Glee- The Break-Up

By David Shankbone (Chris Colfer) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What happened: Finn got kicked out the army for shooting himself in the leg and comes to see Rachel, who tries to get him set up in New York City with her. Finn isn't into it, realizing that this isn't his place. When he finds out Rachel kissed Brody, he goes back to Ohio. Rachel follows him there and breaks up with him very satisfactorily. Blaine cheats on Kurt because he was lonely and feels so guilty that he immediately goes to visit Kurt and confesses.

Santana comes back to Lima long enough to break up with Brittany because she feels like long distance relationships are too hard. It's more mature than it sounds. Will and Emma fight because he expects her to go to Washington D.C. with him and just drop her job for a while. Jake breaks up with Kitty after she treats Marley badly, but he turns down Marley's offer to hang out. The musical this year is going to be Grease.

What we thought: Ryan Murphy actually wrote this one himself. Glee hasn't had a crazy-awful episode this season yet, and this episode continued the streak of good choices for this show. Rachel and Kurt need to be single in NYC for a while. This is a good, while sad, decision.

Brittany and Santana started out as a joke, so their relationship hasn't felt real to us until this episode. It's partly that Brittany is so dumb that she can't mentally be in a real relationship with a normal human and have us be rooting for it. This episode made it seem like real love though..

Marley is so cute. We just want to squeeze her little cheeks.Marley will make the perfect Sandy in Grease. What is Jake's problem? There has to be some issue or reason he's staying away from a girl he's obviously crushing on. We've already had a male stripper, so what deep, dark secret will Glee whip out that can top that? Oh, hell, this show is so repetitive, it's probably that he's a male stripper.

Finn is so stupid! He shot himself in the leg and got thrown out of the army? It looks like Finn is going to end up taking over for Will when he goes to D.C. Ugh. We wanted a cool new teacher for the interim. We wanted Will to leave forever, actually. We guess Finn is back for good. He's not the character we want to see make a comeback.

We don't feel that bad for Finn. He messed up his own relationship, Little Lion Man-style. It was sad when he cried on Will's shoulder though. Finn, we're all trying to figure out what to do with our lives. Welcome to the human experience. He needs to work on his insecurity issues before he can be with someone though.

Ugh, we had forgotten about the Left Behind books. Ugh, more like Suck Behind. (That sounded cleverer in one of our heads.) We've read a few, and for books about the end of the world, they are pretty pointless and hatefully boring. The rapture stuff on the show was stupid.The left behind prank was hilarious though. Just so you guys know, only some Christians believe in the rapture. We don't.

We're not feeling Kitty. She's everything that was bad and annoying about Quinn without any of the depth of likability. She is one of the only graduated characters we want to see come back, and she's missing. For the most part though, the way the show is bringing back the old characters feels natural, un-rushed, and not too crowded.

We can't believe Blaine cheated on Kurt. Who was it?!! We guess Blaine is one of those people who can't be alone. We're loving Kurt's new haircut.

Just let Emma stay home, Will. Man, what a stupid fight.

Rachel's speech to Finn was right-on. We love when she's not a crazy jerk. We actually teared up a little. Oh God, maybe we do care about Finchel. That was a well-written scene. It had us rooting for Rachel again and respecting her new pair of balls. 

Long distance relationships can only work if you have a) self control and b) other things in your life other than love and relationships. Plenty of people can be single and happy for a long time because they know how to deal with loneliness. These are the people who can do long distance...for a while. But that requires maturity, and these kids are 18 and younger. It's cool that Santana knows herself well enough to decide that this isn't going to work for her right now. These two handled things the best. 

As for the songs, Barely Breathing sounded alright. Since it was a Blaine/Finn duet, we thought it was just going to be an Autotune Olympics, but most of the song stayed in their range. That helps.

We love when Glee does something different with the song they are covering and hate when they just make the same version with another singer. Turning Give Your Heart a Break into a piano-driven male/female duet was a great idea. It's not like one female singer is going to top Demi's version, even Lea Michele. This song is right in the good spot of Lea's range though. It sounded like karaoke too. Not overproduced, like usual. How short is Brody? Lea Michele is 5'2" and she's almost as tall as him in stilettos.

We didn't care much about Klaine, but Teenage Dream made us feel for Blaine a little. It did everything that song was supposed to and communicated the problems to Kurt. We forget Darren can act. The whole karaoke bar scene was great and natural. Darren Criss sounded raw, and that's a good thing.

Don't Speak sounded good, but it was awkwardly placed in the episode. The street scene was moving, and then the singing took it to a slightly cheesy place. Still, Lea needs to sing more No Doubt or Gwen. She's perfect for that.

Mine was nice, but Naya can't stop Songbird as far as a soft, sweet love songs to Brittany go, and it's weird to hear Santana cover a country song. Only one lyric really fit ("You are the best thing that's ever been mine"). We think a different song could have been used.

Our favorite version of The Scientist is the Natasha Bedingfield cover, but this one was really good too. The flashbacks mixed with the song really got to us. We teared up. We weren't emotionally invested in any of these relationships before this episode, but this one made us hope that Kurt and Blaine reunite. Finchel should maybe happen at the end of the entire series. We love tumblr's Faberry idea though.

 As Leeard put it once, we'll never stop caring about these a**holes. Once we're out, they suck us back in.

Episode grade: A