REVIEW: Glee “Born This Way”

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Oh Glee, how I love thee when you have your shit together. After the debacle that aired last week I’ll admit to being skeptical that this special 90 minute episode would deliver. I worried about pointless songs and entire subplots that served no purpose other than to fill empty air. What we got was a tight, well thought out and developed episode that did not feel long at all. And they did it with nary a peep from Sue Sylvester!

With Nationals in New York creeping up fast Mr. Schuester (Matthew Morrison) is finally pointing out what we viewers have known for two seasons; the choreography is lame and his kids have self-acceptance issues. Mike (Harry Shum Jr) and Brittany (Heather Morris) are the only two members who can really lay down some phat moves. The rest stomp around and twirl like they are wearing lead-soled orthopedic shoes. Artie (Kevin McHale) could give both a run for their money as we saw in an awesome flash-mob dream sequence to “Safety Dance” last year but he has yet to be miraculously cured of his paralysis, so he doesn’t count. So, to get his team in shape Schue holds Booty Camp. Things get off to a rocky start when the worst offender in the group Finn (Cory Monteith) nails Rachel (Lea Michele) and sends her plummeting face first to the stage where she breaks her Streisand. Her doc recommends she fix her “deviated septum” which we all know is code for nose job which sparks a debate about self-love and vanity fueled mostly by Santana (Naya Rivera) keeping it real and calling everyone out on their insecurities. Undaunted (and spurred on by her undying love for Finn whom she claims she doesn’t love anymore but we know she really does) she decides to go ahead with the procedure and has chosen Lady Perfection herself Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron) to show the doc the benchmark for her perfect nose. Naturally Quinn was very modest about it.

Quinn: “I’m shocked more girls don’t ask me to do this. My nose is awesome!”

Also facing her own demons is Emma (Jayma Mays) who has chosen to deal with being dumped and annulled by John Stamos by diving headlong into her own pit of obsessive compulsive madness. She spends most of the 90 minutes individually washing grapes while telling Will how perfectly normal it all is because it is how she is supposed to be. Ready to get on with the business of getting it on with her, Will decides to try tough love and reads her left and right about her weirdness and her avoidance of the real issue. She finally agrees to therapy but spends 48 of the 50 minute hour scrubbing the couch she should be lying on. The doc sends her home with pills and a standing weekly appointment so the Emma of next season should be something to behold. Maybe they’ll over-medicate her and she’ll become a hoarder.

Amidst all this bad dancing, grape washing and deviated septum drama the race for Homecoming Queen is heating up. Quinn has made winning the plastic crown her life’s ambition because it was established many episodes ago that she has accepted the fact that she will never be as awesome and pretty as she is at 17 and that makes the Baby Jesus cry. With Finn by her side she considers herself a sure thing for Queen but she gets a wakeup call when Lauren Zizes (Ashley Fink) throws her sizable hat into the ring. The underdogs at McKinley quickly rally behind her, but to secure her win Lauren pulls some CIA shit and digs up some dirt on Quinn. Turns out she was…wait for it…a chubby and awkward pre-teen with braces and bad clothes who went by the name Lucy! Oh the humanity! Lauren uses the old yearbook photos against Quinn but her plan backfires and the underdogs change teams. This new information about Quinn isn’t exactly shocking or groundbreaking but it is interesting and adds a tad more depth to her character if only to make her more normal. It also made me love Lauren more than I already did. Not for plastering the Lucy Caboosey pics all over the halls but for being so confident and awesome without the nose job/hair dye and perfect figure.

The big big news this week though was the return of Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) to McKinley High. Well all knew this day was inevitable. Not much happened over at Dalton Academy aside from Blaine (Darren Criss) and Kurt exchanging meaningful glances between tightly choreographed harmonizing. Oh that bird died too, but who cares. Bringing Kurt back to the nest was going to be tricky business and I silently prayed to Gaga and Barbra Streisand each night that they wouldn’t do it some weird lame way that made no sense like redistricting or having Dalton burn down or something. Shockingly the campaign to get Kurt back was spearheaded by Santana who after some careful thought and lots of voiceover work decided that the best way for her to win Homecoming Queen was if she dated Dave Korofsky (Max Adler), and the best way for New Directions was for Kurt to rejoin the team so killing two gays with one stiletto she blackmails Dave into making amends so that Kurt will transfer back. The first hurdle would be convincing Kurt that he would be safe.

I love how the writers handled this. Kurt’s dad (Mike O’Malley) was not buying Dave’s newfound remorse and acceptance but Kurt was willing to hear him out, and got down to the truth of the matter once he was left alone with Dave. I thought Dave was being pretty honest about feeling bad about his treatment of Kurt. Granted, faced with being outed before one is ready can be a big motivator, but Max Adler played this well…like Dave was seriously starting to understand who he was and what it meant. I wouldn’t be shocked if Dave came out before the end of this season. I also wouldn’t put it past the writers to tackle the current problem of suicide in gay teens by having Dave off himself. That’s drastic, and I wouldn’t want to see it happen but it would be a powerful way to discuss the issue. This scene also gave birth to another great Kurt quote:

Kurt (about Santana): She’s a regular Latina Eve Harrington. If you are going to be gay you REALLY should know who that is.

Side note: All About Eve is my all time favorite movie. I’ll pause while you get over the shock of that statement.

Kurt is barely back for ten minutes before he is stealing the show with a knockout version of “As If We Never Said Goodbye” from Sunset Boulevard. It was the perfect song for his return and he sang the shit out of it.

Since we are on the subject of music what about the other numbers? Quinn and Rachel’s mash-up of “Unpretty” and “I Feel Pretty” was amazing and easily my favorite of the episode. Finn and Mike tore up “I Gotta Be Me” and The Warblers said goodbye to Kurt with Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know“. The much touted tribute to Gaga’s “Born This Way” rounded out the extended episode in a big way with each Glee member wearing a shirt advertising the thing they most wanted to change about themselves. Some of them were pretty funny, such as Puck’s “I’m With Stoopid” and Mike Chang’s “Can’t Sing”.

So did Rachel get her nose job? Thankfully not thanks to a Barbra-vention flash mob at the local mall that Kurt orchestrated to Duck Sauce’s catchy dance tune “Barbra Streisand“. I don’t know why I like that song so much. There are no lyrics!

Glee really brought their “A” game this week and I hope the momentum holds up till the season finale in a few weeks. I’m shocked they managed a kickass 90 minutes without one peep or cameo from Sue Sylvester but next week it looks like she’ll be back with a vengeance and some interesting disguises. Tune in next week to find out why she’d dressed as David Bowie in the preview below.