Retroactive Disclaimer: I realized while I was writing this and reading the internet (yes, the entire thing) that I might not have been as pumped about this episode as most people were.  I liked it okay, it’s just that I gave a lot of things a mixed review.  I’m telling you this mostly as a warning, because I don’t want to kill anyone’s buzz.  I’m hoping a couple of you will still want to chat, but if not, I TOTALLY get that.  I hate when a blog or internet douchemonger ruins my excitement for mah stories with bitching, and I don’t wanna be that girl.  So there you go–boom!  Warned.  Read on if you dare.

Alright, I hope I’m not committing sacrilege here, but was anyone else a tiny bit underwhelmed with last night’s episode?  I suppose it could’ve been me, since all my shows seemed a little less than spectacular, but part of it could’ve just been expectations, too.  I mean, all this time on Glee has been leading up to Sectionals, and for me, the musical highlight of the show was Mercedes singing “And I Am Telling You”, and that was just in the choir room, you know?  I feel like this is one of the first episodes to leave me with more gripes than not, although there were still several things I enjoyed and I do in general really like this show, and I didn’t think it was unwatchable, you know?  Sometimes that can just be a weird feeling, not liking an episode of a show you’re a big fan of.  But we all go through it sometimes, right?

Anyway, let’s just start with Sectionals because obviously it was a big damn deal.  And here’s the thing, you guys–SERIOUSLY?  Only three schools in a sectional tournament and apparently only two in a regional?  Here is what I know–Ohio is a freaking huge state.  In fact, it is my least favorite state to drive though because it is enormous, and boring, and you feel like you’re getting somewhere and then you’re just in Ohio for fucking ever.  It is like the polar opposite of driving north or south through Tennessee.  And it’s not like it’s all farms, either–it has some decent sized cities and a lot of towns.  So trust me, there would be more than three fucking schools in any kind of sectional.  And I felt kind of cheated, because I WANTED to see a bunch of schools perform.  This could’ve been an almost entirely musical episode, hell, even a two-hour episode, and I would’ve been satisfied with that.

Okay, next bitch about sectionals.  I didn’t like Rachel’s “ballad”, and I don’t even know what technically constitutes a ballad but that didn’t seem like one.  And I get the significance of the song, and blah blah, but after Mercedes, it just felt like SUCH a letdown.  I wanted to really be wowed, and I kind of wasn’t.  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was better for me, partially because of my infinite love for the Stones and hot young Mick Jagger (seriously, do a Google image search–he was a total babe, y’all), but also because again, it was a good song choice for Finn, and if they’re going to have him being King Cock and Balls of the Show Choir World, they have to make him sound good, right? 

As for the judges, it was fun seeing Sarah Newlin from True Blood (or Pam’s sister from The Office), and the newscaster gag was kind of funny.  I wasn’t sure the payoff was worth having judges that didn’t take the competition seriously, though.  I mean, as an audience, we’ve been asked all season to take this seriously, and I think something I might like to see for Regionals is judges who take it WAY too seriously (Best in Show-style).  In a way, I was glad Teacher Eve wasn’t able to confess, because it means Nude Erections New Directions (thanks again, Marlene via Andy!) won on their own merits and not just because they were the only non-cheaters.  And by their own merits, I mean they were the least offensive.  Also, did anyone else kind of feel like this cheating plot cheapened the greatness of the deaf kids choir?  I mean, I guess it was their instructor and not them who cheated, but still.  (Sidenote: I loved Brittany waving at them from the audience.  She’s so clueless.)

For me, the most awesome person at Sectionals was Emma.  I loved her giving the cheating teachers a piece of her mind, and I loved how her telling them that if they’d believed in their own kids a little more, maybe they would’ve been able to get up there and be really great was echoed by her own glee kids taking matters into their own hands and winning.

Also awesome?  Mr. Shue getting to listen in over the phone.  I love when he gets proud of them and almost cries, because then it makes ME almost cry!  But again, I managed to keep it together.

As for the characters’ personal plots in the story … there was a LOT going on.  Let’s start with the Finn/Quinn/Puck/Rachel story.  So apparently Rachel figured out something was up, which everyone else already knew because of Mercedes (but somehow managed to keep under wraps).  The rest of Glee wanted to lock Rachel up in a basement, but they needed her too much for Sectionals, and at this point, I must say how Kath at GMMR is SO right–Kurt has no wasted screen time ever.  So naturally, Rachel got to Finn and told him that Quinn’s baby is Puck’s.  Also, that’s a pretty bold thing to tell someone when you just have suspicions.  (Is bold the right word?)  Finn pretty much lost his mind, gave Puck a beating, and quit Glee.  (Also, how hilarious is it that Puck is in a fight club?  Of COURSE he is.)

I thought Finn was amazing in this plot–he was the right amount of crazy, sad, and homicidal for what was going on.  And I was glad he didn’t just accept Puck’s “we cool?” handshake either, because … DUDE.  But I just had so many QUESTIONS about it, like … where is Quinn going to live?  And who is going to take her baby?  And why doesn’t she want Puck around, besides the obvious sexting scandal?  Maybe that’s where the wheels came off for me a little bit–I wanted to see more of what was going on with Quinn than we did.  And granted, I would’ve wanted to see what was going on with Finn too, but I guess what I’m realizing in writing all this is that maybe the show just tried too hard to pack too much into one episode.  Any one of the three major plotlines could’ve been its own episode, and this was VERY ambitious.

The one thing we did see from Quinn, which was her interaction with Rachel, seemed … not right.  And again, I think Quinn may be a character that this show is writing for that none of its writers ever was–the bitchy queen bee who is also a pregnant teenager.  Bitchy, they seem to be able to handle.  But whenever Quinn is supposed to have these teen pregnancy emotions, things just start to fall apart for me.  I don’t buy that she wouldn’t have been completely pissed at Rachel.  Rachel just ruined whatever last shot of a normal life she had, and I would think that her instinct would be to want revenge, or at least to give her a good screaming at, even if she calmed down and later came to the conclusion that things were for the best, and even that would take a pretty mature teenager.  I feel like in a lot of ways, the writers can’t figure out how to make Quinn’s different sides into one personality, and so she often ends up being either Cheerio Quinn (i.e. blackmailing Sue) or Teen Pregnancy Quinn, who just rolls over and takes whatever (which is obviously how she got to be Teen Pregnancy Quinn–ba-dum-ch!).  I think I’d like it if they could find a way to make those two sides of her personality work together.

Moving on to Mr. Shue’s love triangle … I know Teri is crazy and I also know that I said he should leave her because hello, she faked a pregnancy and that is WHACK.  And no, there is no better word that I can use to describe my feelings on that–whack pretty much sums it up. :)  But it was seriously hard watching that scene between them and I really felt for Teri, because knowing that someone doesn’t love you anymore is the WORST.  And I DID get that she was trying and that she wasn’t always that way. 

Truthfully, it made me think back to Tam’s comment last week, where she would just once like to see a married couple work through their issues.  I said that in the case of TV, because whatever, my moral standards are different for TV than real life, it didn’t really bother me.  But the thing is, they had to go and make Teri a real person, and in this episode, a real person who was really trying.  And that … makes it harder.  If she had just stayed completely hateable, then whatever.  But for all of her shenanigans and for as much as I was like, “Divorce her sorry ass!” last week, this week it made Shue and Emma harder to enjoy.

And about that.  I loved the shots showing Emma’s wedding set up in a very Napoleon Dynamitely edited way, and GOD was it hideous.  But also … I don’t know, sort of charming in its total lack of spectacle.  And this scene also gets mixed reviews from me.  I found it a little distracting that no one else was there … doesn’t Emma have a mom or a sister or something?  But I LOVED when she told Will she put in her notice, and saying how whenever she saw Ken she felt guilty and whenever she saw Will she felt heartbroken, because that’s actually a feeling I can relate to.  And when Will grabbed her arm, that was kind of … I don’t know, it caught me a little off-guard and again, I wanted to enjoy it but I was TORN!  And then it made total sense to me when Emma was like, “You JUST left your wife.  It’s not a good time.”

So, I don’t know, I wish I had been more excited when Mr. Shue and Emma found each other and kissed, because I think it was supposed to be a UK Office-type satisfying kiss, but I didn’t really feel as happy about it as I thought I would.  And again, I think there may have been a case of trying to squeeze too much into an episode–I tend to like a little more build-up than that, but that doesn’t mean I’m not on board for Mr. Shue and Emma, at least in theory.  I just really don’t know how it’s going to go, you know?

As for Sue … Figgins firing her as coach of the Cheerios was NOT something I saw coming.  And I really am excited for her return from Boca, because she’ll no doubt be more evil than ever.  Plus, she had my favorite line of the night, where she told Will that she was sure that revenge would be something else to add to his long list of things he’s not good at, right next to being married, glee club, and finding a haircut that doesn’t make him look like a lesbian.  Hee!  Plus, with more time on her hands, I could see Sue really going insane, which I am totally for.

You guys, I  am starting to realize after much internet surfing today that I may not have been as excited about this episode as most other people and I definitely don’t want that to detract from anyone’s enjoyment of the show or talking about it, so I’m going to add a little retroactive disclaimer at the top.  I just want you to know that when you comment, I’d never dream of raining on your parade.  Also, I think that my main things about this episode where the pacing/amount of stuff packed into it, not necessarily WHAT was in it, and the other thing is this:  I think that a lot of people who watch Glee are true music and musical geeks, and I’m just not–I’m a way more casual watcher of the numbers, and I’m probably less likely to find flaw with song and dance routines than I am with story, because that’s what I watch for (well, that and the funny).  But just because I don’t love every minute of an episode doesn’t mean I didn’t like the show, and as I’ve discussed in the past on GMMR with Chuck, and on this site with Vampire Diaries, when I say these things it’s not that I’m being a hater, it’s that I want and think the show is capable of more.  So even though my excitement wasn’t through the roof over this episode, doesn’t mean I’m not anxious for it to come back in April because Glee has really climbed my charts this season, especially for someone who didn’t watch probably the first six episodes.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, if there’s still anyone who wants to chat, let’s chat!  Tell me what you thought, what your favorite moments were, which storyline was your fave, and what you thought of all the big reveals–Mr. Shue leaving Teri and smooching Emma, Rachel telling Puck about Quinn and Finn, Sectionals, etc.  Comments, friends!