bright future, residence in one of the coolest cities in the world, and a cute new wardrobe, she is miserable. We hate you, Rachel. She’s upset because Finn hasn’t talked to her for two months. Yeah, he’s in the army, but come on, girl. If you haven’t heard from him in two months, you should forget him. Rachel is also disturbed by being constantly sexiled by her roommate who has more than a few notches in her belt. Having sex in a shared room while your roommate is trying to sleep is the ultimate in bad taste.

The worst thing about Rachel’s new life is her dance teacher, Cassie, played by Kate Hudson. Cassie’s personality is even worse than Rachel’s little-girl ballet skirts, but her introduction scene was a nice way to open the season. We like that she calls Rachel “David Schwimmer.” We wish Rachel would take off her version of the Sex and the City “Carrie” necklace. Is that a nod to the HBO show? We get it. Rachel is in New York. That doesn’t make her Carrie. Rachel met a new hot guy with the perfect torso. She heard him singing in the shower. Ern, however, did NOT hear him singing because her dad blundered out of his room and started singing along.

Kate Hudson’s mashup was forgettable, but her performance wasn’t. The Spanish pronunciation wasn’t great, but she sure has charisma. She really put Rachel in her place with that dancing??? She hasn’t heard Rachel sing yet. Whoopi Goldberg is back! Yay! The Freshman Reaping was a good scene. Ave Maria wasn’t good, but we can’t believe that girl got thrown out of the school! What is she going to do now?!! What about her lease in New York where she’s living?! What about all the money she’s invested? Losing a semester? We’re having a meltdown for this two-second character. When Rachel saw Kurt, we were touched and excited for her. He should have given her a heads up that he was coming to squat though.

Back at McKinley, Artie is still on the show and Sue had her ridiculous baby. Ugh. Artie is nominated to pick the “new Rachel,” since “Rachel was the undisputed star.” WHAT?!! They hardly let that girl sing at all last year. We know, because our iPods were particularly empty during season three. They held a little sing-off of Call Me Maybe. The cover was cute and didn’t make our ears hurt. We don’t think it needed to be covered though. We like that most of the characters aren’t regulars anymore. This show had too many characters. Yeah, we aren’t left with most of our faves, but at least the show has a core three dozen to focus on. Of Tina, Blaine, Brittany, and Unique, the new lead should be Tina. But we’re not super impressed with any of them. We’d pick Blaine, but the show autotunes him too hard.

New characters, new characters… So, Glee took the worst person ever on The Glee Project (and that’s saying a lot) and gave him a lead role. Alex was hated by literally every person except Ryan Murphy. Seriously, who else likes him? Unique says he can sing any song, any time. ANY song, any time, Unique? Try this one. Start at 5:00. That’s one blogger’s Everest. Stupid runs one of us has no ear for. Just Jake was okay. He had a decent tone, but he didn’t wow us. We think it’s stupid that he’s Puck’s brother. The Glee club needs better voices this year. Just Jake’s ego should keep him out of the club, but we doubt it will. This is a club that contained Rachel, Mercedes, Santana, and Quinn Fabray at one time. Hate him.

We like Marley alright. She may wear too many hates, but she’s pretty and seems sweet. Her mom is fantastically, tear-jerkingly supportive. We already have the best dad ever on this show (Burt), so it’s time to have the best mom. New York State of Mind was good.  Marley is great and likeable at the same time. Do we have a real nice girl on the show?!! For once? We appreciated that she wasn’t totally overdramatic about the song like Rachel was. She looks like Lexie on Grey’s Anatomy to us. Looks like Marley is the new female lead of the Glee club. She’s better than Tina, so good. She looks like a real teenager. We loved when she stuck up for her mom. We hate that the show is going to put her with Jake. Cliché.

Kurt is looking a lot better in his old age. He’s cuter. And Will got a haircut! So necessary. It’s Time sucked because of all the autotune. That’s a great song, and Darren Criss isn’t that bad. He doesn’t need all that computerized fixing. This show always overuses the autotune, but it was at new levels in this song. It was awful. We greatly prefer the original. We saw Burt. He showed up to foist high expectations about New York on his son. We love that they covered an ADELE song from her first album. Lots of people aren’t familiar with the music on 19. It’s really good and (BONUS) not overplayed like her other stuff. Marley’s voice was better on New York State of Mind though.

This episode wasn’t as laughably bad as a lot of Glee episodes. There was little ridiculousness. We like that it goes between Rachel and the Glee Club, but it feels like they will have to end Rachel’s plot at some point or make a Broadway-based spin off for her and Kurt. We don’t think the high school show can handle nine million characters and a plot about a Broadway adult once Rachel graduates. We’re pretty pleased with this premiere. We came to lambast, hate watch, and snicker, but we got a promising episode. We know it’s only a matter of time before the show sucks again.

Episode grade: B